What the internet is saying about Cursor IDE

What the internet is saying about "Cursor IDE"

🟢 Supporters

Pro-Cursor sentiment is thin in this window. Most of it is indirect or nostalgic.

• •Cursor as a category reference. A Show HN pitched "Arsaze – Cursor for video editing (Tab-complete and agent edits)" and reached 60 points [17]. Using "Cursor for X" as shorthand suggests the product's interaction model still carries mindshare.
• •Past loyalty. Even departing users describe a strong history. One was "such an insane fan of Cursor for well over a year" and moved from the $20 to the $100 to the $200 plan "happy with that increase" [10]. Another said "Cursor was THE GOAT back in the days, the fastest and also with the greatest results in terms of code quality" [8].
• •Some users still find the cheaper tiers viable. One poster said the $20 plan with Composer in Auto mode gave "more than enough" usage for daily development and was weighing the new $8 plan [7].
• •Ecosystem footprint. Tooling is built around Cursor: RepoGuard, an architecture linter for AI-generated code in Cursor and Claude [15], and keyboard overlays [16]. Cursor-authored agent PRs also appear in several GitHub repos [36][37][38][40].

🔴 Skeptics

• •Marketplace security incident. The top story, at 962 points and 545 comments on Hacker News, was a tampered copy of the Claude Code extension published via Cursor's marketplace [1][2].
  • •According to the post, the malicious extension appends an attacker's public key labeled svc-telemetry to the user's SSH authorized keys [1].
  • •Anthropic said it was not a compromise of its systems or employee laptops. The attacker used access to Cursor's marketplace to publish the tampered copy [1].
  • •On Reddit, a user pressed Cursor for answers. They noted that Cursor uses its own non-public marketplace, not Microsoft's or Open VSX [3].
• •Wave of cancellations. Many Reddit posts announce departures: "I cancelled my Cursor subscription" [4], "Today was my last day with cursor" [5], "Final thoughts on Cursor" [9], and "Final straw, cancelled Cursor" [10]. Others ask "Is it time to find another option?" [12].
• •Grok and model quality. Complaints cluster around Grok:
  • •"Grok being shit" [5].
  • •"Grok 5 is nowhere near good enough" [4].
  • •"Since Grok 4.6 and even more with 4.7, models are broken and I spend more time fixing stuff than working" [9].
  • •A Hacker News post titled "Grok Is Killing Cursor" [13].
• •Pricing and usage limits.
  • •One user blames "Elon's acquisition" for worse pricing strategy and less capable models [4].
  • •Another cites "drastically lowered" usage quotas and a full switch to Claude Code [8].
  • •A third says "the plans change" [5].
  • •A fourth says Cursor "recently removed support for third-party models" and questions whether Premium is worth it [6].
• •Product direction. One user says Cursor is "optimized for vibe coders." They report Composer 2.5 deviating from plans, making unilateral design changes, and committing them [11]. Another says it "has basically turned into a tool for amateurs" [4].
• •Competitors catching up. One user says competitors "caught up with speed and cost" [9]. Others moved to VS Code with Claude [5] or Claude Code [8].

⚪ Neutral Observers

• •Anthropic's clarification that its own systems were not breached is context for how to attribute blame in the extension incident [1]. The sources I have don't establish Cursor's full remediation details.
• •The pricing discussion includes a new $8 plan versus the $20 Pro plan. Users are asking for comparisons rather than offering verdicts [7].
• •A user comparing ChatGPT Plus and Cursor Premium shows people weighing Cursor against general chat subscriptions [6].
• •Tooling-compatibility GitHub items treat Cursor as one editor among many, alongside Windsurf, Devin, Kiro, Trae and others [14][16].
• •Many other GitHub hits are only incidental matches. They are "cursor" as a pagination concept [22] or Cursor-agent PR boilerplate [36][37][38][40]. They aren't opinion.

Cross-Platform Signals

• •Reddit (r/cursor) is the most active source for sentiment. It is overwhelmingly negative and focused on cancellations, Grok, and pricing.
• •Hacker News is dominated by the extension-backdoor story, which has by far the highest engagement. Its other Cursor-related items are the "Grok Is Killing Cursor" post [13] and two Show HN posts [15][17].
• •GitHub has little direct opinion. It shows Cursor as embedded infrastructure (agent PRs, compatibility lists) rather than as a debated product.
• •Consensus: the negative trend is consistent across platforms, on both trust (security) and value (models, limits, pricing). Divergence: GitHub usage and "Cursor for X" branding suggest the product is still widely used, even as paying users on Reddit say they are leaving.

Community Verdict

Right now the internet is notably sour on Cursor. A serious marketplace supply-chain incident [1][2][3] landed on top of weeks of frustration over Grok-era model quality, reduced usage quotas, and changing plans [4][5][8][9][10]. Departing users, many of them long-time fans, are moving to Claude Code or VS Code with Claude. Residual goodwill and brand influence remain [17][10], and some users are still evaluating the cheaper plans [7]. Even so, the dominant narrative in this window is lost trust and users leaving. The evidence does not show whether that exodus is large in absolute terms.

---

Based on Hacker News + Reddit + GitHub data from the last 30 days, researched with last30days by Matt Van Horn.