Cursor vs Magic — Pricing, Plans, and Verified Costs (2026)
Cursor starts at $20/mo. Magic uses custom pricing — request a quote to compare.
How pricing works
These two tools don't price the same way, so the headline numbers below aren't directly comparable until you plug in your own volume.
- Cursor (Hybrid) — Cursor is hybrid: a fixed subscription from $20/mo plus metered usage on top (Pro). Your real bill moves with volume, not seat count.
- Magic (Per Usage) — Magic bills purely on usage. There is no fixed per-seat fee, so the monthly cost depends entirely on how much you consume.
Per-minute, per-credit and per-token rates exclude any downstream model, speech or telephony costs unless the vendor states otherwise.
AI-first code editor built on VS Code, and the reference product in the AI-coding category. Every paid plan includes a credit pool equal to the subscription price, consumed by AI operations at underlying LLM token cost. Pricing: Hobby free, Pro $20/mo, Pro+ $60/mo, Ultra $200/mo, Teams $40/user/mo, Enterprise custom. Annual billing ~20% off. Powers Anysphere's growth to $500M+ ARR.
Frontier AI research lab building autonomous coding models with long-context capability (up to 100M tokens claimed). All pricing custom-quoted, enterprise-only. Partnered with Google Cloud for infrastructure. Focus on enterprise engineering teams that need agent capabilities with massive context windows. No self-serve.
All plans compared
| Tier role | Plan | Cursor monthly | Cursor annual | Magic monthly | Magic annual |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free / starter | Hobby / — | Free | Free | — | — |
| Entry paid | Pro / — | $20 | $16 | — | — |
| Mid tier | Pro+ / — | $60 | $48 | — | — |
| Pro / power | Ultra / — | $200 | $160 | — | — |
| Teams | Teams / — | $40 | $32 | — | — |
| Enterprise | Enterprise | Custom | Custom | Custom | Custom |
Tier names differ across vendors. Rows are aligned by tier role, not name. Full tier structures on each tool's page.
What each is best for
Cursor is worth it if… developers who want an AI-native editor where autocomplete, chat, and agent-mode Composer feel like extensions of the IDE — not bolted on. The credit-pool model is the interesting pricing innovation: your $20 subscription IS your $20 of AI usage, so heavy Claude Opus users burn faster than lighter GPT-5 mini users.
Magic is worth it if… Magic is only worth engaging with if you're a large engineering org that specifically needs an AI agent with a very long context window (repositories >1M lines, or complex multi-repo reasoning). The 100M-token context claim is the differentiator.
Bottom line: Choose based on how you want to pay — Cursor is hybrid, Magic is per usage.
Choose Cursor over Magic if…
Choose Cursor if…
- You want the most mature agentic editor with the deepest model line-up.
- You're a developer who lives in the editor and wants long-context, multi-file edits.
- You want predictable seat pricing with usage-based headroom when you need it.
Choose Magic if…
- You want to pay only for actual usage (per usage, custom pricing).
- You match the profile Magic is built for: only worth engaging with if you're a large engineering org that specifically needs an AI agent with a very long context window (repositories >1M lines, or complex multi-repo reasoning).
- You need a general-purpose developer & infrastructure option rather than a vertical-specific one.
At a glance
| Cursor | Magic | |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | Yes | No |
| Entry price | $20/mo | Custom |
| Enterprise available | Yes | Yes |
| Pricing model | Hybrid | Per Usage |
| Last verified | September 10, 2026 | — |
| Full pricing | View full pricing | View full pricing |
Pricing last verified September 10, 2026. Tracked daily.