Choose Claude Code for a terminal-first agent on Anthropic's Claude models, and Cursor for an AI editor that switches between OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and other models. Cursor reads CLAUDE.md and Claude Code's skills, so one repository can serve both.[1][2][3][4][5]
Claude Code opened 822 of the 866 agent-written pull requests we merged from August 12 to October 4, 2026, and Cursor none, so this page compares the two tools' docs, not our results.
Measure both with Zest:
Claude Code and Cursor sessions side by side, per engineer
The model, skills and MCP tools behind each session
Claude CodeFable 5.1 (max) (with fallback)70.4 · Coding Agent Index
CodexGPT-6 Astra (max)67.0 · Coding Agent Index
Muse CodeMuse Spark 1.3 (xhigh)64.2 · Coding Agent Index
Grok BuildGrok 4.5 (high)64.1 · Coding Agent Index
Kimi Code CLIKimi K362.6 · Coding Agent Index
OpencodeGemini 3.8 Flash (high)61.2 · Coding Agent Index
Cursor CLIComposer 2.5 Fast38.3 · Coding Agent Index
Demo setups use current model families. The pairings above are the combinations benchmarked by Artificial Analysis; rankings measure performance, not popularity.
Illustrative daily trends · Other totals: last 30 days. Build Hours: this week, model-estimated activity including overlap; not engineer hours.
USED BY ENGINEERING TEAMS AT
AT A GLANCE
Claude Code vs Cursor, side by side
What each tool documents, row by row.
Claude Code vs Cursor, side by side
Claude Code
Cursor
Team seats for 5 engineers
$100/mo — Claude Team Standard at $20 a seat, billed annually ($25 monthly).[6]
$160/mo — Cursor Teams Standard at $32 a seat, billed annually ($40 monthly).[7]
Where it runs
Terminal CLI, VS Code and JetBrains extensions, a desktop app, the web and mobile, plus Slack and GitHub Actions.[1]
The Cursor editor (Agent pane and Agents Window), the Cursor CLI, Cloud Agents in VMs, and JetBrains through ACP.[8]
Models
Claude models only (Fable, Opus, Sonnet, Haiku); Anthropic doesn't support routing Claude Code to other models.[2]
OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, SpaceXAI (Grok) and more, plus Cursor's own Composer; Auto routing and bring-your-own keys.[3]
Project instructions
CLAUDE.md and .claude/rules/; AGENTS.md only when there is no CLAUDE.md, or through an @import.[9]
.cursor/rules, team rules and AGENTS.md; it also applies CLAUDE.md, for Claude Code compatibility.[4]
Skills, subagents and hooks
Skills (SKILL.md, invoked as /skill-name), custom subagents in .claude/agents, and lifecycle hooks.[10]
Agent Skills, subagents in .cursor/agents and hooks; it also loads .claude and .codex skills and agents.[5]
MCP servers
Local stdio or remote HTTP MCP servers, added with claude mcp add.[11]
Stdio, SSE and Streamable HTTP servers through mcp.json; Cloud Agents can use team MCP servers.[12]
Team analytics, built in
Team and Enterprise dashboard: daily users, sessions, lines accepted, accept rate and PRs with Claude Code; API on Enterprise.[13]
Teams dashboard: AI share of committed code, agent edits, messages by model, daily users and a leaderboard.[14]
Checking your own usage
/usage (also /cost and /stats) shows plan usage, session cost and a 24h/7d breakdown by skill, subagent and MCP server.[15]
A usage dashboard and editor settings show included usage per pool, Cursor models and other models.[3]
Each tool's column is read from its vendor's own docs and pricing page, dated in the sources below.
Claude Code or Cursor: which one fits your team
Pick Claude Code if your engineers live in the terminal, or want the same agent in VS Code, JetBrains, a desktop app, Slack and GitHub Actions. It runs Claude models only. Its usage comes in five-hour windows, with a weekly limit on paid plans.
Pick Cursor if your engineers want the agent inside their editor, with models from several vendors (Claude among them) and Auto routing between them. A paid Cursor plan doesn't stop you at a limit: past a seat's included usage, on-demand usage carries on at API prices, billed in arrears. Cursor publishes no number for what a plan includes.
Claude Code vs Cursor pricing and limits
Claude Code and Cursor, from each vendor's pricing page in October 2026:
Claude Code comes with Claude Pro at $20 a month ($17 billed yearly), Max from $100 and Team seats at $25 ($20 billed yearly). Every plan's limits reset on a rolling five-hour window, and paid plans add weekly limits on top. More on Claude Code pricing.
Cursor Pro is $20 a month, Pro+ $60 and Ultra $200, and a Teams seat is $40 per user ($32 billed yearly). Cursor publishes no number for any plan's included usage: every plan includes a set amount, and the models you pick decide how fast it runs out. More on Cursor pricing.
What our own team can tell you
We can't rank them on our own work, because we run Claude Code. It wrote 822 of the 866 agent-written pull requests merged in our two repos from August 12 to October 4, 2026, and Cursor none; it co-authored 7 of the 3,192 commits in our two repos from July 5 to October 3, 2026.
What we can share is how often a limit stops the work: on one engineer's laptop, Claude Code showed a usage-limit notice on 16 of 29 active days from September 4 to October 3, 2026. On Claude Code each one means waiting for the reset or paying for usage credits; on a paid Cursor plan, the same point starts on-demand billing.
Running Claude Code and Cursor on one repository
Cursor reads Claude Code's files: it applies CLAUDE.md for compatibility and loads skills and agents from .claude next to its own .cursor folders. Keep instructions in CLAUDE.md and shared skills in .claude/skills, and both tools pick them up.
TRY IT ON YOUR TEAM
See what your team ships with AI.
Starter is free (3 seats, no credit card). Pro is $49 a month with 5 seats and Max is $149 a month with 10 seats — priced per workspace, not per engineer, with extra seats at $19 a month.
Yes. Cursor offers Anthropic's Claude models next to OpenAI's, Google's and its own Composer. Third-party models draw on the Other Models pool at their API price, per Cursor's docs.
Winding / Teams
