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Most buyers should pick Amp.
Choose Amp if agents need to keep running after you leave, with phone continuation, scheduled checks, and team sharing. Its Hobby tier is free; Individual is $20/month and includes 45,000 hosted orb minutes. Choose Cursor for an end-to-end coding workflow across desktop, CLI, Slack, and GitHub, plus model choice. Cursor’s listed paid entry is $8/month, while Teams starts at $30/user/month. Annual prices and learning-curve comparisons aren’t published.
01Side by side
| Amp | Cursor | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | $20/month Individual; Hobby is free | $8/month Plus; Free plan available |
| Free plan | Hobby: free; self-hosted orbs unlimited | Free: limited agent and Chat requests |
| Best for | Persistent agents, phone continuation, team sharing | End-to-end coding across desktop, CLI, Slack, GitHub |
| Core strength | Long-running agents and scheduled production checks | Agents plan, write, test, and demo features |
| Learning curve | Not published | Not published |
| Integrations/data | Bring your own runners; unlimited public and private repositories | Desktop app, CLI, Slack, GitHub, multiple model providers |
| Team/seat costs | Teams: no extra charge; any team size | Teams: starts at $30/user/month |
| Support | Review score: 5/10 | Review score: 5/10 |
Amp Choose Amp if
- Choose Amp if agents must keep working after you close your laptop.
- Choose Amp if phone continuation and scheduled checks matter.
- Choose Amp if you want shared team billing without extra team charges.
Cursor Choose Cursor if
- Choose Cursor if you want coding workflows in Slack and GitHub.
- Choose Cursor if you want a terminal agent and desktop app.
- Choose Cursor if selecting among multiple model providers matters.
02Pricing compared
Amp has a free Hobby plan, a $20/month Individual plan, and a Teams plan with no extra charge. Hobby includes unlimited self-hosted orbs and use of your own runners; Amp-hosted orbs are pay-as-you-go, with rates not published. Individual includes 45,000 minutes of Amp-hosted orb time, and the pricing page lists unlimited self-hosted orbs and bring-your-own keys. Cursor’s listed paid entry is $8/month for Plus, but that tier is limited to Grok models. Premium costs $30/month and includes cloud agents; third-party models are billed separately at API list price. Cursor Teams starts at $30 per user per month. Both pricing pages list monthly prices only, with no annual pricing published. If hosted usage or third-party models matter, check those costs before comparing the headline prices.
03Features and depth
Amp’s distinction is persistent work beyond a single coding session. Its agents can keep running after you close your laptop, and you can continue from your phone or share work with teammates. Amp also lists scheduled automations for production checks and rollout monitoring, multimedia prompts, and workflows that can run tests, rebase changes, and ship to main. The Individual plan’s 45,000 hosted orb minutes are a concrete limit to weigh; hosted-orb overage rates are not published.
Cursor is built around handing off coding tasks and reviewing the result. Per its homepage, agents can plan, write, test, and demo features, while cloud agents can run in parallel for hours or days. It also offers a CLI, Slack integration, and GitHub pull-request review workflows. Cursor advertises model selection, but its pricing page says Plus includes only Grok models; third-party models are billed separately at API list price on Premium. That makes the plan details important if model choice is a deciding factor.
04Ease of use and learning curve
Neither product publishes a learning-curve comparison, so we would not call one easier based on the available material. Cursor’s desktop app, CLI, Slack, and GitHub workflows give teams several ways to hand off and review coding work, but that breadth may mean choosing how agents fit into an existing process. The docs and pricing details provided do not quantify setup time.
Amp’s phone continuation, teammate sharing, and scheduled agents suit work that needs to continue beyond a desktop session. Its hosted-orb minutes and unpublished pay-as-you-go rates add a cost detail to track. For either product, compare the workflow you actually need—not just the lowest listed monthly price.
Questions people ask
Which is cheaper, Amp or Cursor?
Amp has a free Hobby plan and a $20/month Individual plan. Cursor lists an $8/month Plus plan, but it is limited to Grok models; Premium, which includes cloud agents, is $30/month. Hosted Amp orb rates and Cursor third-party model costs can add charges.
Does Amp or Cursor have a free plan?
Both list free plans. Amp Hobby includes unlimited self-hosted orbs and use of your own runners, while Amp-hosted orbs are pay-as-you-go. Cursor Free includes limited agent and Chat requests. The published pricing details do not give numeric request limits for either free plan.
Which is better for a team?
Amp Teams has no extra charge and lists shared billing, pooled credits, and SAML/OIDC SSO. Cursor Teams starts at $30 per user per month and lists centralized billing, administration, SSO, and team-wide privacy settings. Choose based on whether pooled credits or per-seat administration fits your needs.
Can agents keep working after I close my laptop?
Amp specifically says its agents can keep working after you close your laptop, with phone continuation and scheduled automations also listed. Cursor says cloud agents can run in parallel for hours or days. The available details do not specify whether Cursor agents continue under the same conditions.