1) It's still an IDE. Because of pricing I mostly use Codex, but I always have a VSCode/Cursor IDE open, thus have to juggle between the two. Working directly in the IDE is more comfortable. For full on vibecoding that might be worse, but when you want to do a deep review of the changes, an IDE is way better than reading a diff on github.
2) It supports every model. It's often very helpful to try different models when you don't like the result of the first.
Recently they also seem to have made big changes that makes Cursor worse for editing code by hand. I'm not sure what they are trying to do, but it doesn't feel like vscode fork anymore.
I'm starting to consider alternatives.
To answer your question though, to me your workflow seems cumbersome. Cursor is more integrated and more frictionless.
I don't think it offers any. I got tired of switching between Codex and Claude plus I wanted to start using glm and kimi so I switch to pi. Then I got tired of VSCode eating up battery and RAM so I moved to Neovim which has barely any efficiency downside anymore since most code is not written by hand and if you know how to use it well it was only maybe 10% less efficient than VSCode to begin with. I am not sure why a heavy desktop application would be better than nvim + pi in terminal which are both super extensible via vibecoding and very light on resources.
Cursor was a great introduction to agentic engineering but I've learned their Claude pricing is largely just batch purchases. Their real moat I think is Composer 2.5 because both their agentic and IDE experiences fall short of Codex and Claude Desktop in my opinion. I think their sales will tell you economically they make the most sense and I would probably agree, but cost isn't everything especially when the spread isn't that wide. At this moment, capability is really king.
These days I'm using Codex and Claude Desktop with Zen when I need to look at code. Codex's real time audio chat feature (not dictation) is also second to none when paired with their agentic flow.
I am shocked, shocked, that a company that is part of SpaceXAI would become hostile to its existing paying users and partners. This has never happened before in history.
Cursor you have a beautiful comeback story, you have a wonderful model with Composer 2.5, and a terrific behemoth with Grok 4.5 now. A top-tier dev ux with the Cursor agent app, why on earth are you squandering this opportunity and behaving this way?
You came back from the dead pretty much and now you're pissing it away for what exactly?
Do not spite your individual developer customers or you will perish yet again.
The PM comment above matches what I've seen. Hiding a usage number doesn't remove the anxiety, it just removes the user's ability to verify it, so people pad their mental estimate upward and quietly disengage. For anything usage-billed, trust in the tool is capped by trust in the number, and you can't build that trust by making the number invisible.
The move that actually works is the opposite: make it legible. Show the breakdown, show what drove the spike, let people reconcile it against their own expectation. A scary number you can explain beats a hidden one they have to guess at.
Removing the CSV export is the part that stings most, because that's the one thing power users reach for the moment they stop trusting the dashboard.
These days I “write” code with claude code and codex, and read/review it on GitHub. If I need to read it locally, I use a plain text editor.
Can someone help me understand what value cursor offers in 2026?
1) It's still an IDE. Because of pricing I mostly use Codex, but I always have a VSCode/Cursor IDE open, thus have to juggle between the two. Working directly in the IDE is more comfortable. For full on vibecoding that might be worse, but when you want to do a deep review of the changes, an IDE is way better than reading a diff on github.
2) It supports every model. It's often very helpful to try different models when you don't like the result of the first.
To answer your question though, to me your workflow seems cumbersome. Cursor is more integrated and more frictionless.
Unless by "text editor" you mean Neovim or Emacs ?
Double-edged sword. It is also simple to move back to VS code and agent extensions.
These days I'm using Codex and Claude Desktop with Zen when I need to look at code. Codex's real time audio chat feature (not dictation) is also second to none when paired with their agentic flow.
You came back from the dead pretty much and now you're pissing it away for what exactly?
Do not spite your individual developer customers or you will perish yet again.
The move that actually works is the opposite: make it legible. Show the breakdown, show what drove the spike, let people reconcile it against their own expectation. A scary number you can explain beats a hidden one they have to guess at.
Removing the CSV export is the part that stings most, because that's the one thing power users reach for the moment they stop trusting the dashboard.