Cursor vs Kombai

Cursor

Still the editor most teams reach for when they want agents working inside a real IDE, with cloud agents, PR review and a CLI under one login. Since the SpaceX purchase the price list has been rebuilt around a usage pool shared with Grok: the old $20 Pro plan is gone, the cheapest tier only runs Grok models, and anyone attached to Claude, GPT or Gemini now pays for those separately at API list price.

Pros

• +Agents work with repository-wide context in the editor, the terminal and the cloud
• +Model menu still spans in-house Composer plus Anthropic, OpenAI, Google and xAI models
• +Usage allowance refreshes weekly rather than monthly, so one heavy day does not drain the month
• +Free tier remains for trying agent workflows
• +SOC 2, ISO 27001 and ISO 42001 certifications listed for enterprise procurement

Cons

• −The $8 Plus tier is restricted to Grok models, so the realistic entry price for a multi-model workflow is $30
• −Third-party models are no longer included in any plan and bill at API list price on top
• −Pricing has been restructured twice within a year, which makes budgeting a guess
• −Ownership moved to SpaceX in 2026, so roadmap and data policies may shift again

Kombai

A rare agent that treats frontend as a design-plus-code problem: canvas designs, stack-aware code output and visual editing inside the IDE you already use. The catch is that it is frontend-only and credit-metered, so it complements rather than replaces a general coding assistant, and heavy use pushes you toward team pooling.

Pros

• +Designs arrive as editable HTML blocks, not flat mockups
• +Runs inside VS Code, Cursor and other editors plus its own desktop apps
• +Free tier renews credits daily, so evaluation is genuinely ongoing
• +SOC2 compliance and no training on user data on paid plans

Cons

• −Scope ends at the frontend; everything else needs other tools
• −Credit metering on each generation makes costs usage-dependent
• −No public API for pipeline automation

Is Cursor cheaper than Kombai?

On published entry prices, Cursor starts lower — $8/mo against $20/mo for Kombai. Entry price is the lowest paid plan as we last verified it; what each plan includes differs.

Does Cursor or Kombai have a free tier?

Both: Cursor has a free tier, and Kombai has a free tier.