Cursor 3 shipped the Agents Window on April 2, 2026, and Composer 2 followed on March 19. The combination is what r/cursor has been calling “the first IDE-native parallel agent stack that does not eat itself”: multiple agent panes, /best-of-n that fans the same task across models and lets you pick the best result, background cloud agents that survive a closed laptop, and a local-to-cloud session handoff. Composer 2 posts 61.3 on CursorBench (Anysphere’s first-party benchmark, +39% over Composer 1.5) at 200+ tokens per second, and prices the slow tier at $0.50/M input and $2.50/M output. The first-party benchmark warrants caution; the independent TokenMix take walks through what to trust. This is the full review.
Quick answer: if you live in VS Code, want parallel agents in one workspace, and care about editor experience as much as raw model quality, Cursor 3 with Composer 2 is the strongest editor-native answer in April 2026. If you need the best model on every task without editor overhead, route Cursor to Claude Opus 4.7 or run Claude Code in parallel. If you’re on JetBrains or primarily need autocomplete, GitHub Copilot is still the smarter spend.
Company context: why this release matters
Anysphere hit $2 billion in annual recurring revenue by February 2026, reaching that milestone 14 months faster than almost any SaaS company before it. They have raised over $3 billion from Nvidia, Google, and others. Cursor 3, built under internal codename “Glass,” is Anysphere’s direct answer to Anthropic’s Claude Code and OpenAI’s Codex, both of which made inroads on agentic coding market share during the year. Co-founders Michael Truell and Sualeh Asif described this as “era two” of software development: humans direct, agents write. Thirty percent of Cursor’s internal pull requests now come from autonomous agents running in cloud sandboxes.
What Cursor 3 ships
- Agents Window. Replaces the Composer pane with a full-screen workspace for running and managing multiple AI agents simultaneously. Each agent gets its own tab; you can view them side-by-side or in a grid. Every agent, whether local or running in the cloud, appears in a unified sidebar. Launch it with
Cmd+Shift+Pthen “Agents Window”. You can switch back to the IDE at any point or run both simultaneously. - /best-of-n. Run the same task across multiple models in parallel, compare outputs, choose the strongest. As of April 24, 2026, the model picker includes Composer 2, Claude Opus 4.7, GPT-5.4, GPT-5.5 (added the day after OpenAI’s April 23 launch), GPT-5.3-Codex, and Gemini 3.1 Pro. GPT-5.5 is worth the slot when terminal-style agent tasks are in the mix. On r/cursor the early consensus is that /best-of-n is the killer feature for hard one-shot refactors where one model just gets it.
- Background cloud agents. Long-running tasks (8-hour refactors, codebase migrations) run on Anysphere’s cloud and survive your laptop closing. Cloud agents automatically produce screenshots and demo videos so you can verify what they did without running it yourself. Beta-quality per community reports; Pro tier has a 2-hour soft cap, Max removes it.
- Local-to-cloud handoff. Move an agent session from cloud to local to make hand edits or run tests, then push it back to cloud to keep running while you context-switch.
- Design Mode. Toggle with
Cmd+Shift+D. Click and select a UI element in your running app, add your instruction, the agent implements the change. UseShift+dragto select an area,Cmd+Lto add it to chat. For frontend work, this closes the gap between Cursor and dedicated tools like v0. - Built-in Git. Staging, committing, and creating pull requests happen natively inside Cursor 3 without switching to a terminal. The full loop from code change to merged PR can stay in one window.
- /worktree command. Runs a task in an isolated Git worktree, keeping experimental work separate from your main branch automatically.
- Multi-repo workspace. One window, several repos, agents that move between them.
- Cursor SDK. Released alongside Cursor 3, the SDK lets you build and run the same Cursor agents programmatically from scripts, CI pipelines, or backend services. The TypeScript package is available as
@cursor/sdk.
Composer 2: the in-house model
Composer 2 is Cursor’s own agentic coding model and is the default in Auto mode. The official numbers per Cursor’s model docs:
- 61.3 on CursorBench, +39% over Composer 1.5.
- 200+ tokens per second on the fast variant via custom GPU kernels.
- Pricing: $0.50/M input and $2.50/M output on the standard tier; $1.50/M and $7.50/M on the fast variant.
- Tuned for tool use, file edits, and terminal operations inside Cursor.
Caveat: CursorBench is Anysphere’s own benchmark and is not directly comparable to SWE-bench Verified or Aider polyglot. On the public leaderboards, Claude Opus 4.7 leads SWE-Bench Pro at 64.3%, and GPT-5.5 takes Terminal-Bench 2.0 at 82.7%. Composer 2’s value is not “best on every benchmark”; it is “best price-per-token at frontier-quality inside the editor where you are already typing,” and it picks up the new frontier models the day they ship via /best-of-n routing.
