Cursor vs Copilot pricing
Top-line: Copilot starts cheaper, Cursor scales cheaper. The simple "$10 vs $20" comparison misses three things — request limits, model access, and what your team actually uses. Here's every plan, what it includes, and which one wins for each kind of buyer.
Side-by-side tiers
| Plan tier | Cursor | GitHub Copilot |
|---|---|---|
| Free | Hobby — limited completions, slow Premium model calls | Free — limited completions; full for students & OSS maintainers |
| Pro / Individual | $20/mo · 500 fast Premium requests, unlimited slow | $10/mo · effectively unlimited completions, 300 Premium requests |
| Power user | Ultra $40/mo · 2,500 Premium requests | Copilot Pro+ $39/mo · 1,500 Premium requests + Claude/Gemini access |
| Team | Business $40/user/mo · SSO, admin, privacy mode default | Business $19/user/mo · org policies, audit logs, IP indemnity |
| Enterprise | Custom · SOC 2, SAML, on-prem option | Enterprise $39/user/mo · SSO, Knowledge Bases, fine-tune |
| Usage / pay-as-you-go | Yes — top-up beyond Premium quota | Yes — Premium request overage at $0.04/request |
What "Premium request" actually means
Both companies meter the expensive stuff — Claude Sonnet, Opus, GPT-5, Gemini 2.5 Pro, o3 — as Premium requests. Tab completions and the cheaper models are unlimited.
- Cursor Pro: 500 Premium requests/month. A heavy day of Composer use can burn 30+. Power users hit the ceiling around day 15.
- Copilot Pro: 300 Premium requests/month, but most Copilot usage stays on the included GPT-4o-class model so the quota matters less day-to-day.
- Cursor Ultra ($40): 2,500 Premium requests. Equivalent to ~80/day. Most pros don't hit this.
- Copilot Pro+ ($39): 1,500 Premium requests + Claude & Gemini access. Slightly fewer than Ultra but unlocks the same model breadth.
Which is cheaper — by buyer type
Solo dev, light use
Copilot $10 wins. If your AI use is "complete this function, write a regex, explain this error" — Copilot's quota covers it and Cursor's $20 buys features you won't use.
Solo dev, heavy multi-file work
Cursor $20 wins. Composer is worth the extra $10 alone. You'll burn through Copilot Pro's Premium quota in two weeks.
Solo dev, model A/B testing
Cursor $20 wins. Cursor exposes Claude, GPT, Gemini, Grok, and o3 from day one. Copilot Pro only unlocks Claude/Gemini at the Pro+ tier ($39).
Team of 10, mixed use
Copilot Business $19/seat ($190/mo) vs Cursor Business $40/seat ($400/mo). Copilot is half the cost, and you keep VS Code and JetBrains — no editor migration. Cursor wins only if the team will use Composer heavily.
Team of 50, enterprise compliance
Copilot Enterprise $39/seat matches Cursor Business on price but adds Knowledge Bases, audit logs, and IP indemnity that procurement teams care about. Cursor Enterprise is custom-priced; sales call required. For most large orgs, Copilot is the easier procurement.
JetBrains shop
Copilot wins by default — Cursor doesn't run there. Don't even compare prices, just buy Copilot.
Hidden costs
Cursor's overage rates are real
Once you blow past the Premium quota, Cursor charges API-equivalent rates on overage. A power user with Composer can hit $30–60 of overage in a heavy month on Pro. Bump to Ultra at $40 instead.
Copilot's Premium overage is $0.04/request
Sounds tiny. Adds up. 100 Premium requests = $4. 500 = $20. If you'd hit that, Pro+ at $39 is already cheaper than Pro + overage.
Both bill annual upfront for the cheap rate
Monthly billing is ~25% more expensive at most tiers. Worth knowing before you sign up.
The honest pick
Cheapest entry: Copilot $10/mo or free for students/OSS.
Best $20 in AI coding: Cursor Pro.
Cheapest at scale (teams): Copilot Business at $19/seat.
Most model breadth per dollar: Cursor Pro ($20) beats Copilot Pro+ ($39) on raw model variety.
Cost is only one axis. See Cursor vs Copilot — full comparison for features, codebase context, and agent quality.
Pricing is one piece of the stack — see total cost when you add a model, agent, and context layer.
Estimate your full stack cost →