Cursor apologizes for unclear pricing adjustments that upset customers

The CEO of Anysphere, the corporate behind the favored AI-powered coding setting Cursor, apologized Friday for a poorly communicated pricing change to its $20-per-month Professional plan. The adjustments resulted in some customers complaining that they unexpectedly confronted extra prices.

“We acknowledge that we didn’t deal with this pricing rollout effectively and we’re sorry,” stated Anysphere CEO Michael Truell in a weblog submit. “Our communication was not clear sufficient and got here as a shock to a lot of you.”

Truell is referring to a June 16 replace to Cursor’s Professional plan. As an alternative of Professional customers getting 500 quick responses on superior AI fashions from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google, after which limitless responses at a slower charge, the corporate introduced subscribers would now get $20 value of utilization per 30 days, billed at API charges. The brand new plan permits customers to run coding duties in Cursor with their AI mannequin of selection till they hit the $20 restrict, after which customers should buy extra credit to proceed utilizing it.

Nonetheless, Professional customers took to social media to file their complaints within the weeks following the announcement.

Many customers stated they ran out of requests in Cursor slightly shortly beneath the brand new plan, in some instances after only a few prompts when utilizing Anthropic’s new Claude fashions, that are notably well-liked for coding. Different customers claimed they have been unexpectedly charged extra prices, not absolutely understanding they’d be charged further in the event that they ran over the $20 utilization restrict and had not set a spend restrict. Within the new plan, solely Cursor’s “auto mode,” which routes to AI fashions based mostly on capability, gives limitless utilization for Professional customers.

Anysphere says it plans to refund customers that have been unexpectedly charged, and goals to be extra clear about pricing adjustments transferring ahead. The corporate declined TechCrunch’s request for remark past the weblog submit.

Truell notes within the weblog that Anysphere modified Cursor’s pricing as a result of “new fashions can spend extra tokens per request on longer-horizon duties” — which means that a few of the newest AI fashions have grow to be costlier, spending a whole lot of time and computational assets to finish difficult, multi-step duties. Cursor was consuming these prices beneath its outdated Professional plan, however now, it’s passing them alongside to customers.

Whereas many AI fashions have lowered in value, the reducing fringe of efficiency continues to be costly — in some instances, extra dear than ever. Anthropic’s not too long ago launched Claude Opus 4 mannequin is $15 per million enter tokens (roughly 750,000 phrases, longer than the complete “Lord of The Rings” sequence) and $75 per million output tokens. That’s much more pricey than Google’s launch of Gemini 2.5 Professional in April, which was its costliest AI mannequin ever.

In current months, OpenAI and Anthropic have additionally began charging enterprise prospects for “precedence” entry to AI fashions — a further premium on high of what AI fashions already value that ensures dependable, excessive pace efficiency.

These bills could also be filtering their manner right down to AI coding instruments, which appear to be getting costlier throughout the trade. Customers of one other well-liked AI software, Replit, have been additionally caught off guard in current weeks by pricing adjustments that made finishing giant duties with AI costlier.

Cursor has grow to be one of the profitable AI merchandise in the marketplace, reaching greater than $500 million in ARR largely by means of subscriptions to its Professional plan. Nonetheless, Cursor now faces intense competitors from the AI suppliers it depends on, whereas concurrently determining the best way to affordably serve their costlier AI fashions.

Anthropic’s not too long ago launched AI coding software Claude Code has been successful with enterprises, reportedly boosting the corporate’s ARR to $4 billion, and certain taking some customers from Cursor within the course of. Final week, Cursor returned the favor by recruiting two Anthropic staff that led product growth of Claude Code.

But when Cursor intends to maintain its market-leading place, it could’t cease working with the state-of-the-art mannequin suppliers — not less than, not till its personal home-grown fashions are extra moderately aggressive.

So Anysphere not too long ago struck multi-year offers with OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and xAI to supply a $200-a-month Cursor Extremely plan with very excessive charge limits. Anthropic co-founder Jared Kaplan additionally informed TechCrunch in June he plans to work with Cursor for a very long time.

Nonetheless, it actually feels as if the stress between Cursor and AI mannequin builders is constructing.