Staxly

Anthropic API vs Cursor

API for Claude — frontier models for chat, tool use, agents, and long-context reasoning
vs. AI-native code editor — VS Code fork with deep AI integration

Anthropic website ↗Cursor website ↗

Pricing tiers

Anthropic API

Opus 4.7 — usage
Input $5 / output $25 / cache-write $6.25 / cache-read $0.50 per 1M tokens. Batch = 50% off.
Custom
Sonnet 4.6 — usage
Input $3 / output $15 / cache-write $3.75 / cache-read $0.30 per 1M tokens. Batch = 50% off.
Custom
Haiku 4.5 — usage
Input $1 / output $5 / cache-write $1.25 / cache-read $0.10 per 1M tokens. Batch = 50% off.
Custom
Anthropic website ↗

Cursor

Hobby (Free)
Free. Limited Agent requests + Tab completions. No credit card.
Free
Pro
$20/month. Extended Agent limits, frontier models, MCPs + skills + hooks, cloud agents.
$20/mo
Teams
$40/user/month. Shared chats + commands + rules, centralized billing, RBAC, SAML/OIDC SSO.
$40/mo
Pro+ (Recommended)
$60/month. Everything in Pro + 3x usage on OpenAI, Claude, Gemini.
$60/mo
Ultra
$200/month. 20x usage multiplier + priority access to new features.
$200/mo
Enterprise
Custom. Pooled usage, SCIM, AI code tracking API + audit logs, priority support.
Custom
Cursor website ↗

Free-tier quotas head-to-head

Comparing opus-4-7 on Anthropic API vs hobby on Cursor.

MetricAnthropic APICursor
discount batch50 % off—

Features

Anthropic API · 0 features

    Cursor · 15 features

    • Agent Mode — Autonomous multi-file editing + tool use. Runs terminal commands with confirmati…
    • Background Agents — Run agents in the cloud to tackle longer tasks async.
    • BugBot (PR reviews) — AI reviewer on GitHub PRs.
    • Chat (⌘L) — Conversational chat with codebase context.
    • Cmd-K Inline Edit — Highlight code + ⌘K → natural language edit instruction.
    • Codebase Indexing — Embedding-based semantic search over your codebase.
    • Composer — Multi-file edit sessions with full context.
    • .cursorrules / Project Rules — Custom system prompts per project to steer the AI.
    • MCP Support — Add Model Context Protocol servers to extend agent capabilities.
    • Privacy Mode — Data never used for training; zero-retention routing.
    • Skills & Hooks — User-defined skills library + lifecycle hooks.
    • Tab (multi-line completion) — Predictive completions including next-edit suggestions.
    • Team Shared Context — Share chats, commands, rules across team.
    • VS Code Extension Compat — Most VS Code extensions work via the marketplace.
    • YOLO Mode — Auto-approve all agent actions (for trusted workflows).

    Developer interfaces

    KindAnthropic APICursor
    CLIClaude Code CLICursor CLI
    SDKGo SDK, Java SDK, Python SDK, Ruby SDK, TypeScript SDK (@anthropic-ai/sdk)—
    RESTAWS Bedrock, Google Vertex AI, Microsoft Azure AI, REST API (Messages + Agents)—
    MCP—Cursor MCP support
    OTHER—Cursor Desktop App, Cursor Rules (.cursorrules), Privacy Mode
    Staxly is an independent catalog of developer platforms. Outbound links to Anthropic API and Cursor are plain references to their official websites. Pricing is verified against vendor pages at publication time — reconfirm before buying.

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