Comparison · under IB-CODE-2026.2
Aider vs Cursor
| Aider | Cursor | |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor | Paul Gauthier (OSS, Apache 2.0) | Anysphere |
| Pricing | Free OSS + API tokens; $30-60/mo typical at moderate use with Sonnet 4.6 | Pro $20/mo + token-based SDK usage |
| Default model | Model-agnostic; community default claude-sonnet-4-6 or GPT-5.5; 100+ providers | Composer 2 (proprietary) — switchable to Opus 4.7, GPT-5.5, Gemini 3.5 Pro |
| CLI surface | ✓ | ✓ |
| Eval status | queued | queued |
Comparison pending — neither side evaluated yet
Both Aider and Cursor are currently unevaluated under IB-CODE-2026.2. This page will update as evaluations land.
Want this comparison sooner? Vendors can commission an evaluation to bump their tool up the queue (with full editorial independence on the verdict). Readers can email hello@indiebench.dev to vote for which comparison ships next.
About each tool
Aider
Aider is the reference implementation of BYOK CLI coding agents. Deepest git integration in the category: auto-commit per change, smart context windows from the repo map, reproducible CI runs. Pip-installable, model-agnostic, no telemetry. Star growth has slowed as OpenCode picks up community attent…
Cursor
Cursor is the IDE-first agentic coding tool with $2B ARR by Feb 2026 (fastest B2B SaaS scaling on record). The Cursor SDK released April 29 2026 exposes the agent harness programmatically for the first time — codebase indexing, semantic search, subagent spawning, hooks, MCP. Evaluations under IB-COD…