OpenAI Codex vs Cursor (2026)

Pricing side by side

OpenAI Codex vs Cursor: public pricing

Item	OpenAI Codex	Cursor
Starting price	Free; Plus $20/mo	Free; Plus $8/mo
Pricing model	Subscription	Subscription
Free plan	Yes	Yes
Plans	Free: $0 Go: $8/mo Plus: $20/mo Pro: from $100/mo Business: $25/user/mo	Free: $0 Plus: $8/mo Premium: $30/mo Super: $100/mo Ultra: $200/mo Teams: from $30/user/mo
Pricing note	Or use your own API key and pay API prices.	Cursor's plans are now bundled with X/Grok features. Third-party models (Claude, GPT and others) are billed separately by usage. Annual billing: Plus $80/yr, Premium $300/yr, Super $1,000/yr, Ultra $2,000/yr (cursor.com/docs/models-and-pricing, checked October 28, 2026).
Checked	October 28, 2026	October 28, 2026
Source	Vendor pricing page	Vendor pricing page

Copied from each vendor's public pricing page on the date shown. "not published" means the vendor doesn't publish it; we don't guess. Prices change; confirm with the vendor.

Features and details from our listings

Use cases

OpenAI Codex

• Use caseCoding

  A solo developer spent three months making the Steam game Solitaire: Kingdom in Chains with Claude Code and Codex alongside Photoshop, Cubase and Filmora, and puts the AI share of the work at about 30%.

  Oct 2026@bigbropatchwork on X ↗

• Use caseCoding

  After running Claude Code and Codex side by side on two real projects for weeks, a builder logged one day in which Claude Code delivered 9 changes he could open and use, while Codex stopped three times over rules it had written for itself and got about 18 minutes of building done.

  Oct 2026@bstuartTI on X ↗

• Use caseCoding

  A developer ran Google's open Gemma 4 model locally inside Codex CLI and wrote up how a coding agent performs without a cloud model.

  Apr 2026Daniel Vaughan (blog), via Hacker News ↗

• Use caseCoding

  Simon Willison used Codex CLI to port the JustHTML HTML5 parser from Python to JavaScript in about 4.5 hours, using the existing html5lib test suite to check the agent's work.

  Dec 2025Simon Willison's Weblog ↗

• Use caseCoding

  Semgrep's security researchers had Claude Code and OpenAI Codex hunt for vulnerabilities in real Python web apps: both found real bugs (about 20 high-severity), but more than 80% of what they flagged were false positives.

  Sep 2025Semgrep blog ↗

Cursor

• Use caseCoding

  A beginner poker player went from small Python scripts that export his hand histories to a full Laravel web app for reviewing hands, built with help from Cursor.

  Oct 2025Reilly Chase ↗

• Use caseCoding

  A developer wrote a Cursor rule whose job is to write other Cursor rules, so project conventions get saved as reusable instructions for the agent.

  Apr 2025Adithyan (blog), via Hacker News ↗

Use cases are summarised in our own words from the linked public post; vendor case studies are labelled. All use cases.

Who each is best for

• SubscriptionFree plan

  OpenAI Codex is best for

  • Teams that need to: Port or rewrite code against a test suite; Delegate coding tasks to run in the cloud.
  • Budget: starts at Free; Plus $20/mo (subscription, free plan available).
• SubscriptionFree plan

  Cursor is best for

  • Teams that need to: Build or change an app with an agent in the editor; Refactor and fix bugs across files.
  • Budget: starts at Free; Plus $8/mo (subscription, free plan available).

From our listing data (jobs, public pricing); not a hands-on test. Full details: OpenAI Codex · Cursor.

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