Cursor vs GitHub Copilot: pricing, credits, and which one fits the way you build

GitHub Copilot is the cheaper and more predictable buy, starting at $10 per user per month with a published credit allowance. Cursor starts at $8 but sells through X’s subscription tiers and holds most models back for higher plans. Copilot suits teams standardised on GitHub. Cursor suits agent-led work across a whole repository.

Both are listed in the Spotsaas catalogue, so you can open Cursor and GitHub Copilot alongside the rest of the AI code generators category. We hold no review data for either product yet, so nothing below is a ratings comparison. Every price is a US dollar figure read off each vendor’s own page on 8 November 2026: cursor.com/pricing and GitHub’s Copilot plans.

Cursor vs GitHub Copilot at a glance

	Cursor	GitHub Copilot
Cheapest paid plan	$8 per month	$10 per user per month
Next tier up	$30 per month	$39 per user per month
Top individual tier	$200 per month	$100 per user per month
Team pricing	from $30 per user per month	$19 per granted seat per month
Organisation tier	priced on request	$39 per granted seat per month
How usage is metered	multiples of the entry plan	AI credits, 1 credit = $0.01
Sold by	X Subscription Corp	GitHub
Pricing types we record	Freemium, subscription	Free trial, freemium, subscription

Read the cheapest row carefully. The $8 and $10 look like the same decision and are not, which the next two sections explain.

GitHub Copilot pricing, and how the credits work

GitHub publishes the whole ladder in US dollars across its Copilot plans page and its subscription plans documentation, and it is unusually legible for this market:

• Free: $0. Limited chat and agent usage.
• Pro: $10 per user per month. 1,000 base AI credits plus a 500 flex allotment, so 1,500 a month in total.
• Pro+: $39 per user per month. 3,900 base credits plus 3,100 flex, so 7,000 in total, and access to premium models.
• Max: $100 per user per month. 10,000 base credits plus 10,000 flex, so 20,000 in total, with priority access to premium models.
• Business: $19 per granted seat per month, carrying 1,900 credits per user.
• Enterprise: $39 per granted seat per month, carrying 3,900 credits per user.

The credit is the part worth understanding, because it makes the bill predictable. One AI credit is $0.01, so a $10 budget covers 1,000 credits, and included credits pool across an organisation. Usage past the pool is charged at that same cent per credit. Code completions are unlimited and consume no credits at all, which means ordinary autocomplete never eats the allowance.

There is one more route that catches people out. If your company already holds GitHub Enterprise Cloud licences, Copilot access carries a $0 seat charge for those users. Bought standalone, the same access is $10 per user per month. Before you price anything, ask whoever administers your GitHub organisation which of those two you are already in.

What changed with Cursor’s pricing

Cursor’s published tiers in US dollars are Free at $0, Plus at $8 per month, Premium at $30, Super at $100 and Ultra at $200, with Teams from $30 per user per month and Enterprise priced on request.

Three things on that page change how those figures read:

• The tiers are not Cursor-only. They bundle X features next to Cursor usage, and the pricing page‘s own FAQ states that subscriptions “are only sold directly through X Subscription Corp”. Third-party price trackers report that switch happening in October 2026, when a bundled X Subscription replaced SuperGrok and X Premium. We verified the tier prices and the FAQ wording ourselves; the timing is reported rather than verified.
• The $8 plan is narrower than it looks. It carries a footnote saying only Grok models are available on it. If you want to work against a different frontier model, the entry tier is not the plan you are buying.
• Usage is quoted relative to the entry plan, at four times on Premium, fifteen times on Super and fifty times on Ultra, rather than as an absolute allowance you can budget against.

So the honest read on the cheapest row is this: Copilot Pro at $10 tells you exactly what you get, 1,500 credits at a cent each. Cursor Plus at $8 tells you that you get a share of a pool and only one model family. Those are different products at a similar price.

Cursor vs Copilot vs GitHub: the naming is doing real damage

A lot of the search traffic here is people untangling names rather than comparing products, so it is worth being blunt about it.

• GitHub Copilot is the coding assistant, sold by GitHub, priced in the ladder above.
• Microsoft Copilot is a different product, the assistant across Microsoft 365, priced separately. If you are reading about seats in Word and Excel, you are reading about the wrong one.
• Cursor is a standalone editor built on the VS Code foundation, now billed through X’s subscription.
• Copilot inside Cursor does not exist as a plan. You buy one or the other, and nothing stops you running both.

If your question was really about the Microsoft 365 assistant, our Microsoft Copilot pricing post covers that ladder instead.

Where Windsurf fits, and the one product here with review data

Windsurf is the third name in most of these threads, and it is the only one of the three for which we hold reviews. It is rated 4.6 from 89 reviews with a SpotScore of 9.2/10, starts at $15 per user per month on our data, and records subscription, per user, freemium and free trial pricing.

That makes the three-way shape roughly: Copilot for predictable per-seat cost inside an existing GitHub estate, Cursor for agent-led editing where you want the editor itself to drive, and Windsurf for agent-led work with a published per-seat price and actual review history behind it. Our Windsurf vs Cursor comparison goes deeper on the last two.

How to choose in an afternoon

Price is not the deciding factor between $8, $10 and $15. Four questions settle it faster than any feature table:

1. Do you already hold GitHub Enterprise Cloud licences? If yes, Copilot access may already cost you $0 per seat, and that ends the conversation for most teams.
2. Does your work need a specific model? Cursor’s entry tier restricts you to one model family. Copilot Pro+ and Max are where premium model access sits on that side.
3. Do you want a bill you can forecast? Credits at a cent each are forecastable. Usage quoted as a multiple of someone else’s allowance is not.
4. Does anyone need to approve the vendor? Cursor subscriptions now route through X Subscription Corp. If your procurement process cares who the counterparty is, find that out before you pilot, not after.

Then run the same real task in both for a week and watch your own usage meter. Any ranking you read today, this one included, has a short shelf life, because both products ship changes faster than articles get updated.

Frequently asked questions

Related reading

• Best AI coding assistants: the wider field, read from a buyer’s seat instead of a developer’s.
• Windsurf vs Cursor: the two agent-led editors head to head.
• Microsoft Copilot pricing: the other Copilot, if seats in Microsoft 365 were the real question.
• Copilot vs ChatGPT for business: if the comparison is really about assistants, not editors.