Should you build your own Cursor?
Switch to GitHub Copilot Business. At $19 a seat it costs 37% less than Cursor Teams at $30.
Short answer
Cursor now sells its plans inside the X Subscription, a bundle with Grok and X that launched in October 2026. Teams seats cost $30, $100 or $200 a month, and models from other vendors are billed on top at API list price. Five $30 seats cost $5,400 over 3 years, against $3,420 for five Copilot Business seats at $19. Building your own setup with an open-source agent and API keys costs about $8,800 once you add the API fees.
- Buy for 3 years
- $5,400 Teams (Premium seat), $30/mo × 5 seats
- Build and run for 3 years
- $8,845 12 h to build, 2 h/mo upkeep
- Verdict
- SWITCH Money and risk combined
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Cheaper options
Cursor pricing in 2026
| Plan | Billed yearly | Billed monthly |
|---|---|---|
| Plus | $6.67/seat/mo | $8/seat/mo |
| Premium | $25/seat/mo | $30/seat/mo |
| Teams (Premium seat) Typical | $30/seat/mo | – |
| Super | $83.33/seat/mo | $100/seat/mo |
| Ultra | $166.67/seat/mo | $200/seat/mo |
Free plan: Limited agent and chat requests
Paying too much? The Free plan is enough to try it. Plus at $8 a month ($80 a year) covers light use, but models from other vendors need Premium or higher.
Per seat. Annual billing is $80, $300, $1,000 and $2,000 a year for Plus, Premium, Super and Ultra. Teams seats are listed at $30, $100 or $200 a month with no annual price, so $30 is the monthly price of a Premium seat. Plus is not offered on Teams, and models from other vendors are billed separately at API list price. Existing Pro and Teams customers keep their old plans. Checked October 26, 2026.
Run your own numbers
Defaults are a typical small team at $30/hour. Change anything.
Buying is about $3,445 cheaper over 3 years.
3-year totals. Building includes your time, upkeep, running costs and one month of an AI app builder ($25). Change any number to match your situation.
What you’d build
- VS Code with the Cline or Continue extension
- A shared proxy (such as LiteLLM) so one API key serves the team
- Per-developer budgets and a usage report
- A shared settings file for rules and approved models
Our estimate: about $30 per developer per month in model API fees (what a Premium seat includes) plus $25 for a small proxy server.
What you’d give up
- Cursor’s tab completions inside the editor
- Cloud agents that work on tasks in the background
- One flat seat price instead of per-token bills
- Team controls: SSO, privacy settings and usage analytics
Risks the price doesn’t show
Your proxy holds the team’s API keys and sees all your code.
Agent loops can burn through an API budget in a day without limits.
Editor extensions and model names change often.
When the verdict flips
Switch to BUY if your developers use Cursor’s agents all day and its usage pool beats Copilot’s credits plus overage for them. Track a month of real usage on both before you decide.
Sources
Cursor pricing · Cursor plans and usage (docs)
Build hours are our estimates for one person using an AI app builder. How we score. Spotted a wrong price? Tell us on X @BuildictHQ.
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