Why pick Cursor

Pick Cursor if you spend your day in heavy agentic work — multi-file refactors, long-running agent tasks, and parallel agents. Cursor's agent mode is the best in any IDE, and it gives you the freshest frontier models the moment they ship. It's also faster, with around 30% better task-resolution speed. The tradeoff is cost: Pro starts at $20/mo, and heavy agent use can push the real bill to $40–80 under the credit-based model.

Why pick GitHub

Pick GitHub Copilot if you want the best performance per dollar and broad compatibility. It plugs into your existing editor rather than replacing it, works across every major IDE, and starts at $10/month — half of Cursor's Pro tier. It also edges ahead on benchmark accuracy (56% vs 51.7% on SWE-bench) and is the natural choice if you're deep in the GitHub ecosystem or need a genuinely usable free tier.