5 ms·

They are now a Codex clone and without the subscription pricing. You have to spend thousands to get what you get from a $200 Codex subscription. How do they com

They are now a Codex clone and without the subscription pricing. You have to spend thousands to get what you get from a $200 Codex subscription. How do they compete with this except from users who haven't caught on yet, or businesses that are unbothered to spend thousands a month per dev and wouldn't consider just subscribing to 1-3 $200 subscriptions instead? And their price is so high because it's markup on API rates. API rates, even without markup, are just insanely irresponsible for anyone to be spending on full-time daily usage.

deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
mandeepj 6mo ago
> users who haven't caught on yet They are catching up fast! https://www.businessinsider.com/chamath-palihapitiya-ai-costs-tokens-8090-2026-3 https://www.businessinsider.com/chamath-palihapitiya-ai-cost...
- altacc 6mo ago
  Tellingly, from his full post: "Mostly because I do not yet see an equivalent uptick in productivity or revenue..." https://x.com/chamath/status/2029634071966666964 https://x.com/chamath/status/2029634071966666964 I suspect that as the value a company provides is more than its code, then increasing code churn does not lead to an equivalent increase in revenue. Even for a tech company, a business' concept, connections, knowledge, assets, non-coding staff, etc.. are a significant value and increasing code doesn't increase the throughput of that value. For non-tech companies code is the grease in the gears, not the gears themselves.
  - wahnfrieden 6mo ago
    Codex is coming for those non coding use cases too. Is Cursor?
otabdeveloper4 6mo ago
API rates are the real rates. Subscription costs are the "first hit is free" subsidized pricing.
- wahnfrieden 6mo ago
  They’re not the “real rates”, they’re the rates that are being charged for API use. API reportedly has a margin of profit You also neglect that products like Cursor run on two margins, their own plus the API provider’s. That’s always going to come at a premium
  - otabdeveloper4 6mo ago
    Yes, the rates with a margin of profit are the real rates. The rates without a margin of profit (or with a negative one) are not real.
sighthrowaway 6mo ago
> users who haven't caught on yet If you think this of users who use cursor then I don’t think you’ve used cursor much at all.
- echelon 6mo ago
  What do you mean? Only the foundation model companies offer cheap/subsidized compute. If you're an app layer company, you're offering a 10x worse deal to your customers. Foundation model companies are willing to lose money to win loyalty. Remains to be seen if it'll work.
  - sighthrowaway 6mo ago
    If you’re more worried about cost than you are being productive and getting good results then sure, stick with foundational model company apps.
    - paganel 6mo ago
      “Being productive” without taking inputs/costs into consideration is an oxymoron.
      - sighthrowaway 6mo ago
        A company that cares more about cost than results is probably a terrible company to work for. They will give you 10yo dell laptop with 8gb memory and complain that you’re slow when it takes 15m to build the application. So no it’s not an oxymoron.
        SiempreViernes 6mo ago
        Productivity is literally a statement of the relationship between the result and the cost, presumably you found that out after reading the reply and that is why you switched from "productivity" to "results" in your reply.
modo_mario 6mo ago
What's the advantage over github copilot actually? They seem to have all the same access and features (except for this sheduling thing?) for cheaper.
zozbot234 6mo ago
API rates on local models are quite cheap, and you can even run them locally. Yes, the hardware for doing so at speed is expensive, but people used to drop the equivalent of what would be $50k or $100k today on an individual workstation for full-time use. It's justified if the productivity gain is strong enough.
- wahnfrieden 6mo ago
  But that’s not competitive. The only reason to do that is out of need for privacy. Which is critical for some. The tradeoff is that the models are relatively bad. I don’t see how Cursor can win from this use case especially if to get the privacy benefit you need to spend a huge amount. You can already run Codex for free with local models too.
dtagames 6mo ago
Whose pricing is above API rates? Not Cursor. It's 100% at each model provider's published API rate. With a bigger sub, you get it cheaper than that. Cursor makes a ton of money because the product is great. It's easily the most sophisticated harness out there, and it isn't an IDE anymore. It's an agent dashboard since version 3. Suffice it to say it's not all idiot money being thrown at them by users.

