The free alternative to Cursor Cloud
Cursor’s background agent is great — and ~$720/yr at the tier that unlocks it. Freebuff Cloud does the cloud-sandbox-and-preview part for $0.
TL;DR
- Cursor Cloud runs Cursor’s background agent in a remote sandbox — and the tier that unlocks it runs ~$60/mo ($720/yr), before any compute metering.
- Freebuff Cloud gives you the same shape of thing — a cloud sandbox, a coding agent, a live preview — for $0.
- It works with any GitHub repo, not just the ones Cursor manages.
- If you live inside the Cursor IDE, keep Cursor for editing and point Freebuff Cloud at the same repo for the cloud-sandbox / shareable-preview part.
Cursor nailed the in-editor agent experience. Then they shipped a cloud version of it, and it is genuinely good — and genuinely gated. The plan that actually lets the background agent run in a remote sandbox is not the free or $20 tier. This is the breakdown for people who want the cloud part without the $720/yr.
What Cursor Cloud actually costs#
Cursor’s pricing moves around, but the pattern is consistent: the cheap tier is for local IDE use, and the cloud / background-agent capability lives higher up. By the time you can hand a task to a remote agent and walk away, you are on the ~$60/mo plan, and you are still watching a compute budget.
| Feature | Freebuff | Cursor Cloud |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $0 | ~$60/mo ($720/yr) at the cloud tier |
| Cloud sandbox | Yes — any GitHub repo | Yes |
| Live preview URL | Yes, shareable | Limited / via workspaces |
| Bring your own repo | Any repo, public or private | Yes |
| Per-task metering | None | Compute-budgeted |
| In-IDE agent | Browser + terminal surface | First-class VS Code fork |
| Models | DeepSeek V4, MiMo 2.5 Pro, GLM 5.2, and more | Claude, GPT, Gemini via Cursor |
Where Cursor Cloud is better#
- The IDE. Cursor is a VS Code fork and the editor integration is the best in class. If your happy place is a tabbed editor with inline diffs, Cursor wins that fight.
- Model breadth from one vendor. Cursor negotiates direct access to Claude, GPT, and Gemini. Freebuff runs top open-weight models plus optional connected ones.
Where Freebuff Cloud wins#
- Price. $0 vs $720/yr. That is not a rounding error; it is the whole point.
- No compute metering. You will never hit a "you are out of fast requests" wall mid-task.
- A real shareable preview. The live preview URL is meant to be sent to people who do not have Cursor installed — clients, teammates, recruiters.
- Any repo. A three-year-old monorepo, a fork, a private company repo. Cloud is not limited to projects Cursor manages.
Stop paying $60/mo for the cloud part
Connect a repo to Freebuff Cloud and get a sandbox + live preview for $0.
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