Cursor alternatives in 2026: 7 editors and agents to use instead

Disclosure: Enjoy is our product. We checked every app below against its maker’s own pages on October 27, 2026, and we say where another app is the better pick, Cursor included.

Cursor alternatives compared

Cursor calls itself “your coding agent for building ambitious software”: an AI code editor for macOS, Windows and Linux, with a command line and cloud agents beside it. Its homepage says “Cursor is now a part of SpaceX,” and its models page says it’s “sold as part of The X Subscription, one subscription for Grok, Cursor, and X.” Some of the apps people weigh against it are editors that suggest code as you type; others are agents you hand a task to. Several work together.

App	Best for	Price, checked October 27, 2026	Runs on	Models
Cursor	Grok and Cursor’s own models, in an AI editor	Free; Plus $8 a month, Cursor’s own models only; Premium $30, other labs’ models at API prices	Mac, Windows, Linux	Grok and Composer; Claude, GPT and Gemini billed separately
GitHub Copilot	Several labs’ models in VS Code, from $10 a month	Free; Pro $10 a month; Pro+ $39; Max $100	VS Code, Visual Studio, JetBrains IDEs, Xcode, Eclipse	Claude, Gemini and GPT; Opus 5.5, Gemini 4 Argon and GPT-6.1 Sol from Pro+
Devin Desktop, formerly Windsurf	The editor closest to Cursor	Free; Pro $20 a month; Max $200	Mac, Windows, Linux	OpenAI, Claude, Gemini and SpaceXAI models from Pro
Zed	A fast, open-source editor, with your own keys or agents	Free with your own keys or agents; Pro $10 a month	Mac, Windows, Linux	Any provider’s key, or Claude Code, Codex and other agents
Kiro	A written spec before the code, and Claude on a free plan	Free, with 50 credits; Pro $20 a month, with 1,000	Mac, Windows, Linux	Claude Sonnet 4.5 and open-weight models free; Claude Opus 5 and Sonnet 5 on paid plans
Claude Code	Claude, on your Claude plan, in the editor you choose	Included in Claude Pro ($20 a month) and Max (from $100)	Mac, Windows, Linux; VS Code, Cursor and other editors	Anthropic’s Claude models
Codex	GPT, on your ChatGPT plan, with a free start	Free and Go ($8) in the desktop app; Plus $20; Pro from $100	Mac, Windows, Linux; VS Code, Cursor and other editors	GPT-6 Luna on Free and Go; GPT-6.1 Sol from Plus
Enjoy	Several labs’ agents side by side, on your own plans	A monthly subscription, free for 7 days, with your phone and other computers (pricing)	Mac, Windows, Linux	Claude Code, Codex, Grok Build, Antigravity, Muse Code, OpenCode

Prices are per month as each maker lists them in the US, before tax. Cursor, Copilot, Devin Desktop, Zed Pro and Kiro sell their own AI usage; Claude Code and Codex come with Anthropic’s and OpenAI’s plans; and Zed’s free plan and Enjoy run on the keys, agents and plans you bring.

Why people look for a Cursor alternative

Three things on Cursor’s own pages, and one on OpenAI’s, send people looking:

• Plus has only Cursor’s own models. Cursor’s pricing says of Plus, at $8 a month, “Only Grok models are available on this plan,” and its models page lists Grok 4.7, 4.6 and 4.5 and Composer 2.5 for it. “Plus and Free don’t include third-party models.”
• Other labs’ models cost extra. Premium and above “include generous usage of Grok models but do not include an allowance for third-party models,” so Claude, GPT and Gemini are paid “at the model’s API list price from the first request,” from prepaid credit. Claude Opus 5.5 costs $4 per million input tokens and $20 per million output, as on Anthropic’s own API.
• Moving to The X Subscription is one-way. Legacy Pro, Pro+ and Ultra plans keep working, but of the move, Cursor’s help center says: “The switch is permanent. It can’t be undone, and Support can’t undo it for you.”
• OpenAI’s models are leaving. OpenAI’s help center says “We have proposed a transition period of November 12, 2026,” and that “Cursor may choose to end access sooner.” Cursor’s models page lists GPT-5.6, not OpenAI’s GPT-6 models. Our memo on the cutoff has the details.

GitHub Copilot, in VS Code

Best for: going back to VS Code, with Claude, Gemini and GPT in one plan from $10 a month.

