Cursor vs OpenAI Codex

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).

Best for

• Delegated coding tasks
• Existing OpenAI commitments

Watch out

ChatGPT sign-in uses Codex plan credits, whose rates differ from API prices. Do not estimate subscription task allowances from Platform token tariffs. Standard GPT-6.1 Sol rates are 50 input / 2.5 cached input / 250 output credits per million tokens; no separate cache-write charge. Plus is $20/month; Pro tiers are $100/$200/$500; Business Standard is $20/user/month with annual billing (two-user minimum), $25 monthly; Enterprise is negotiated. Pro has no five-hour limit, while Plus/Standard Business local-message estimates are not fixed caps; weekly limits and shared Work/Codex usage still apply. Fast mode bills at 2.5x included subscription credits or 2x purchased/pay-as-you-go credits; Astra Ultrafast is 8x or 6x respectively and requires eligible access such as Pro 500. These are billing multipliers, not speed guarantees (https://learn.chatgpt.com/docs/pricing; https://learn.chatgpt.com/codex/agent-configuration/speed). GPT-6.1 Sol access is rolling out on Plus/Pro/Business/Enterprise/Edu; Enterprise/Edu admins must enable it. Free/Go desktop Luna access is rollout-dependent. Model availability varies by account, surface and client version (https://learn.chatgpt.com/docs/models). API-key sign-in supports local desktop/CLI/IDE work and uses Platform billing; cloud features such as GitHub review and Slack require ChatGPT sign-in (https://learn.chatgpt.com/docs/auth). GPT-5.4/mini retired from ChatGPT-authenticated Codex on August 31; GPT-5.5 retirement is scheduled for October 14, 2026, with API availability unaffected. Pick a currently supported Sol/Luna replacement. Linux/WSL2 uses bubblewrap with a user-namespace-dependent bundled fallback; native Windows has its own sandbox and WSL1 is unsupported from CLI v0.115.0 (https://learn.chatgpt.com/docs/sandboxing).