Cursor review (2026): is it worth $31 AUD/month for an Australian developer?

We’ve been using Cursor on real client work since late 2025. Here’s the assessment after 8 months.

What Cursor is brilliant at

Tab-to-accept completion

This is where Cursor genuinely shines. The inline suggestions feel like they read your mind, they pull context from your open tabs, your .cursorrules, your recent edits, and propose the next 1-15 lines with surprising accuracy.

Other tools (Copilot, Continue) do this. Cursor does it best.

Composer for multi-file refactors

“I want to rename this prop across the component tree and update all the callers”, Composer shows you the full proposed diff across files, you accept or reject section by section. Smooth.

This is the workflow where Cursor specifically beats Claude Code. Claude Code can do the same thing but the terminal-mediated diff experience is rougher.

.cursorrules

Project-level configuration file. Defines voice, style, libraries to prefer, things to avoid. Functionally similar to a CLAUDE.md but tuned for in-editor work. The team-share story is good.

Visual UI for AI work

If you don’t want to live in a terminal, Cursor is the best option. The chat pane, inline edits, composer panel, all polished, all stable.

Where it falls short

Agentic work

Cursor agents are getting better but Claude Code’s agentic loop is still ahead. If your typical task is “go away and finish this multi-step thing,” Claude Code wins.

MCP polish

Cursor supports MCP servers. The configuration is slightly more friction than Claude Code’s .mcp.json, and a couple of community MCP servers have flakiness on Cursor that they don’t have on Claude Code. Improving fast.

Pro vs Business tier

Cursor Pro at $20 USD/month is the entry tier. Heavy users get throttled and pushed to Business at $40 USD/month. This is fine but feels arbitrary, the Pro-to-Business prompts come at unpredictable usage levels.

For comparison, Claude Code is pay-per-token with no throttling.

AU billing

Cursor’s invoicing defaults to a US format. Australian users wanting GST-compliant invoices have to request them via support. Not a dealbreaker, just friction.

What we run

At Boring Ventures (DotVA, Lead Gen Empire):

• Claude Code: 80% of dev work. All agentic background tasks.
• Cursor: 20%, frontend polish, when we want fast visual diff iteration on a component.

For our two-person ops team, Cursor Pro pays for itself in the in-editor flow on the days it gets used.

Who Cursor is for

• In-editor-first developers who don’t want to live in a terminal
• Frontend-heavy teams doing lots of component-level iteration
• Teams already on VS Code wanting a drop-in AI upgrade
• Anyone who finds Claude Code’s terminal-native flow alienating

Who Cursor isn’t for

• Heavy agentic users, Claude Code wins
• Non-developers, too much editor friction for spreadsheet/email/CSV work
• Cost-conscious users doing only occasional AI-coded work, flat $31 AUD/month is worse than Claude Code’s metered model if you do under 10 hours/week

Bottom line

We pay for Cursor and use it less than we expected. It’s the right tool for the moments it’s right for; for our overall workflow, Claude Code is the daily driver.

Try the 2-week Pro trial. If you find yourself in the editor more than the terminal, Cursor’s probably right for you.