On October 12, 2026, Cursor's plans became part of the X Subscription, the bundle of Grok, Cursor and X Premium. It follows SpaceX's purchase of Cursor's maker, Anysphere, which closed in August. For a lot of people it changes the math:
- Plus, $8 a month, runs Grok models only.
- Premium, $30, adds cloud agents, Bugbot reviews and models from other companies, but Claude and GPT are billed separately, at API list prices, through top-ups.
- Super ($100) and Ultra ($200) give 15 and 50 times Plus's usage, in a weekly pool shared with Grok.
- Pro and Pro+ no longer appear on the pricing page. If you already pay for Cursor, your included Claude and GPT usage carries on until you switch plans.
If Claude or GPT is your daily driver, Cursor now costs a subscription plus API prices. These are the alternatives worth looking at in October 2026. A disclosure first: I build Morphy, which is one of them, and every product here was checked against its own website on October 16, 2026.
Should you leave at all?
Not necessarily:
- You like Grok: Plus at $8 a month is now one of the cheapest AI editors there is.
- You already pay for Cursor: your plan's included Claude and GPT usage continues until you switch, so there's no rush.
- You use Claude or GPT every day: compare Premium ($30) plus your API spend with a flat plan below. For heavy users, a Claude or ChatGPT subscription usually goes much further than paying per token.
The alternatives at a glance
| What it is | Claude and GPT in the plan? | Paid plans from | Free plan | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Devin Desktop (Windsurf) | An AI editor, with local and cloud agents | Yes, plus Gemini and Grok | $20 a month | Yes, light usage |
| GitHub Copilot | An agent in VS Code, JetBrains and more | Yes, plus Gemini and Grok | $10 a month | Yes |
| Claude Code | Anthropic's agent, in VS Code, Cursor, a desktop app or the terminal | Claude only | $20 a month (Claude Pro) | No |
| Codex | OpenAI's agent, in VS Code, Cursor, the ChatGPT app or the terminal | OpenAI only | $20 a month (ChatGPT Plus) | Yes, in the desktop app |
| Zed | A fast editor with built-in and external agents | With your own keys, or $5 of tokens on Pro | $10 a month | Yes, with your own keys |
| Kiro | AWS's agent editor, built around specs | Claude, plus open-weight models | $20 a month | Yes, 50 credits |
| Google Antigravity | Google's agent editor | Claude yes; GPT only as the open-weight GPT-OSS | Google AI Pro or Ultra | Yes, with weekly limits |
| Cline | An open-source agent for VS Code and the terminal | With your own keys | No plan: pay for the AI you use | Yes |
| Morphy | A canvas to run many agents at once, next to your editor | Through your own Claude, ChatGPT and other plans | $5 a month (Pro) | Yes |
The alternatives, one by one
Devin Desktop (formerly Windsurf)
Windsurf's editor, renamed Devin Desktop by Cognition in June 2026 (windsurf.com now leads there). It's the closest thing to Cursor before the change: an AI editor with tab completions and agents, where Pro includes frontier models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and SpaceXAI in its usage allowance.
- Price: Free (light usage, some models, unlimited tab completions), Pro $20 a month, Max $200, Teams $80 a month plus $40 a seat. Usage refreshes daily and weekly, and you can buy more at API prices.
- Watch out for: it has grown into a home for many agents at once (its own, plus Codex, Claude's agent and OpenCode, on your computer and in the cloud), so it's more than the editor you may remember, and heavy use runs into daily and weekly quotas.
Sources: pricing, Devin Desktop.
GitHub Copilot
If you just want an agent in VS Code (or JetBrains, Visual Studio and more), Copilot is the cheapest serious option, and it includes models from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google and xAI.
- Price: Free (limited chat and agent use, 2,000 code completions a month), Pro $10 a month (with $15 of usage credits), Pro+ $39 ($70 of credits, and it can hand tasks to third-party agents like Claude), Max $100 ($200 of credits).
- Good for: pull request reviews on GitHub from Pro, and staying in plain VS Code.
- Watch out for: heavy agent use runs through the credits, so check how far yours go in a normal week.
Sources: plans.
Claude Code
Anthropic's own agent. The VS Code extension gives you a graphical Claude Code panel (with side-by-side diffs, plans you can comment on and checkpoints), and it works in Cursor and other VS Code-based editors too. There's also the Claude desktop app and the terminal.
- Price: Claude Pro, $20 a month or $17 billed yearly; Max $100 or $200. Claude's free plan doesn't include Claude Code.
