Cursor vs Refact.ai

Two fact sheets from our own research, side by side — pricing, platforms, API access and status re-checked by us rather than quoted from the vendors.

The short answer

Cheaper paid plan: Cursor — $8/mo vs $10/mo for Refact.ai
Free plan: Both have one
Higher Trust score: Cursor — 98 vs 83 for Refact.ai
Best fit: Cursor: Developers who want agents, cloud agents and code review inside one editor · Refact.ai: Teams whose code must stay on-prem but still want an agent and completions
Platforms: Cursor: macOS, Windows, Linux, Web · Refact.ai: VS Code extension

From our own records as of each tool's last check. Anything we have not confirmed is left out rather than guessed. How we verify

CursorCode editor built around coding agents that work in the IDE, the terminal, the cloud and on pull requests

Refact.aiOpen-source AI coding agent and autocomplete that runs in your IDE, in the cloud or fully self-hosted

Side by side

Fact	Cursor	Refact.ai
Category	AI Code Editors & IDEs	AI Coding Assistants
Pricing model	Freemium	Freemium
Starts at	$8/mo	$10/mo
Trust score	98 / 100	83 / 100
Platforms	macOS, Windows, Linux, Web	VS Code extension
Company	Anysphere, Inc.	Small Magellanic Cloud AI Ltd
Launched	2023	2023
Last verified	Oct 23, 2026	Oct 16, 2026

What our research says

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

Refact.ai

One of the few coding agents you can audit and run entirely on your own hardware, at a Pro price well under most rivals. The trade-off is polish: agent and completion quality trail the frontier hosted tools, and the docs subdomain currently redirects somewhere stale.

Pros

Open-source core with a real self-hosted path, including fine-tuning
Broad IDE coverage beyond the usual VS Code-only support
Pro at $10/month undercuts most agent subscriptions
Free tier suffices for light daily use

Cons

docs.refact.ai currently redirects to an outdated third-party GitHub wiki
Output quality depends heavily on which model tier you run
Small vendor competing against far larger, faster-moving rivals

Which one fits

Choose Cursor if you need

Developers who want agents, cloud agents and code review inside one editor
Teams standardising on a single vendor for editor, review and Slack-driven agents
Users already paying for Grok who want one usage pool to cover both

Choose Refact.ai if you need

Teams whose code must stay on-prem but still want an agent and completions
Developers who want AI inside JetBrains, VS Code or Neovim rather than a separate AI editor
Tinkerers who prefer open-source AI tooling they can inspect and modify