Compare 4 free alternatives to Cursor for AI Coding. Every one of their free tier limits side by side, with the read and catalogue dates we hold.

Best Cursor Alternatives with Free Tiers (2026)

4 free alternatives in AI Coding. Sorted by pricing stability.

Current Cursor Situation

Risk Level: caution

Why: effective 2026-10-12 — From October 12, 2026, new subscribers buy Cursor as part of The X Subscription, one plan for Grok, Cursor and X: Free $0, Plus $8, Premium $30, Super $100 and Ultra $200 a month, with one weekly usage pool shared with Grok that covers Cursor's own models. Third-party models such as Claude, GPT and Gemini are not included in any plan: on Premium and above they cost the model's API list price, paid from prepaid credit, and Free and Plus cannot use them. Hobby, Pro ($20), Pro+ ($60), Ultra and the Teams Standard and Premium seats continue for existing subscribers until they switch. Source ↗

Category: AI Coding

Pricing Page: www.cursor.com/pricing

Recent Pricing Changes (2)

restructured effective 2026-10-12 high impact

From October 12, 2026, new subscribers buy Cursor as part of The X Subscription, one plan for Grok, Cursor and X: Free $0, Plus $8, Premium $30, Super $100 and Ultra $200 a month, with one weekly usage pool shared with Grok that covers Cursor's own models. Third-party models such as Claude, GPT and Gemini are not included in any plan: on Premium and above they cost the model's API list price, paid from prepaid credit, and Free and Plus cannot use them. Hobby, Pro ($20), Pro+ ($60), Ultra and the Teams Standard and Premium seats continue for existing subscribers until they switch. Source ↗

restructured effective 2025-06-16 medium impact

Cursor moved Pro from 500 requests a month to usage-based pricing and introduced a $200/month Ultra tier. Source ↗

See Cursor's full history →

📖 In-depth migration guide available

Read our detailed AI Coding Tools Pricing Comparison 2026 guide with curated recommendations and service comparison.

Recommended Migration Targets

These alternatives were identified from Cursor’s pricing changes as recommended replacements.

Windsurf recommended

Free

Windsurf is now Devin Desktop ("Devin Desktop is the new name for Windsurf."), Cognition's AI IDE. windsurf.com/pricing redirects to devin.ai/pricing, which prices it together with Devin.

AI Coding Read 2026-11-13 · catalogue date 2026-06-25

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−1 stale_verification We cannot confirm this offer: 13 consecutive re-check attempts have failed (most recently 2026-11-13 — the page never names Windsurf, on a domain that carries its name), never confirmed since it was indexed. This is our inability to verify, not a change by the vendor.

GitHub Copilot caution 2026-06-24 restricted recommended

Free

AI coding assistant by GitHub. Copilot Free is $0 with no credit card: 2,000 code completions a month, a limited monthly allowance of GitHub AI Credits for chat and agent features, and models through auto model selection only.

AI Coding Read 2026-10-31 · catalogue date 2026-07-10

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−1 stale_verification Our last read of the vendor's pricing page, on 2026-10-31, found the page different from the terms we hold. This is our confidence in the record, not a change by the vendor.

Cline recommended

Open Source

Open-source autonomous AI coding agent for VS Code. Fully free.

AI Coding Read 2026-10-14 · catalogue date 2026-07-29

Profile

−1 stale_verification Our last read of the vendor's pricing page, on 2026-10-14, could read no amount, tier or rate on the page. This is our confidence in the record, not a change by the vendor.

Claude Code recommended

Paid

Agentic coding tool by Anthropic: it reads a codebase, edits files, runs commands and works with development tools, in the terminal, IDEs, a desktop app and the browser. No free plan: "Claude Code is included in all paid plans", and Claude's Free plan does not include it.

AI Coding Read 2026-10-14 · catalogue date 2026-08-17

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not_a_free_offer Tier "Paid" is no free offer at all.

All Free Alternatives (4)

0 of these carry no recorded demerit and are indistinguishable under every signal we hold; their order rotates daily. 3 are demoted with the reason named, and 1 are listed last because they are not generally available or are not a free offer. How we rank.

Windsurf

Free

Windsurf is now Devin Desktop ("Devin Desktop is the new name for Windsurf."), Cognition's AI IDE. windsurf.com/pricing redirects to devin.ai/pricing, which prices it together with Devin.

AI Coding Read 2026-11-13 · catalogue date 2026-06-25

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GitHub Copilot caution 2026-06-24 restricted

Free

AI Coding Read 2026-10-31 · catalogue date 2026-07-10

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Cline

Open Source

Open-source autonomous AI coding agent for VS Code. Fully free.

AI Coding Read 2026-10-14 · catalogue date 2026-07-29

Profile

Claude Code

Paid

AI Coding Read 2026-10-14 · catalogue date 2026-08-17

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not_a_free_offer Tier "Paid" is no free offer at all.

Recompute today's order yourself. The order above is a permutation seeded only on the UTC date and the query key — no vendor name, slug, id or offer field is an input. The algorithm is published, so anyone can reproduce this page's order without asking us.

date: 2026-11-14
query_key: alternative-to:Cursor
seed: f0f2e2985d1593a06f8e23f1743d731f0ffb39e66079e0e959abc482a737ac6a
tie_count: 0

Category Trends

See the broader pricing landscape for this category.

↑ AI Coding Pricing Trends

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the best free alternatives to Cursor?

We publish no ranking of these. Nothing we record measures popularity or generosity, so naming a best or a top few would be our preference rather than our data. We hold 4 free alternatives to Cursor, each listed below with its tier, category and the read and catalogue dates we hold. Of those, 3 are demoted with the reason named, 1 is listed last behind a stated gate. Our ranking rule is published at /criteria.

Is Cursor's free tier still available?

Cursor has a free tier (Free), but it's flagged as "caution" because of one specific recorded change, on 2026-10-12: From October 12, 2026, new subscribers buy Cursor as part of The X Subscription, one plan for Grok, Cursor and X: Free $0, Plus $8, Premium $30, Super $100 and Ultra $200 a month, with one weekly usage pool shared with Grok that covers Cursor's own models. Third-party models such as Claude, GPT and Gemini are not included in any plan: on Premium and above they cost the model's API list price, paid from prepaid credit, and Free and Plus cannot use them. Hobby, Pro ($20), Pro+ ($60), Ultra and the Teams Standard and Premium seats continue for existing subscribers until they switch. Source: https://forum.cursor.com/t/introducing-the-x-subscription/174450

How many free alternatives to Cursor exist?

There are 4 free alternatives to Cursor tracked on AgentDeals across the AI Coding category.

Has Cursor changed their pricing?

Cursor has 2 recorded pricing changes. The most recent was on 2026-10-12: From October 12, 2026, new subscribers buy Cursor as part of The X Subscription, one plan for Grok, Cursor and X: Free $0, Plus $8, Premium $30, Super $100 and Ultra $200 a month, with one weekly usage pool shared with Grok that covers Cursor's own models. Third-party models such as Claude, GPT and Gemini are not included in any plan: on Premium and above they cost the model's API list price, paid from prepaid credit, and Free and Plus cannot use them. Hobby, Pro ($20), Pro+ ($60), Ultra and the Teams Standard and Premium seats continue for existing subscribers until they switch. Source: https://forum.cursor.com/t/introducing-the-x-subscription/174450