OpenAI plans to cut Cursor off on November 12. How to keep using GPT there

What changes on November 12

On August 28, 2026, two weeks after SpaceX completed its purchase of Cursor, OpenAI said it had notified SpaceX “that we intend to wind down our contract providing OpenAI models to Cursor, with a proposed shutoff date of November 12, 2026.” Its reason: “we cannot be confident that SpaceX will use our technology within our terms of service, based on our experience with Elon Musk’s companies violating contracts.”

Part of that is already in effect, and part isn’t settled:

• No new OpenAI models reach Cursor. OpenAI said it would hold the cancellation “to the latest date we can while not providing future models to Cursor.” Cursor’s models page lists GPT-5.6 Sol, Terra and Luna. OpenAI’s current family, GPT-6 Astra, GPT-6.1 Sol and GPT-6 Luna, isn’t there.
• November 12 is still a proposal. OpenAI’s help page on Cursor, updated October 24, says it has “proposed a transition period of November 12, 2026,” that “Cursor may choose to end access sooner,” and that OpenAI will share the official date “as soon as it is confirmed between both companies.”
• Cursor wanted to resolve it. Its CEO, Michael Truell, wrote on X the night of the announcement that “OpenAI models serve about 5% of Cursor user traffic, and we’re speaking with the OpenAI team to resolve this,” CNBC reported. OpenAI’s help page still describes a wind-down.

Who it affects

How you reach GPT in Cursor today depends on your plan. New customers have been on The X Subscription since October 12, and Cursor’s models page, API keys help and legacy plans page set out each one:

Plan	GPT from Cursor, until the cutoff	Your own OpenAI API key
Plus, $8 a month	Not available	Not available
Premium, Super or Ultra, $30 to $200	At API list price, from prepaid credit	Yes, billed by OpenAI
Teams, $30 to $200 a seat	At API list price, plus Cursor’s token rate	Yes, plus Cursor’s token rate
Legacy Pro, Pro+ or Ultra	From the Other Models pool	Yes, billed by OpenAI

Free, like Plus, includes only Cursor’s own models: Grok 4.7, 4.6 and 4.5, and Composer 2.5. Cursor’s token rate on Teams is $0.25 per million tokens, and GPT-5.6 Luna is exempt from it.

After the cutoff, the middle column ends for everyone. Nothing announced touches Claude, Gemini, Muse Wonder, Grok or Composer. Anthropic’s Tom Brown wrote the same night that “We’ll continue to increase compute to support Claude models in Cursor.”

You can be affected without ever picking GPT. On Teams and Enterprise, Cursor Router chooses the model for each request in its Balance and Intelligence modes, and Cursor’s help page lists GPT-5.5 as one of the four it routes across, with “Recommended: GPT-5.5 and Claude Opus 5.”

Four ways to keep using GPT

1. Your own OpenAI API key, in Cursor. Paste it under Cursor Settings > Models and enable the model. OpenAI bills you at API prices: $2 in and $10 out per million tokens for GPT-6.1 Sol, $10 and $50 for GPT-6 Astra, $0.10 and $0.50 for GPT-6 Luna. OpenAI’s page says a key works only in Cursor’s local Chat and Agent, not in “Cursor Tab, Auto, Cloud or Background Agents, Automations, the Cursor CLI, or Cursor’s API and SDK.” Cursor’s own help describes its OpenAI support as “Standard, non-reasoning chat models” and says the model picker shows which are available, so check that the one you want appears. Cursor’s zero data retention doesn’t apply to requests on your own key.
2. OpenAI’s Codex extension, inside Cursor. The Codex IDE extension lists Cursor among the editors it installs in, and signs in with ChatGPT or an API key. It’s a separate agent in its own panel; Cursor’s Agent, Tab and Cloud Agents don’t change. It’s the only option here that runs on a ChatGPT plan; as OpenAI puts it, “A ChatGPT subscription does not include OpenAI API usage.” Codex pricing puts Codex in the IDE extension on Plus, with GPT-6.1 Sol and GPT-6 Luna; for Free and Go it lists only the desktop app.
3. A gateway. OpenAI also names Amazon Bedrock, Azure and other OpenAI-compatible gateways, set up in the same Models settings. They have the same limits as a key: local Chat and Agent only.
4. Another model in Cursor. On Premium and above, Claude Opus 5.5 costs $4 in and $20 out per million tokens from prepaid credit, Claude Sonnet 5.5 and Gemini 4 Argon $2 and $10. Grok 4.7 and Composer 2.5 come out of the weekly pool on every paid plan.

What to do before November 12

• Find everything that names a GPT model. The model picker is the obvious place. Less obvious are custom subagents, which can set a model field in their YAML frontmatter, and Cloud Agents and Automations, which a key can’t take over.
• Try the replacement on real work now. Run this week’s tasks on the model or agent you’ll use after the cutoff, so you find the gaps before you have no choice.
• Recheck the X Subscription without GPT. Legacy Pro, Pro+ and Ultra include third-party models through the Other Models pool; The X Subscription doesn’t, and Cursor says the switch “is permanent.” Once GPT leaves Cursor, that pool can’t buy it, but it still covers Claude and Gemini.
• If you pay for ChatGPT, use it. Codex, in the extension, the CLI or OpenAI’s app, runs GPT-6 models on the plan you already have.

Using GPT outside Cursor

Enjoy runs Codex on your ChatGPT plan beside Claude Code, Grok Build and the other labs’ agents, each signed in to its own account. Start a job with one, switch the conversation to Codex when you want GPT-6.1 Sol, and Codex gets the messages it missed. Enjoy is free. It doesn’t put OpenAI’s models back into Cursor, and it doesn’t add GPT to a Grok or Claude account.

What neither company has said

• The confirmed date, or whether talks could still change it.
• Which OpenAI models a key reaches in Cursor’s picker, and whether GPT-6 is among them.
• What Cursor Router uses in place of GPT-5.5.
• What happens on the day to a conversation, subagent or Automation set to GPT. As of October 24, Cursor’s model pages list GPT-5.6 Sol, Terra and Luna without mentioning November 12.

We’ll update this memo when the date is confirmed.