Cursor, built by Anysphere since 2022, forks VS Code and rebuilds the editing experience around AI from the ground up rather than adding it as a plugin, and it has become the specific editor most other AI-native coding tools in this category get measured against, in adoption, valuation, and feature parity alike.
Its Tab autocomplete predicts and applies multi-line edits across a change rather than only the next few tokens, and Composer, its agent mode, handles multi-file changes across a codebase from a single natural-language request, running tests and iterating on failures as part of the same session. Multiple underlying models are available rather than locking users to one.
A free tier covers limited usage, and paid plans start around $20 a month for much higher limits and priority access to newer models. For a developer choosing an AI-native editor without a strong existing preference, Cursor's scale, adoption, and continuously updated feature set make it the default starting point most others in this category are compared against.
