Cursor vs GitHub Copilot: How August 2025 Price Changes Screwed Everyone

When AI Coding Tools Decided to Screw Their Users

August 2025 was when both Cursor and GitHub Copilot basically said "fuck your budget" and jacked up prices.

As someone who's been using both tools for over a year, watching these pricing changes felt like getting bait-and-switched by your favorite SaaS product.

GitHub Copilot's New Pricing Structure

As of August 27, 2025, GitHub Copilot operates under a three-tier system:

Free Tier: 2,000 completions plus 50 chats per month.

Honestly, this is pretty decent for weekend coding. I burned through it in 3 days when I first tried it.

Copilot Pro: $10/month with 300 "premium requests" monthly.

After that, you pay $0.04 per request. Standard autocomplete is unlimited though.

Copilot Pro+: $39/month gives you 1,500 premium requests and access to newer models.

This is where they're trying to compete with Cursor on features.

The "hybrid pricing" is just Microsoft's way of saying "we'll let you use the cheap models unlimited, but charge per request for the good stuff." It's actually not terrible compared to what happened to Cursor.

Cursor's Controversial Pricing Changes

Cursor completely fucked over their users in 2025. They changed pricing multiple times, and in August announced they were killing unlimited Auto mode on September 15th.

This was like ordering unlimited data and having your carrier switch to pay-per-GB halfway through your contract.

What Cursor costs now:

• Free: 200 completions (barely usable)

• Pro: $20/month with $20 in credits, then pay more

• Business: $40/user/month (doubled from $20)

The Auto mode change is what really pissed everyone off. Auto mode was Cursor's killer feature

• it could understand your entire codebase and make changes across multiple files.

Now it eats through your credits in minutes.

The reaction on their forum says it all: "Mass cancellations incoming" and "I feel sad and betrayed every time you change the pricing without prior notice." I canceled my annual plan the day they announced this.

What This Actually Costs You

Let me break down what these pricing changes mean for your monthly bill, because the companies sure as hell won't be honest about it.

My August bill: $47 for Git

Hub Copilot Pro (hit premium request limits), $73 for Cursor (Auto mode ate my credits debugging one React component).

Here's the reality:

**Git

Hub Copilot** is now the safer choice. $10/month gets you unlimited basic autocomplete and 300 premium requests.

Most devs stay under that limit. If you go over, it's $0.04 per request

• predictable and not insane.

Cursor is a gambling addiction disguised as a coding tool. You start with $20 in credits, then watch them disappear. One Auto mode session refactoring a component hierarchy? $12 gone. Debugging a TypeScript error across multiple files? Another $8. Your bill becomes completely unpredictable.

For teams, GitHub costs $19/user monthly vs Cursor's $40/user. Unless your entire team is doing complex refactoring daily, Cursor isn't worth double the price.

The free tiers tell the story: Git

Hub gives you 2,000 completions (actually usable for side projects), Cursor gives you 200 (barely covers a single session).

Let me cut through the marketing bullshit and tell you how these tools actually perform when you're debugging a React app that should have been deployed yesterday.

GitHub Copilot: Boring But It Works

I've been using GitHub Copilot for 18 months now, and here's the truth: it's boring, predictable, and rarely crashes. Sometimes boring is exactly what you need.

What actually works:

• Works in any editor: I can switch between VS Code, JetBrains, and Neovim without losing my mind
• Doesn't break: I can't remember the last time Copilot crashed VS Code. It just... works.
• Good at boilerplate: Writing API routes? Copilot nails it. TypeScript interfaces? Perfect. React components? Gets it right 80% of the time.
• Agent mode is decent: Can actually read GitHub issues and suggest code changes that make sense

The autocomplete got better in August with GPT-4.1. It's not revolutionary, but it understands context better and suggests fewer completely wrong implementations.

Cursor: Brilliant But Unstable

Cursor is what happens when you build an IDE around AI instead of bolting AI onto an existing editor. When it works, it's fucking magical. When it doesn't, you want to throw your laptop.

Where Cursor shines:

• Actually understands your codebase: It reads your entire project structure and remembers your patterns. Ask it to "add error handling like in user-service.ts" and it actually knows what you mean.
• Multi-file refactoring: Auto mode can refactor across 20+ files while keeping everything consistent. I've seen it update imports, types, tests, and docs all in one go.
• Chat that doesn't suck: You can have actual conversations about your code architecture. "Why is this component re-rendering?" gets useful answers.
• Model variety: Choose between GPT-4, Claude, or Gemini depending on what you're doing.

Where Cursor pisses me off:

• Crashes constantly: Lost my entire chat history 3 times this month when it crashed mid-refactor
• Eats RAM like Chrome: 4GB+ memory usage is normal. My laptop fan sounds like a jet engine.
• Auto mode goes rogue: Sometimes it "helps" by changing code you didn't ask it to touch
• VS Code lock-in: You're stuck with their editor. No JetBrains, no Neovim, no choice.

Real-World Performance: What Actually Happens

Here's how these tools perform when you're actually shipping code, not writing demo apps:

Daily coding tasks:

• GitHub Copilot wins: Stable autocomplete that doesn't break your flow. Suggests the right import statements, completes function signatures correctly.
• Cursor is overkill: Why use a nuclear reactor to power a flashlight?

Complex refactoring:

• Cursor dominates: Migrating from Redux to Zustand? Auto mode handles 80% of the work. Moving components between packages? It updates all the imports.
• GitHub Copilot struggles: Good luck getting it to understand cross-file dependencies.

Team environments:

• GitHub Copilot scales better: $19/user vs $40/user, plus actual admin controls and usage monitoring.
• Cursor is a budget nightmare: One developer doing complex refactors can blow through $100+ in credits per month.

August 2025: Both Tools Got Better and Worse

While raising prices, both platforms did add some decent features:

GitHub Copilot improvements:

• Bigger context windows (64K tokens) - actually notices when you're working in a monorepo
• Multi-file edits - finally can refactor across files (sort of)
• Auto-generated commit messages - usually better than "fix stuff"

Cursor updates:

• Better codebase indexing - reads your project faster, still crashes just as often
• "Enhanced" Auto mode performance - now costs money per use
• Improved error handling - still loses your chat history when it crashes

Productivity Reality Check

Here's what these tools actually do for your productivity:

GitHub Copilot speeds up routine coding by maybe 25-30%. It's like having a junior dev who never gets tired but sometimes suggests dumb shit.

Cursor can handle complex architectural changes that would take you hours. When it works, you feel like a 10x developer. When it crashes mid-refactor, you feel like throwing your laptop.

Bottom line: Pick GitHub for consistent daily productivity gains. Pick Cursor if you do a lot of complex refactoring and don't mind the occasional mental breakdown.