- Good for: the strongest results on long agent tasks: Claude Code with Opus 5.5 leads the independent Terminal-Bench 4.0.
- Watch out for: Claude models only, and no tab completions.
More in Codex vs Claude Code and the best Claude Code GUIs.
Codex
OpenAI's agent. The IDE extension runs in VS Code, Cursor and Windsurf, and Codex also lives in the ChatGPT desktop app and the terminal, with cloud tasks on paid plans.
- Price: included in ChatGPT. Free and Go ($8) get it in the desktop app only, with GPT-6 Luna; Plus ($20) adds the extension, the CLI, cloud tasks and GitHub reviews.
- Good for: value: in Vals.ai's test, GPT-6.1 Sol did a task for $1.72 against $13.20 for Claude Opus 5.5, and Codex is sandboxed by default.
- Watch out for: OpenAI's models only.
More in Codex vs Claude Code and Codex app vs Morphy.
Zed
A very fast editor, written in Rust, with its own agent and room for others: Claude Code, Codex and more connect to it, and several agents can run in parallel in one window.
- Price: Personal is free, and AI in it is unlimited with your own API keys or external agents. Pro is $10 a month, with unlimited edit predictions and $5 of tokens (then API prices plus 10%). Business is $30 a seat.
- Watch out for: it's not VS Code, so your extensions don't come along.
Sources: pricing, parallel agents.
Kiro
Amazon's agent editor, built around specs: you agree on requirements and a plan with the agent before it writes code.
- Price: Free with 50 credits, Pro $20 a month (1,000 credits), Pro+ $40, Pro Max $100, Power $200; extra credits at $0.04 each. It runs Claude Sonnet 5, Claude Opus 5 and open-weight models.
- Watch out for: credits make heavy months harder to predict, and its Claude models are a version behind the newest (5 rather than 5.5).
Sources: pricing.
Google Antigravity
Google's own editor for working with agents, free for individuals with weekly limits; a Google AI Pro or Ultra subscription raises them. It runs Gemini, including Gemini 4 Argon, Google's newest, and Claude Sonnet 5.5 and Opus 5.5, depending on your tier.
- Watch out for: no OpenAI models apart from the open-weight GPT-OSS, and the free tier's limits are tight for heavy use.
Cline
A free, open-source agent for VS Code and the terminal. You bring your own API keys (Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, OpenRouter and many more) and pay only for what the models cost.
- Good for: full control over which model does what, with no subscription.
- Watch out for: paying per token adds up fast with the top models on long tasks.
Sources: pricing.
Morphy
Not an editor: a desktop app where every chat is an agent on one canvas. If you used Cursor mainly for its agent, Morphy runs Claude Code, Codex, Copilot, Gemini, Grok and OpenCode side by side on your own plans, next to whatever editor you keep. Any chat can work in its own copy of your project (a git worktree), and when one plan runs out, another AI can carry the conversation on.
- Price: free (3 agents at a time, 2 projects), or Pro at $5 a month (an early price). You pay for the AIs you use.
- Watch out for: no tab completions or code editor; review line comments and pull requests stay in your editor or on GitHub.
More in the best tools to run Claude Code and Codex in parallel.
Can you keep Cursor's editor?
Yes. Cursor's editor is built on VS Code, and both Anthropic's Claude Code extension and OpenAI's Codex extension run in it. So you can stay on Cursor's free plan for the editor, and run Claude Code or Codex in it on your own Claude or ChatGPT plan, at the flat price of that plan.
Moving your setup is easier than it used to be too: Claude Code's /import cursor brings your Cursor configuration, like its instruction files and MCP servers, into Claude Code.
Which should you pick?
- You want the closest thing to the old Cursor: Devin Desktop.
- You want to spend as little as possible: GitHub Copilot (free or $10), or Cursor's free editor with Claude Code or Codex in it.
- You use Claude every day: Claude Code on a Claude plan.
- You use OpenAI every day: Codex on a ChatGPT plan.
- You want speed and your own keys: Zed, or Cline in VS Code.
- You run several agents at once: Morphy, next to the editor you like.
References
- Cursor: pricing, Introducing the X Subscription; SpaceX's purchase of Anysphere: Wikipedia
- Each alternative's sources are listed in its section above.
- Anthropic: Claude Code in VS Code, commands, including
/import, Claude pricing - OpenAI: Codex in your IDE, Codex pricing
- Benchmarks: Terminal-Bench leaderboard, Vals.ai Terminal-Bench 4.0
