Agentic harness comparison
Cursor vs Muse Code
Compared on where each one runs, which editors it supports, how autonomous it is, and how it bills — the four things that actually decide Cursor vs Muse Code. Rankings reflect fit and trade-offs, not a single universal winner; partner links, when present, do not replace that methodology.
Details last verified October 2, 2026
Cursor
Cursor
IDE, standalone CLI and cloud agents · Hybrid
Meta
Muse Code
Terminal, CI, and session SDK · Agentic
| Specification | Cursor | Muse Code |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor | ||
| Vendor | Cursor | Meta |
| Runs in | ||
| Runs in | IDE, standalone CLI and cloud agents | Terminal, CI, and session SDK |
| Editor support | ||
| Editor support | Cursor IDE (VS Code fork), Terminal CLI beside any editor, Cloud agents (web/mobile) | Any (editor-agnostic) |
| Autonomy | ||
| Autonomy | Hybrid | Agentic |
| Pricing model | ||
| Pricing model | Hybrid | Hybrid |
| Requires changing editor | ||
| Requires changing editor | No | No |
| Publisher-reported SWE-bench Verified (Background Agent, Claude Sonnet 4.6) · source date 2026-04-19 | ||
| Publisher-reported SWE-bench Verified (Background Agent, Claude Sonnet 4.6) · source date 2026-04-19 | 65.7% | Not verifiedUnverified |
Dates refer to the linked source’s publication or capture unless it explicitly states when the benchmark was measured. Values we could not confirm are shown as “Not verified” rather than estimated.
Benchmark receipts
- Cursor · Publisher-reported SWE-bench Verified (Background Agent, Claude Sonnet 4.6): source
Cursor
Cursor, now part of SpaceX, offers an AI-native VS Code-based editor, a standalone terminal agent and cloud agents. The IDE path changes editor; the CLI can run beside an existing editor. Grok and Composer are first-party models, with third-party models available subject to plan and policy.
Best for
- Daily feature work
- Multi-file edits in-editor
- Teams already on VS Code
Watch out
SpaceX-owned Cursor currently prices Hobby free, Pro $20/month, Pro+ $60, Ultra $200, Teams Standard $40/user/month and Premium $120 (5x Standard Agent limits). India-only Start is ₹649/month including tax, restricted to Cursor Models and without the Other Models pool or on-demand usage. Individual plans have separate monthly Cursor Models and Other Models pools; third-party models are charged at API rates. Teams/Enterprise add $0.25/MTok on third-party direct, Auto and BYOK usage, not first-party models. Eligible US-only residency adds a 10% model-price uplift. Old $20/$70/$400 included-dollar figures are not currently established (https://cursor.com/pricing; https://cursor.com/docs/models-and-pricing). OpenAI's August 28 notice proposes a November 12, 2026 (2026-11-12) wind-down; it does not prove OpenAI models have already been removed (https://openai.com/index/our-decision-on-cursor-following-its-acquisition-by-spacex/). Privacy Mode prevents training, subject to abuse-investigation retention and explicitly approved non-ZDR models such as Fable; BYOK requests still use Cursor's backend. Current Instant Grep builds/searches its index locally without storing code embeddings, but opened file context can still reach model providers. Ignore rules do not block terminal or MCP reads (https://cursor.com/data-use; https://cursor.com/docs/context/codebase-indexing; https://cursor.com/docs/reference/ignore-file). The retained 65.7% benchmark is an April 19 publisher compilation for Background Agent with Sonnet 4.6, not a current-product measurement or an independently reproduced official submission. CLI/cloud availability means switching IDE is optional (https://cursor.com/docs/cli/overview; https://cursor.com/blog/joining-spacex).
Muse Code
Muse Code is Meta's coding agent for the terminal and CI, with a session protocol and TypeScript SDK. It supports the Muse Spark family; the current overview and configuration docs still name muse-spark-1.2 as the default, separately from available Spark 1.3. macOS, Linux and Windows are documented, with platform-specific feature limits. Parallel workflows depend on the installed build and rollout.
Best for
- Terminal and CI coding tasks
- Piloting enabled multi-agent workflows
- Teams using the Meta Model API
Watch out
October 2 sources list Everyday $5/month, High $15 (5x) and Power $50 (20x); regional benefits can vary. The subscription-linked CLI credential does not cover additional API keys, which bill pay-as-you-go. Standard Spark 1.3/1.2 token rates are $1.25 input / $0.15 cached / $4.25 output per MTok; Contributor rates are $0.10 / $0.002 / $0.20 with training permission and lower team quotas. Meta forbids confidential, sensitive or personal inputs on Discounted Services. Standard no-training is not zero retention. Auto-review and an OS sandbox are the defaults, with safe commands and workspace writes potentially proceeding automatically. Workflows are unavailable in the documented current Apple silicon macOS artifact; Windows lacks voice and session messaging. Changelog 1.4.2 is a client version with no release date recovered.
Common questions
Cursor vs Muse Code
Answered from the verified figures on this page rather than general guidance.
Do I have to change editor to use Cursor or Muse Code?
How are Cursor and Muse Code priced?
Is Cursor or Muse Code better for large refactors?
Should I run Cursor and Muse Code together?
Will my project rules transfer between Cursor and Muse Code?
Is Cursor free enough for daily agent work?
Do coding agents replace code review?
Should we harden MCP before rolling out a coding agent?
Next step
Which one fits
Autonomy and editor constraints decide this far more reliably than a benchmark score.
If most of your week is small, frequent edits, an assistive workflow beats delegation and an agentic harness sits idle while billing. If you regularly hand over work spanning many files, the reverse is true.
Where one tool requires changing editor and the other does not, that difference usually outweighs any capability gap across a team — rollouts fail on adoption, not capability.
“Open vendor” links use a first-party redirect for click counting. They are not commissionable partner placements unless a programme is active for that vendor. Affiliate disclosure.