Autocomplete performance
Cursor’s Supermaven-powered autocomplete delivers 30-45ms average latency with a p99 under 50ms. That is noticeably faster than GitHub Copilot’s 43-50ms average during multi-line predictions. For developers working in large files with frequent completions, the speed gap is felt. On SWE-bench task solve rate, the picture is different: GitHub Copilot solves 56% versus Cursor’s 52%. For raw benchmark accuracy on isolated tasks, Copilot has a slight edge. For multi-file agent workflows and speed, Cursor leads.
Where it wins: our 14-task editorial scoring
| Domain | Composer 2 (auto) | vs Claude Opus 4.7 | vs GPT-5.3-Codex |
|---|---|---|---|
| Refactor (multi-file) | 8.1 | -0.9 | -0.3 |
| Test-gen | 8.0 | -0.4 | -0.7 |
| Debug | 8.2 | -0.6 | -0.2 |
| Agent & tool use (parallel) | 8.3 | -0.8 | -0.3 |
| Strict JSON | 8.0 | -0.2 | -1.0 |
| Daily editor flow (latency-adjusted) | 9.2 | +1.5 | +1.2 |
The 9.2 on daily editor flow is the number that matters for most users. Composer 2 at 200 tok/s feels closer to autocomplete than to agent. The first 5 minutes of a session are noticeably faster than running Opus 4.7 inside Claude Code, and the Cursor UX (file diffs, accept/reject, multi-file preview) cuts the back-and-forth. For sustained 8-hour coding, the latency advantage compounds. Independent testing puts development cycle acceleration at 30-40% on complex refactors versus a standard coding session.
Where it loses
Hardest cross-package refactors. Composer 2 hits the barrel-file trap that the refactor TypeScript guide describes in detail: on multi-package TypeScript monorepos with re-exported types, it misses the indirected call sites that Opus 4.7 catches. The fix in Cursor is to run /best-of-n with Opus 4.7 in the mix, or to switch the same task to Claude Opus 4.7 directly. Composer 2 and Opus 4.7 coexist in the same Cursor workspace.
Large monorepos. Performance lags behind vanilla VS Code on projects with thousands of files. Agent indexing overhead is real, and community reports back this up consistently. If your repo has 10k+ files and startup speed matters more than agent features, this is a genuine friction point.
JetBrains environments. Cursor is a VS Code fork and has no plugin for IntelliJ, WebStorm, or other JetBrains IDEs. Developers in those environments have to stay on GitHub Copilot.
Cursor 3 vs GitHub Copilot
| Feature | Cursor 3 | GitHub Copilot |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly price (Pro) | $20/mo | $10/mo |
| SWE-bench solve rate | 52% | 56% |
| Autocomplete latency (avg) | 30-45ms | 43-50ms |
| IDE type | Standalone (VS Code fork) | Extension (any IDE) |
| Multi-file editing | Composer, excellent | Limited |
| Model choice | Opus 4.7, GPT-5.5, Gemini 3.1 Pro + more | Primarily GPT-focused |
| JetBrains support | No | Yes |
| Parallel agents | Yes (Agents Window) | Maturing (less capable) |
| Background cloud execution | Yes (Pro 2-hour cap; Max uncapped) | No |
Copilot leads on benchmark accuracy (56% vs 52% on SWE-bench) and price ($10 vs $20/month). Cursor leads on autocomplete speed, multi-file editing depth, model flexibility, and parallel agent execution. The choice splits cleanly: if you use JetBrains or only need inline suggestions, Copilot is the smarter spend. If you run multi-file agent workflows regularly, the extra $10 pays back in the first hour-long refactor it helps you complete.
Pricing and plans
| Plan | Price | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Hobby | Free | ~50 slow Composer requests/day, all paid models BYOK |
| Pro | $20/mo ($16 annual) | $20 monthly credit pool, cloud agents (2-hour cap), Auto mode unlimited |
| Pro+ | $60/mo | 3x credits ($60 pool), same features as Pro |
| Ultra (Max) | $200/mo | 20x credits, background cloud agents without cap, priority GPU |
| Teams | $40/user/mo | Pro features + admin controls, SSO, centralized billing |
| Enterprise | Custom | Pooled usage, dedicated support, compliance |
How the credit pool works. Auto mode is unlimited and does not draw from your monthly credit pool. When you manually select a premium model (Opus 4.7, GPT-5.5, Gemini 3.1 Pro), each request draws from the pool based on token consumption. A $20 Pro pool covers roughly 200-250 Sonnet-tier requests. Stay in Auto mode as your default; switch to a specific frontier model for the tasks that genuinely need it. Heavy manual model selection will exhaust the pool faster than expected.
If you are already on Cursor Pro, the Cursor 3 update is automatic and free. No price increase. If you preferred the classic layout, it is still available in settings; the Agents Window is additive, not a forced replacement.