deleted 6mo ago

[deleted]

mandeepj 6mo ago

> users who haven't caught on yet They are catching up fast! https://www.businessinsider.com/chamath-palihapitiya-ai-costs-tokens-8090-2026-3 https://www.businessinsider.com/chamath-palihapitiya-ai-cost...

altacc 6mo ago
Tellingly, from his full post: "Mostly because I do not yet see an equivalent uptick in productivity or revenue..." https://x.com/chamath/status/2029634071966666964 https://x.com/chamath/status/2029634071966666964 I suspect that as the value a company provides is more than its code, then increasing code churn does not lead to an equivalent increase in revenue. Even for a tech company, a business' concept, connections, knowledge, assets, non-coding staff, etc.. are a significant value and increasing code doesn't increase the throughput of that value. For non-tech companies code is the grease in the gears, not the gears themselves.
- wahnfrieden 6mo ago
  Codex is coming for those non coding use cases too. Is Cursor?

otabdeveloper4 6mo ago

API rates are the real rates. Subscription costs are the "first hit is free" subsidized pricing.

wahnfrieden 6mo ago
They’re not the “real rates”, they’re the rates that are being charged for API use. API reportedly has a margin of profit You also neglect that products like Cursor run on two margins, their own plus the API provider’s. That’s always going to come at a premium
- otabdeveloper4 6mo ago
  Yes, the rates with a margin of profit are the real rates. The rates without a margin of profit (or with a negative one) are not real.

sighthrowaway 6mo ago

> users who haven't caught on yet If you think this of users who use cursor then I don’t think you’ve used cursor much at all.

echelon 6mo ago
What do you mean? Only the foundation model companies offer cheap/subsidized compute. If you're an app layer company, you're offering a 10x worse deal to your customers. Foundation model companies are willing to lose money to win loyalty. Remains to be seen if it'll work.
- sighthrowaway 6mo ago
  If you’re more worried about cost than you are being productive and getting good results then sure, stick with foundational model company apps.
  - paganel 6mo ago
    “Being productive” without taking inputs/costs into consideration is an oxymoron.
    - sighthrowaway 6mo ago
      A company that cares more about cost than results is probably a terrible company to work for. They will give you 10yo dell laptop with 8gb memory and complain that you’re slow when it takes 15m to build the application. So no it’s not an oxymoron.
      - SiempreViernes 6mo ago
        Productivity is literally a statement of the relationship between the result and the cost, presumably you found that out after reading the reply and that is why you switched from "productivity" to "results" in your reply.

modo_mario 6mo ago

What's the advantage over github copilot actually? They seem to have all the same access and features (except for this sheduling thing?) for cheaper.

zozbot234 6mo ago

API rates on local models are quite cheap, and you can even run them locally. Yes, the hardware for doing so at speed is expensive, but people used to drop the equivalent of what would be $50k or $100k today on an individual workstation for full-time use. It's justified if the productivity gain is strong enough.

wahnfrieden 6mo ago
But that’s not competitive. The only reason to do that is out of need for privacy. Which is critical for some. The tradeoff is that the models are relatively bad. I don’t see how Cursor can win from this use case especially if to get the privacy benefit you need to spend a huge amount. You can already run Codex for free with local models too.

dtagames 6mo ago

Whose pricing is above API rates? Not Cursor. It's 100% at each model provider's published API rate. With a bigger sub, you get it cheaper than that. Cursor makes a ton of money because the product is great. It's easily the most sophisticated harness out there, and it isn't an IDE anymore. It's an agent dashboard since version 3. Suffice it to say it's not all idiot money being thrown at them by users.