Cursor Review

Cursor has a free Hobby plan that includes 2,000 completions and 50 slow requests per month — enough to meaningfully evaluate the Tab autocomplete and chat features. The free plan uses slower model tiers, meaning response times are longer and you don't get access to frontier models like Claude 3.7 Sonnet or GPT-4o. For a professional developer, the free plan will last approximately 1–3 days of normal usage before hitting the slow request limit. It's sufficient to decide whether to upgrade, not for sustained daily professional use.

For most VS Code users, yes — Cursor's Tab autocomplete is more accurate, its Agent mode is more mature, and the codebase context system is more sophisticated. GitHub Copilot scores 89/100 vs Cursor's 92/100 on the VIP AI Index™. The key reasons to choose Copilot over Cursor: you use JetBrains IDEs (Copilot supports them natively, Cursor doesn't), you need deep native GitHub integration (PRs, Issues, Actions), or the $10/mo price point vs $20/mo is a constraint. For pure AI coding capability inside a VS Code environment, Cursor is better. For IDE flexibility and GitHub-native workflows, Copilot is better.

Agent mode lets you describe a coding task in natural language and have Cursor execute it autonomously across multiple files — reading relevant code, planning changes, implementing them, running terminal commands, and iterating based on errors. In testing it handles tasks like: "add JWT authentication to this Express app", "migrate this component from class to functional with hooks", "add unit tests for all functions in this file", and "refactor this monolith into separate service modules". Quality varies by complexity: simple to medium tasks (adding features, refactoring, writing tests) are handled well with light supervision. Complex architectural decisions and greenfield projects from scratch require more guidance and iteration. It's best treated as a fast, capable junior developer — not a fully autonomous senior engineer.

On the Hobby and Pro plans, code sent to Cursor for AI features is processed by Cursor's servers and model providers (Anthropic, OpenAI, Google). Cursor's privacy policy states they do not train on your code and do not sell it, but the code is transmitted to third-party model APIs. For proprietary code: use Privacy Mode (Business plan, $40/mo/seat) which provides data processing agreements ensuring code is not stored or used for training, or use API key mode on Pro which sends requests directly to model providers using your own API keys, bypassing Cursor's servers. For highly regulated industries (finance, healthcare, legal), review the Enterprise plan and consult Cursor's DPA before using it with client or regulated data.

No — Cursor is a standalone IDE built on VS Code. It does not exist as a plugin for JetBrains products. If you use IntelliJ IDEA, PyCharm, WebStorm, DataGrip, or any other JetBrains tool, your options are: GitHub Copilot (the best JetBrains AI coding integration available), Windsurf (limited JetBrains support), or switching your primary IDE to Cursor. For developers deeply invested in JetBrains workflows — who rely on JetBrains' debugger, refactoring tools, and IDE-specific features — switching to Cursor may not be worth the loss of those platform capabilities, even for Cursor's superior AI features.

Migration from VS Code to Cursor takes approximately 2 minutes. Download and install Cursor from cursor.com, open it, and on first launch it offers to import your VS Code settings — including extensions, keybindings, themes, and workspace configurations. Accept the import and your environment is ready. Because Cursor is a VS Code fork, nearly all VS Code extensions install and run identically. The only exceptions are extensions that conflict with Cursor's own AI features (some code completion extensions) or require the exact VS Code binary rather than a fork. The learning curve is effectively zero for existing VS Code users — the editor looks and works identically, with AI features added on top.