Cursor changed how new customers pay on 12 October. New sign-ups now go onto The X Subscription, a bundle of Grok, Cursor and X Premium. Existing subscribers are not moved automatically, and switching is permanent once done.
The published tiers run from a free plan through Plus at $8 a month (introductory), Premium at $30, Super at $100 and Ultra at $200, with Teams starting at $30 per user per month. The included usage is for Grok models. Claude and GPT are no longer part of the allowance. On Premium and above you can still select them, but they bill from the first request against prepaid credit, at the model makers’ list prices. One analysis cites Sonnet 5.5 at $2 input and $10 output per million tokens, and Opus 5.5 at $4 and $20. Cursor has not explained how prompt caching is billed, so treat any cost maths as an estimate.
What this tells you
Until recently, a flat monthly seat felt like a flat monthly cost. This is a move toward metered pricing for the best-known models, with a cheaper in-house-adjacent model as the default. It follows the same direction as the other AI coding subscription changes we have tracked this month: the headline price stays low, and the real bill depends on which model your developers pick and how hard they run agents.
Two practical effects for anyone commissioning software:
- Your supplier’s tool costs are now more variable. If a team uses Cursor with Claude for heavy agent work, usage can climb well beyond the seat price.
- Model choice is a commercial decision, not just a technical one. Cheaper models are fine for routine work; they are not interchangeable with the strongest models on complex changes.
So what
If you pay an agency or contractor who uses Cursor, ask two questions: which models do they use for which work, and are AI tool costs inside the fixed price or passed through? A good partner can answer both in a sentence, and will have a budget view of agent usage rather than a surprise at month end. Our AI-assisted development approach prices the work as a whole, so tool-pricing changes like this are our problem, not yours. If you want a second opinion on a quote, start a project conversation.