Claude Code vs Codex vs Cursor: Usage, Price and Benchmarks Compared

Claude Code, Codex and Cursor are the three coding agents developers compare most often. This page puts their public numbers next to each other and updates daily; the figures below are as of Oct 6, 2026.

At a glance

Read the usage rows with care. Claude Code and Codex are distributed through npm, so their downloads are counted; Cursor is a desktop application and is not, which is why its page shows site traffic rank and Homebrew installs instead. The products are not measured on the same channel, so the table shows what exists for each without pretending to a single winner.

What each one is

Claude Code

Anthropic's agentic coding tool that reads a codebase, edits files and runs commands from the terminal, with VS Code and JetBrains integrations plus desktop, web and mobile access. It runs Claude models through a Claude subscription, an Anthropic Console API key or supported third-party cloud providers.

• Interfaces: CLI, IDE extension, Desktop, Web, Mobile, SDK
• Models: Anthropic Claude models via Claude plans, a Console API key or supported third-party cloud providers
• Pricing: Included in paid Claude plans: Pro $20/month ($17/month billed annually), Max from $100/month (5x and 20x tiers), Team standard seat $20/seat/month annual ($25 monthly) and premium seat $100 annual ($125 monthly). The Free plan does not include it; pay-as-you-go API credits via a Console account are an alternative.

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.

• Interfaces: CLI, IDE extension, Desktop, Web, Mobile, SDK
• Models: OpenAI GPT models (GPT-6 family per current docs) via ChatGPT sign-in or 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).

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.

• Interfaces: Desktop IDE, CLI, Web, Mobile, Slack, GitHub, Linear, API/SDK
• Models: Models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, SpaceXAI (Grok 4.7/4.6/4.5) and Meta (Muse Spark), plus Cursor's own Composer 2.5.
• 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.
• Note: Acquired by SpaceX. Cursor's own announcement that it is joining SpaceX is dated 2026-08-14 and says the process began with a SpaceXAI partnership in April 2026; it does not state a price.

How they differ where it matters

Where you work. Claude Code and Codex began as terminal agents and added editor extensions, desktop apps and cloud modes. Cursor began as an editor and added a command-line agent and cloud agents. If you live in a terminal and want to script the agent or run it in CI, the first two fit more naturally. If you want the agent inside the editor with visual review as the default, Cursor does.

Which models you get. Claude Code runs Anthropic's models and Codex runs OpenAI's, each bundled with that vendor's subscription. Cursor lets you choose among models from several vendors. Choosing Claude Code or Codex is therefore partly a choice of model family; choosing Cursor keeps that open at the cost of one more layer between you and the model.

How fast they move. Claude Code shipped 26 stable releases in the last 30 days. A fast cadence means quick fixes and frequent behaviour changes; the release notes on each agent's page show what changed.

Measured quality. On Terminal-Bench 4.0, the best listed Claude Code run solves 57.9% of tasks (± 3.8) and the best Codex run 58.2% (± 2.8). Those ranges overlap, so the benchmark does not separate them. The runs did differ in cost: $6,244 for the Claude Code run against $3,267 for the Codex run. Full tables are on the benchmarks page.

Trends

For history charts of each pair, see the head-to-head pages:

• Claude Code vs Codex
• Claude Code vs Cursor
• Codex vs Cursor

Which should you pick

Start from your constraints instead of the leaderboard:

• You already pay for one vendor's assistant: use the coding agent that subscription includes, since it costs nothing extra to try.
• You want one tool across several model vendors: look at Cursor, or at the open-source agents that accept any API key.
• You need automation in CI or over SSH: a terminal agent.
• You are still undecided: run the same bug fix through two of them on your own codebase and compare the diffs you would have to review.