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Claude Code vs Cursor

Claude Code is where we and our most AI-forward guests ended up; Cursor is still the most polished IDE, with a built-in browser and debug mode, and it remains common in enterprises.

By Jordan Metzner & Sam Nadler · From our episodes · Updated October 2026

Watch: Episode 35, AI Agents Are Replacing Entire Marketing Teams from 16:26

The short answer

Pick Claude Code if you want an agent that does the work while you manage it, especially several at once. Pick Cursor if you want a polished editor where you stay close to the code, with a built-in browser and debug mode, or if your company has already standardized on it.

Jordan was a Cursor user through 2025 and called it his go-to as late as December. By early 2026 he, his engineers and several guests had moved to Claude Code (and Jordan later to OpenAI Codex). The most useful counterpoint came from a guest: the model you run matters more than the tool you run it in.

What we built with each

Cursor builds

Ryz Score: "I think I built most of this in Cursor," with Supabase for auth and data (Episode 4, at 08:25).
Mate and the Collective finance dashboard: both started in Bolt and were finished in Cursor.
Tix LAX parking ticket map: "I coded almost all of it using cursor and codex," with Mapbox (Episode 15, at 06:11).

Claude Code builds

Sam's ATS: Sam's first Claude Code project, with up to three agents on different pages at once (Episode 9).
ScreenEval: built in about six hours in the terminal (Episode 29).
Personal DNA and health insights dashboard and the internal web app redesign handed off from Claude Design, which Claude Code applied across the whole app in about thirty minutes (Episode 40).

Both

The Kalshi prediction market trading bot used Opus 4.5, Cursor and Claude Code together over the holiday break (Episode 26).

Head-to-head

	Claude Code	Cursor
Product polish	Terminal; less to look at	Jordan in Dec 2025: "definitely the most developed"
Parallel agents	Many terminal sessions; Agent Teams	Jordan ran four agents at once in it
UI work	Applied a full Claude Design redesign	Built-in browser and debug mode, per August Kiles
Models	Anthropic's; we used Opus 4.5 and 4.6	Anthropic models, Gemini 3 (Jordan tried it), and Cursor's own Composer
Cost talk	A guest called it "already very expensive"	Jordan's card "getting hit all the time"; one $2,000 surprise bill
Large old codebases	Amar Goel: tools "break down"	Same critique applied

The clearest switching story came from Iliya Valchanov of Juma:

So everybody on our team was using Cursor before, then we all moved to ClothCode, and basically last week, we canceled Cursor, and we haven't been nobody wants to move to Codecs.

— Iliya Valchanov, Episode 35

He said the difference "was so big that we actually intentionally moved away from Cursor." Jordan answered that we went through "a similar set of iterations," moving from Cursor to Claude Code when the new Opus came out.

Where each one fell short

Cursor. In Episode 14 Jordan argued that zero switching costs put Cursor "in such a dangerous position," and said his engineers had gone from Cursor to Claude Code to Codex in twelve weeks. Arya Health's Arun Kalaiselvan ran a six-month enterprise pilot about a year and a half earlier and found it "introduced more issues into our code base than they solved for," so they switched to Copilot. His colleague said Cursor has matured since. Jordan also remembers Cursor writing randomly numbered markdown notes with "no context" about a year before June 2026 (Episode 46).

Claude Code. Cost and lock-in. Anand Chandrasekaran predicted in Episode 24 that once coding models converge, tooling and price win, and Cursor will be ahead:

I don't know where Cloud Code will be at that point, but Cloud Code is already very expensive when compared to everything else.

— Anand Chandrasekaran, Episode 24

Jordan pushed back that whoever builds the model may also build the best tooling for it. And in Episode 35 he said Claude Code would make mistakes "but be confident that there were no mistakes," which moved him to Codex.

What our guests use

August Kiles, Emblem: the model matters most. "Cursor or Copilot with Opus 4.6 is going to be so much better than using Claude Code with Opus 4.5 that it's not even funny." He still uses Cursor for its browser and debug mode (Episode 31, at 18:57).
Karim Malhas: built his company with Cursor and runs a competition over who uses it more; he says he is a top 8% Cursor user (Episode 42).
Anis Bennaceur, Attention: when he studied his engineers' Cursor spend in 2025, the biggest spenders were the weakest and the strongest engineers, "no one in the middle" (Episode 45).
Jackson Reiter, Realm: "We use Cursor" (Episode 47). Sagi Waitzman's team uses Claude Code for new features and Windsurf, which he compares to Cursor, for specific fixes.
Amar Goel, Bito: Cursor, Claude Code and the rest are great for new projects but break down on large existing codebases (Episode 23).

Which one we reach for now

Mid 2025: Cursor was Jordan's IDE for most builds.
September 2025: his engineers went from Cursor with Anthropic models, to Claude Code, to Codex in about twelve weeks.
December 2025: Jordan still called Cursor his go-to and "the best, like, product user customer experience" for running multiple agents.
January to March 2026: spend shifted away from Cursor toward Anthropic (Episode 29), and by Episode 35 Jordan described the move to Claude Code as done.
April 2026: Jordan said "really advanced AI teams" have moved on from Cursor to Claude Code and Codex, "but, you know, we're still seeing lots of enterprises just starting to adopt Cursor" (Episode 40, at 12:49).

Today Jordan's daily driver is Codex, Sam splits his work between Claude Code and Codex, and some of our developers still prefer Claude Code. Cursor is no longer in our daily rotation, but August's point stands: put the newest model in whatever tool you like. See Claude Code vs OpenAI Codex for our current pick, and Cursor vs Google Antigravity and Cursor vs Lovable for more on Cursor.

FAQ

Is Claude Code better than Cursor?

For us it was. Jordan's teams and guest Iliya Valchanov's team at Juma both moved from Cursor to Claude Code, and Juma canceled Cursor because the gap was so big. August Kiles argued the model matters more than the tool: Cursor with a newer Opus beats Claude Code with an older one.

Why do people still use Cursor?

August Kiles likes its built-in browser for UI tweaks and its debug mode, Karim Malhas runs a contest at his company on who uses Cursor most, and Jordan said many enterprises and universities are only now adopting it.

Is Claude Code more expensive than Cursor?

We did not run a cost test. Anand Chandrasekaran called Claude Code already very expensive compared to everything else, while Jordan said his Cursor card was getting hit all the time with Anthropic models and one developer ran up a $2,000 bill with a new Cursor feature.

Can you use Claude models in Cursor?

Yes. Jordan's engineers used Cursor with Anthropic models before moving to Claude Code, and August Kiles uses Cursor with Opus.

Do you use Cursor and Claude Code together?

Often. The Kalshi trading bot was built with Opus 4.5, Cursor and Claude Code, and Mate and the Collective dashboard were finished in Cursor after starting in Bolt.