OpenAI Codex vs Cursor
OpenAI Codex (OpenAI) and Cursor (Anysphere (owned by SpaceX)) side by side on public data, as of Oct 6, 2026.
OpenAI Codex has 3.8x the GitHub stars of Cursor (128K against 33.3K).
Side-by-side numbers
| Metric | OpenAI Codex | Cursor |
|---|---|---|
| Pulse Score | 82 | 71 |
| Overall rank | #1 | #8 |
| Downloads, last 7 days | 25.6M | — |
| Downloads, 7-day change | up 5.7% | — |
| Downloads, 30-day change | up 21.2% | — |
| VS Code installs | 15.2M | — |
| Marketplace rating | 2.9 / 5 (725) | — |
| GitHub stars | 128K | 33.3K |
| Homebrew installs, 30 days | 89.7K | 2,963 |
| Hacker News mentions, 30 days | 1,782 | 204 |
| Latest stable release | 0.160.1 · yesterday | — |
| Stable releases, 90 days | ||
| Terminal-Bench (best run) | 58.2% · v4.0 | — |
| Price | Free + $8/mo | Free + $20/mo |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Proprietary |
| First released | April 2025 | March 2023 |
| Interfaces | CLI, IDE extension, Desktop, Web, Mobile, SDK | Desktop IDE, CLI, Web, Mobile, Slack, GitHub, Linear, API/SDK |
| Models | OpenAI GPT models (GPT-6 family per current docs) via ChatGPT sign-in or an OpenAI API key | Models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, SpaceXAI (Grok 4.7/4.6/4.5) and Meta (Muse Spark), plus Cursor's own Composer 2.5. |
Trends
OpenAI Codex
OpenAI's coding agent, offered as an open-source terminal CLI, an IDE extension, a desktop app and a cloud agent that works on repositories. Users sign in with a ChatGPT account or use an OpenAI API key.
Pricing: Included in ChatGPT plans: Free $0, Go $8/month, Plus $20/month, Pro from $100/month ($100, $200 or $500 tiers), Business $20/user/month billed annually ($25 monthly), Enterprise and Edu by contact. API-key use is billed at API rates (no cloud features).
Latest release 0.160.1:
- Preserve SYSTEMROOT, TEMP, and TMP when launching remote stdio MCP servers with explicitly configured remote environment variables, allowing Unix hosts to retain the Windows executor's startup…
- #51121: Backport Windows remote MCP environment preservation to 0.160.
Cursor
AI coding editor and agent platform with a desktop app, a CLI, web and mobile agents, and cloud agents that run tasks in remote environments. It offers models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, SpaceXAI (Grok) and Meta alongside its own Composer models.
Pricing: Hobby is free; Pro $20/mo, Pro Plus $60/mo, Ultra $200/mo; Teams $40/user/mo (Standard) or $120/user/mo (Premium); Enterprise is custom; a Start plan for India costs INR 649/mo. Paid plans include usage pools billed at model API rates with on-demand overage.