Freebuff vs Cursor: free all day vs a meter Cursor won’t size
Cursor rebuilt its pricing again in October, put Claude and GPT behind API-price credit, and stopped publishing how big its usage pools are. Freebuff is free, every day.
In short
- Our verdict: Freebuff. We make Freebuff, so weigh that, but every claim below links to a source you can check.
- Cursor’s free plan is "Limited", and its new $8 plan is Grok only. Claude, GPT and Gemini start at $30 a month, and even then they are billed at API list price from prepaid credit.
- Cursor no longer says how big its usage pools are. It publishes multiples ("4x", "15x") of an undisclosed base, and its staff confirmed it no longer publishes dollar amounts.
- Users are unhappy. Cursor scores 1.5 out of 5 on Trustpilot from 359 reviews, with complaints about surprise charges and refunds refused.
- Freebuff is free for a full day of work, every day. Unlimited messages in every hour-long session, a daily allowance with no monthly cap, and models that never touch the allowance at all.
Cursor is a polished editor, and a lot of developers learned AI coding in it. But its pricing has been rebuilt twice in 16 months, and in October 2026 it became a Grok bundle with every other vendor’s models sold separately at API prices. If you want an agent you can use all day without watching a meter, Freebuff is the better choice.
At a glance
| Feature | Freebuff | Cursor |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | A full day of work, every day | "Limited", no third-party models |
| Cheapest paid plan | Not needed | $8/mo, Grok models only |
| Claude, GPT, Gemini | Bring your own key or ChatGPT plan if you want them | $30/mo plan plus API-price credit on top |
| How usage is counted | Hour-long sessions with unlimited messages | A weekly pool of undisclosed size |
| Monthly cap | None: the allowance refills every day | Weekly pool, then pay or wait |
| Unmetered models | Yes: Solar Mini 4, Solar Pro 4, and DeepSeek V4.1 Flash Fast for new accounts in top-tier countries | No |
| Where it runs | CLI, Mac/Windows/Linux desktop, browser, iOS and Android | Editor and CLI |
What Cursor costs now
According to Cursor’s pricing and its docs, the plans since October 2026 are Free ("Limited"), Plus ($8 a month, "Only Grok models are available on this plan"), Premium ($30, 4x Plus usage), Super ($100, 15x) and Ultra ($200, 50x).
The usage pool covers Cursor’s own models and is shared with the Grok apps. Claude, GPT and Gemini are not in it: on Premium and up they are billed at API list price from prepaid credit. Cursor publishes only the multiples, not the size of the base, and in September a Cursor staff member confirmed that it "no longer publishes specific dollar amounts" for included usage.
What Freebuff gives you for free
- Unlimited messages in every session. A session lasts an hour, and the agent can read, edit, test and retry as many times as it needs inside it.
- A big daily allowance with no monthly cap. Up to 30 hours a day in the US, and 21 in countries such as Canada, the UK and Germany. That is 10 hours a day of DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, refilled every day, and you always know how much is left.
- Unmetered models. Solar Mini 4 and Solar Pro 4 never use your allowance. New accounts in the US and other top-tier countries also get DeepSeek V4.1 Flash Fast without touching it.
- Nothing to charge. No card on file means no surprise bill, no top-up and no refund to chase.
- Every surface, free. The CLI works next to any editor, including Cursor. There is also the desktop app for Mac, Windows and Linux, the web workspace, and apps for iOS and Android.
What Cursor users are saying
Cursor still scores well with professional reviewers on G2. Individual users tell a different story: Cursor’s Trustpilot page is rated 1.5 out of 5 from 359 reviews, about 81% of them one star.
- The October pricing change. In the announcement thread for the new plans, users said the $20 plan was dropped without notice and asked whether they would now pay $30 "while also removing all third party models". One summed it up: "what’s left is an editor with Grok inside".
- A meter that does not add up. An Ultra user’s own usage export reconstructed only about 65% of a meter reading 100%. Another hit 100% after about half the tokens of the previous cycle, and Claude and GPT disappeared from the picker.
- A meter that flips. In November, a team reported a weekly meter jumping between 77% and 100% in real time and stopping their work: "The weekly limit shouldn’t behave this way".
- Charges and refunds. Recent Trustpilot reviews describe an annual plan charged without confirmation and refused a refund, and a weekly allowance used up in about a day.
- It happened before. Cursor’s June 2025 pricing change ended in a public apology and refunds for surprise charges, and the admission that "unlimited" had applied only to Auto.
- Files deleted. A Remote-SSH reconnect bug deleted files from disk; Cursor staff said it "isn’t intended behavior".
What Freebuff users are saying
I’ve fixed more bugs in one day than my other tools fixed in two weeks! I have already modernized the UI for two applications and today I’m working on a third.
It has been reliable, useful, and has helped me complete complex technical and development work efficiently.
Moving over? See how to switch from Cursor to Freebuff.
Where Cursor is strong
Cursor is a mature editor with the widest model menu around and solid team features. If you live in its editor and your company pays, it is a capable tool. You can keep it: the Freebuff CLI runs in Cursor’s terminal like any other.
Our verdict
Pick Freebuff. Cursor now charges $30 a month before you can reach Claude or GPT, then bills those at API prices on top, from a pool it will not size. Freebuff costs nothing, gives you unlimited messages in every session and an allowance that refills every day, and never puts a card on file.
Try Freebuff for free
No card, no API key. `npm install -g freebuff`