GitHub Copilot works in VS Code, Visual Studio, JetBrains IDEs, Xcode and Eclipse, and its plans page says “All plans include Copilot CLI and the Copilot app.” Its inline suggestions complete code as you type, as Cursor’s Tab does, and its model list puts the labs side by side: Pro includes Claude Sonnet 5.5, Gemini 3.8 Flash, GPT-6.1 Terra and GPT-6 Luna, and Pro+ adds Claude Opus 5.5, Gemini 4 Argon and GPT-6.1 Sol.

Price: Copilot Free costs nothing. Pro is “$10 USD per month (free for some users),” with 1,500 GitHub AI Credits a month; Pro+ is $39, with 7,000; and Max is $100, with 20,000.

Watch for: “On Copilot Free and Copilot Student plans, access to models is available through auto model selection only,” so you can’t pick Claude there, and inline suggestions are “Limited to 2000 completions per month on Copilot Free.” Claude Opus 5.5 and GPT-6.1 Sol need Pro+ or Max.

Devin Desktop, formerly Windsurf

Best for: the editor closest to Cursor, with several labs’ models in the plan.

“Devin Desktop is the new name for Windsurf,” says its page, and “Only the name and branding are changing.” It’s an AI editor with “Unlimited Tab completions” on every plan, an “Agent Command Center (Spaces, Kanban view, and multi-agent management),” and Devin Local, “Our next-generation agent harness, shared with Devin CLI.” Its docs list Mac, Windows 10 and later, and Linux, and say “You can easily import your VS Code/Cursor configuration into Devin Desktop.”

Price: its pricing has Free, with a “Light quota to code with agents” and “Limited model availability”; Pro at $20 a month, with “Increased quotas, including access to frontier models from OpenAI, Claude, Gemini, and SpaceXAI”; and Max at $200, with “Significantly higher quotas.” Teams is $80 a month for the team plus $40 for each full developer seat.

Watch for: “Each paid plan comes with a usage allowance that refreshes automatically on a daily and weekly basis,” and “Cost per message varies based on the model used, the task size and complexity, and the reasoning required.” Beyond the allowance, “you can purchase extra usage which is consumed at API pricing.”

Zed

Best for: a fast, open-source editor, free with your own API keys or with Claude Code and Codex.

Zed calls itself “The world’s fastest IDE. Open source. AI optional.” It comes “from the creators of Atom and Tree-sitter,” under the GPL-3.0 license with Apache-2.0 parts, per its GitHub repository, with downloads for macOS, Windows and Linux. Its own agent works with your provider’s API key, its edit predictions let you “accept AI completions while you type,” and it runs other agents in the editor: its docs list Claude, Codex, OpenCode, Copilot, Cursor and more, and “Zed does not charge for External Agents.”

Price: its pricing has Personal at $0, “Free forever,” with “Unlimited use with your API keys or external agents like Claude Agent, Codex CLI, and more.” Pro, at $10 a month, adds “Unlimited edit predictions” and “$5 of tokens included,” and beyond that, “Zed Pro bills at API list price +10% for hosted usage.” Business is $30 a seat.

Watch for: on the free plan, the AI is whatever you bring. Each outside agent “owns its own authentication and billing,” so Claude Code still needs a Claude plan and Codex a ChatGPT one, and Zed’s docs say “Native tool permissions depend on the agent.”

Kiro

Best for: turning a request into a written spec before the code, with a Claude model on the free plan.

Kiro, “Built and operated by AWS,” says it “turns your prompts into requirements, architectural designs, and sequenced tasks, then implements them with parallel agents.” The Kiro IDE “supports Open VSX extensions, themes, and VS Code settings,” with downloads for macOS, Windows and Linux, and there’s a CLI too.

Price: its pricing has Kiro Free at $0, with 50 credits and “Access to open weight models and Claude Sonnet 4.5”; Pro at $20 a month, with 1,000 credits; Pro+ at $40, with 2,000; and plans up to Power, at $200. Paid plans get “premium models, including Auto, Claude Sonnet 5 and Claude Opus 5,” and add-on credits are $0.04 each.

Watch for: the free plan’s Claude is for “Users on the Free Tier who signed up with social logins or AWS Builder ID,” and “Access is subject to rate limits.” On paid plans, “Not all premium models are available in all countries/regions.”

Claude Code

Best for: Claude, on the Claude plan you pay for, in the terminal, Claude’s desktop app or the editor you already use, Cursor included.

Claude Code is Anthropic’s coding agent: you hand it a task, and it reads your project, edits files and runs commands. Its extension “provides a native graphical interface for Claude Code, integrated directly into your IDE.” It installs in VS Code and Cursor, and “the extension also installs in forks like Devin Desktop or Kiro.” So you can keep Cursor as your editor and let Claude Code do the agent’s work on your Claude plan instead of Cursor’s credit.