What the threads are saying
Three patterns dominate r/cursor since the Composer 2 launch:
- Speed is the unlock. 200 tok/s is the number people quote. Once you have used Composer 2 for a week, switching back to a 60 tok/s model feels jarring. The latency difference compounds over an 8-hour session.
- Background agents are still beta. The 8-hour migration story works. Merge resolution on parallel agents touching the same file is rough. Anysphere is shipping fixes weekly. Pin the version if you ship reproducibly.
- The SpaceX acquisition. A reported $60B Cursor acquisition by SpaceX has been in negotiation since mid-April 2026. As of April 22, 2026 it has not closed. Composer 2 stays as default in Auto mode regardless. Community sentiment on r/cursor is mixed: some welcome the resources, others worry about the editor roadmap.
How it compares
| TCC editorial score | Cursor 3 + Composer 2 | Claude Code + Opus 4.7 | Windsurf 2.0 + Cascade | Aider + Opus 4.7 | GitHub Copilot |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Editor UX | 9.4 | 7.8 | 9.0 | 6.5 (terminal) | 8.5 |
| Best model on hard refactor | 8.6 (with /best-of-n) | 9.0 | 8.4 | 8.8 | 7.9 |
| Parallel agents | 9.1 | 7.6 | 7.8 | n/a | 7.2 |
| Background long-running | 8.4 (Max) | 8.7 (Routines) | 8.0 (Max + Devin) | n/a | n/a |
| Price floor | $20/mo | $20/mo | $20/mo | API-pass-through | $10/mo |
Pros and cons
| Strengths | Weaknesses |
|---|---|
| 200+ tok/s on Composer 2; fastest editor-native model by latency | SWE-bench solve rate 52% vs GitHub Copilot’s 56% |
| Parallel agents with /best-of-n model routing in one workspace | Monorepo indexing overhead on 10k+ file projects |
| Design Mode: click-to-annotate UI changes without text description | No JetBrains plugin; VS Code fork only |
| Built-in Git: staging, commit, PR without leaving the window | Background agents still beta; parallel merge conflicts are rough |
| Access to every frontier model (Opus 4.7, GPT-5.5, Gemini 3.1 Pro) in one editor | Credit pool at $20 Pro can exhaust fast with manual frontier model selection |
| $2B ARR company with $3B raised; not going anywhere | SpaceX acquisition uncertainty on roadmap (unresolved as of April 2026) |
Frequently asked questions
Is Cursor 3 free to use? Yes, the Hobby plan exists with limited completions and agent requests. The full feature set (cloud agents, Design Mode, frontier model access, parallel agents) requires Pro at $20/month or higher.
What happened to Composer? Composer is replaced by the Agents Window. It is the same idea rebuilt for parallel agents and cloud execution. The classic IDE layout is still available; you can have both open simultaneously or ignore the Agents Window if you only use Tab completions.
Is the Cursor 3 upgrade free for existing subscribers? Yes. If you are on any paid Cursor plan, update the app and Cursor 3 is there. Pricing has not changed with this release.
Does Cursor 3 work with JetBrains? No. Cursor is a VS Code fork and has no JetBrains plugin. Developers locked into IntelliJ, WebStorm, or similar tools should use GitHub Copilot instead.
How does the /best-of-n command work? It runs the same prompt against multiple AI models and presents results side by side. You pick the output you want. Useful when you’re unsure which model handles a specific refactor better, and the fastest way to use Opus 4.7’s cross-package accuracy within Cursor without fully switching contexts.
Should I use Cursor Pro or Cursor Max? Pro at $20/month is right for most individual developers using Auto mode as the default. Max at $200/month is justified when you run background cloud agents longer than 2 hours and need the priority GPU allocation for consistent throughput on long sessions.
Cursor vs Claude Code: which should I use? The split is workflow-based. If you prefer a terminal-first workflow and want the best available model on every task without IDE overhead, Claude Code wins. If you want parallel agents, Design Mode, Git integration, and a familiar editor interface, Cursor 3 is the better choice. Most power users run both and switch by task type. See our Aider review and Windsurf 2.0 review for more comparisons.
Verdict
Cursor 3 is the most consequential editor release of 2026 and Composer 2 is the model that makes the upgrade worth running on day one. The Anysphere benchmark is first-party, so anchor your decision on the public leaderboards (Opus 4.7 still leads on hard refactors) and on what your workday actually looks like. If you switch in and out of agents twenty times an hour, Composer 2 at 200 tok/s changes the loop. If you run an overnight migration, take the Max tier or run the job in Claude Code Routines. If you’re evaluating Cursor for the first time, the Hobby plan is a genuine free trial, not a nag screen.
Pair this review with the Cursor 3 shortcuts cheatsheet and the Cursor 3 parallel agents trend post. For the methodology behind every score, see the 14-task scorecard.