You must have a Paid version of Cursor with Paid LLM

You must be a paying Cursor customer to use any external LLM such as Sonnet-4.


The attached image is what you will see if you have not updated your Cursor Subscription.

I don’t mind paying, I just don’t like how I’m having to find all of this out.

Note to CURSOR:
HEY CURSOR, If you need a UX Dsigner, I’m good to go… I could help you with business strategy. You need it!!!

---------- > UPDATE:

Limitations:

  • Custom API keys only work with standard models from supported providers.

  • Cursor does not support custom local LLMs or non-standard API formats natively. Workarounds exist for running local LLMs, but these are not officially supported and require exposing your local model as a compatible API endpoint

  • .

Summary Table

Feature Free Version + API Key Paid Version (Cursor Pro)
Use external LLM API key Yes Yes
Access advanced Cursor features No (some features require Pro or specific models) Yes (full access)
Supported providers OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Azure, AWS Bedrock, DeepSeek Same
Local LLM support Not natively supported Not natively supported

Conclusion:
Cursor IDE requires you to have tokens (credits) with Cursor to use Anthropic models—even if you provide your own paid Anthropic API key—due to a policy change that restricts Anthropic model access on the free plan. This is confirmed by multiple user reports and forum discussions: when you enter your Anthropic API key on the free plan, Cursor displays a message indicating that you need Cursor tokens or a Pro subscription to use Anthropic models

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