Price: Claude’s pricing says “Claude Code is included in all paid plans”: Pro at $20 a month, or $17 a month billed yearly, and Max from $100. The extension takes “any paid Claude subscription (Pro, Max, Team, or Enterprise) or a Claude Console account.”

Watch for: “Both Pro and Max plans have a five-hour session limit and a weekly limit,” says Anthropic’s help center, and “These limits are shared across Claude and Claude Code.” It runs only Claude, and in the editor, “Some features are only available in the CLI.” Our Claude Code vs Codex guide compares it with OpenAI’s agent.

Codex

Best for: GPT on your ChatGPT plan, including the GPT-6 models Cursor doesn’t list.

OpenAI’s Codex runs in the ChatGPT desktop app, in a terminal and in your editor. Its IDE extension is for “VS Code and compatible editors,” naming Visual Studio Code, Cursor and Windsurf, while “Xcode and JetBrains IDEs provide their own integrations.” It runs GPT-6.1 Sol and OpenAI’s other current models, which Cursor’s own picker doesn’t offer.

Price: “ChatGPT Work and Codex are included in your ChatGPT Free, Go, Plus, Pro, Business, Edu, or Enterprise plan,” says Codex’s pricing. Free, and Go at $8 a month, get “GPT-6 Luna at Standard speed in the desktop app, subject to rollout.” Plus, at $20, adds “Codex on the web, in the CLI, in the IDE extension, and on iOS” and GPT-6.1 Sol, and Pro starts at $100.

Watch for: Codex inside Cursor or VS Code starts with Plus, since the free plans get only the desktop app. OpenAI estimates 15 to 160 local messages every five hours with GPT-6.1 Sol on Plus, but “These estimates are not fixed message limits,” and “Weekly limits may also apply.” It runs only OpenAI’s models.

Enjoy

Best for: Claude Code, Codex and other labs’ agents side by side, on the plans you already pay for, when you’d rather describe a change than type it.

Enjoy is a desktop app for Mac, Windows and Linux that runs Claude Code, Codex, Grok Build, Antigravity, Muse Code, and local models through OpenCode, on the plans you already have: most sign in with their own lab’s account, and OpenCode uses the models you set up in it, free and local ones included. What it adds:

• Switch agents mid-conversation. Hand a job from Codex to Claude Code or Grok Build: “The new agent gets the conversation so far, including replies from other agents, before it works on your message.”
• Keep going through limits. When an agent runs out of usage, Enjoy switches to another of your accounts or waits for the reset, then carries on.
• Every project at once. Each conversation runs its own agent, and JOY keeps an eye on all your projects: ask it what needs you, or start work in any of them.
• Your work, in view. You can edit your project’s files in its code editor, and agents open your site beside the conversation and click through it.

Price: Enjoy is one monthly subscription, and the first seven days are free, with a card to start. It includes your phone and any browser and your other computers, and each teammate you invite needs a subscription of their own. See pricing.

Watch for: Enjoy isn’t an editor in Cursor’s sense. Its code editor has no AI completions as you type: the agents write the code. It doesn’t add Claude to a ChatGPT plan or GPT to a Claude one, and it runs the Codex CLI, which OpenAI includes from Plus. Enjoy isn’t open source, it’s a monthly subscription on top of your AI plans once the free week ends, and scheduled workflows run only while your computer is awake with Enjoy open.

When to stay with Cursor

If Grok and Composer do your work, Plus, at $8 a month, is as cheap as any paid plan here. If you’re on a legacy Pro, Pro+ or Ultra plan, its legacy plans page says “Your legacy plan, price, and features continue unless you change or cancel,” and those plans include an Other Models pool that covers other labs’ models at their API prices. Think before you move: “Switching to The X Subscription is optional and permanent.”

You also don’t have to leave the editor to stop paying Cursor for Claude or GPT. Anthropic’s Claude Code extension and OpenAI’s Codex extension both install in Cursor and run on your own Claude or ChatGPT plan.

Move when you want those labs’ models without API prices on top of a plan, OpenAI’s current models, or a plan that doesn’t come with X.

How we compared

We read each maker’s homepage, pricing, plans and docs on October 27, 2026, and every one is linked below. We quote their own words for the limits, and we don’t count features a maker hasn’t documented. Plans and models in this category change often, so we recheck this guide against its sources at least once a month, and the date at the foot of the page says when we last did.