Cursor or Claude Code?

I recently stopped paying for cursor and moved fully to Claude Code. It is a step up in pricing but the output is usually more accurate and requires fewer iterations vs what I'd have to do in Cursor with the same prompt. I also have some really interesting data from our own user base on Cursor code quality with Claude vs Claude Code.

• Claude Code on average produces less overall code reworks by close to 30% and gets things right in the first or second iteration. Whereas Cursor with Claude 3.5 and 3.7 still tends to produce higher code churn.

• We've also seen a lot of our own customers move to Claude Code and Codex fully while sticking to using VSCode.

• Claude code also tends to produce code which follows existing patterns and has higher modularity by default. We know this because on our reviewer gives less recommendations on modularity and code abstractions for customers of ours that use Claude Code and Codex.
  
  I still use cursor as my go to code editor for making non-complex side-projects but for internal use we our engineers are still very much divided, half on Cursor and half of us on Claude code.
  
  My current stack is:
  IDE:
  @VS Code with Claude Code
  MCP:

  @GitHub and Context7
  Reviewer and Codebase maintenance:
  @Optibot

Nah bro. Cline + gemini cli hock. 2x Free. Best models. No context cap. 60 calls per min. Brrrrrr. Breakdown: https://www.producthunt.com/products/google?comment=4693656

I found a free stack that is currently working pretty well:

1. Visual Studio Code

2. @Cline (100% free).

3. @Google AI (free tier).

I have been using Cursor and I like the flexibility to switch between coding by myself and asking AI to do it, which Claude Code CLI might not offer

Depends on your coding style I guess. What style do you prefer?

Gabe, totally with you Cursor has changed the way I approach small builds and quick experiments. Being able to work directly in a GitHub repo without breaking flow is a huge win. It’s less about flashy features and more about frictionless momentum.

Haven’t personally used Claude yet, so can’t compare, but if Cursor is helping you learn and ship, that’s already a big win in itself. Would love to hear how it stacks up if you end up testing both!

Claude Code is remarkably better at returning good code. It's so much better that I find myself wondering how Cursor and Windsurf are not able to be as good given the underlying model is the same (maybe?).

The downsides to Claude code are:

• It costs way more and you have very little control over how long it takes to do things and how much it thinks

• I don't like doing everything via command line. Having the diff view in the IDE with Cursor/Windsurf is much nicer for me. Claude Code has plugins for the JetBrains IDEs but they are still clunky compared to the VS code options.

Some things that make Claude Code amazing are:

• Integration with GitHub, ex tag it on issues, pull requests etc and it will work async

• MCP support for all kinds of goodies. Some fun ones are Sentry and Linear, ex go fix this bug or go build this feature

I prefer having a user interface over using the terminal, because it allows me to better understand what the AI has changed and gives me a greater sense of control.

I’ve used both before quite extensively. Have since opted for the Claude Max plan because Claude just seems to work with my workflow and the results are mostly pretty good. A few things I’ve come to love:

• Even though it’s a CLI tool, it’s pretty integrated into my IDE. When installing the CLI, it automatically installs the Jetbrains or VS Code extension, so you do get to see and manage the changes side by side in your IDE.

• The MCP functionality is pretty basic but it just works. With a good system prompt built over time, it knows when to run puppeteer to visually test my changes. It knows when to create and apply prisma migrations. It even knows when to access the Internet for more up to date documentation or ways of implementation.

• The output is really good. It’s built a few stable iterations to features that have been better than the previous versions than I have built manually in the past (I am an engineer)

• The context window management isn’t amazing, but it works. When you hit the context window limit it summarises what it’s been working on and discards the previous context window, allowing you to continue indefinitely

• You can manage how it processes information. It has a few keywords that you can use (like “ultrathink through your solution”) to use the thinking model more or less effectively, which helps you balance usage

• The limits are reasonable. For the $100 per month, I use Claude pretty much all the time (often as an unbound agent) and I hardly hit the limits. They have the idea of a session (a five hour window) where you can send something like 250 messages.

• It’s really all about how you use the tool. I’ve set up a pretty in-depth system prompt (a local CLAUDE.md file) that describes design, testing, and coding patterns, rules to follow, etc.) it also manages its own plan.md file as it builds so I can tweak a plan on the fly.

I think it’s worth it. As a dev turned people manager, I love that I can dive into code if I choose, but I haven’t had to write lines of code in months. Even considering the $200 20x Claude max plan (the current max plan has opus model usage run out in about an hour, and it is a better model)

Cursor is made for coding but Claude isn't. And Cx file explore is made for organizing files, which can be download from cxexplore.

Cursor has allowed me to be able to build with speed on small projects. Claude Code is too expensive, especially if you are not in mastery of what you want. If you have a set plan, it may be worth it.

Claude code has been available in the default Claude plan for a while now. Limited tokens per day but enough to get shit done. It integrates quite well with both vscode and cursor so I actually use both. When you run the Claude command in a cursor terminal you can easily set it up with the dedicated Claude code command which will add a little Claude button to your editor. Tapping it will give you an extra Claude window. I tend to use that until I run out of tokens and then I switch to cursor to continue. That way I never have to do the pay as you go and I can save myself from vibe coding myself to bankruptcy 😅

Context: I've been a software engineer for a fairly long time, and I have a workflow that's hard-won and works well for me. I use the terminal heavily. I write code in vim.

So, I'm a big fan of Claude Code because it's a CLI that sits in a terminal window and doesn't demand I change my existing workflow. I like this approach.

Claude Code produces good results for me, and I love some of the recent updates, like being able to use sub agents. Anthropic are doing awesome work with Claude Code.

But as others say, it depends what workflow works for you.

Using both side by side for months now - I tend to use cursor more when I want to be more involved in the code review and editing process whereas claude excels as an on demand system admin and general coder where I'm ok to let it handle specifics.

Hope that helps!

I’ve been using both myself. Usually I’ll use cursor to build a PRD or plan a task and honestly it’s a lot easier to switch in MCP tools in cursor than it is Claude code but when I’m finished planning or researching, Claude code is definitely the ace in the hole. And I gotten super accurate results using a Gemini mcp using google’s grounded search, it’s almost like context7 but will even get the latest docs of pretty much any library. I’ve also experimented with OpenAI codex because it can use open source models and the Gwen models work OK for smaller tasks.

Why not use Copilot (Github) in VSCode and with the Pro plan you can access Claude Sonnet 4 which has an agent mode ?
Claude Sonnet 4 is not included free in the Pro plan but Copilot gives 300 premium requests to use it every month with that plan, which seems fair.

I haven't tested Cursor and Claude Code, but this stack seems equivalent.
Anyone has an idea ?

I've been bouncing around vibe coder tools for the past couple months and Claude Code is my happy spot right now, with @Zencoder being a very close second.

Even on the $20 a month Claude Pro plan, the usage limit is fairly generous and if you run into it, you just have to wait a couple hours for the limit to reset. Only downside is that your limit is a shared pool between the Claude app and Claude Code. If you need more usage than that then you probably are making enough to justify an upgrade to the $100 a month Claude Max plan.

I am using the cursor with Claude Sonnet 4, and it's really good compared to other models. But I am hitting the rate limit frequently and can't use it anymore. I cancelled my subscription with Cursor and am looking for alternatives.

I also tried Gemine 2.5 Pro and o3 models, but they are not as good as Sonnet 4.

I signed up for Google Vertex AI where you get a free trial with €256 credits, where you can use the Sonnet 4 and Opus. I'm going to try that, currently am stuck in setup. The documentation is not very good