CursorvsZed
Generated from the two spec rows. Green marks the better value where a spec has a clear direction. Everything else is just different.
Cursor
Anysphere · AI-native IDE
#12MCP
Panel
6.82 spec wins
- Reliability
- 7.0
- Usefulness
- 7.7
- Cost
- 5.5
- Longevity
- 6.8
“Twenty dollars a month, then 3x, then 20x, and the page never says 20x of what.”
Zed
Zed Industries · AI-native IDE
#2OSSMCP
Panel
7.53 spec wins
- Reliability
- 7.2
- Usefulness
- 6.7
- Cost
- 8.0
- Longevity
- 8.0
“A GPL editor that will host Claude, Codex and Gemini in one panel, so the agent wars now happen inside a Rust window.”
Spec by spec
| Spec | Cursor | Zed |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | ||
| Category | AI-native IDE | AI-native IDE |
| Runs | local, cloud | local |
| Platforms | macos, linux, windows | macos, linux, windows |
| Context window | 200k default, up to 1M tokens on select models | not documented |
| Protocols | ||
| MCP client | Yes | Yes |
| MCP server | No | No |
| Capabilities | ||
| Runs terminal commands | Yes | Yes |
| Multi-file edits | Yes | Yes |
| Git operations | Yes | Yes |
| Browser control | Yes | NoThe agent's only web tools are fetch, which returns a URL as Markdown, and search_web; there is no browser control, Playwright or DevTools protocol access. |
| Sandboxed execution | Yes | YesAgent tool calls run in an OS-level sandbox — Seatbelt via sandbox-exec on macOS and bubblewrap on Linux, applied to the terminal and fetch tools; on Windows only inside WSL. |
| Multi-agent orchestration | Yes | Yes |
| Headless / CI mode | Yes | NoThe zed CLI only opens files, windows and diffs — no print, exec or other non-interactive mode for running the agent from a script or CI is documented. |
| Models | ||
| Backbone | Claude, GPT, Gemini, Grok, Composer, Kimi, GLM | Claude, GPT, Gemini, Bedrock, OpenRouter, Ollama, LM Studio, Copilot |
| Bring your own model | YesYour own keys reach the vendors' own models (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google) plus your own Azure OpenAI deployment or AWS Bedrock account; Tab completion always stays on Cursor's models. | Yes |
| Local models | NoCustom API keys are limited to OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Azure OpenAI and AWS Bedrock, with no documented base URL override, so Ollama, LM Studio or a self-hosted endpoint cannot be pointed at. | Yes |
| Cost | ||
| Pricing model | mixed | mixed |
| Starts at | $20/mo | $10/mo |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Bring your own key | Yes | Yes |
| Openness | ||
| Open source | No | Yes |
| License | proprietary | GPL-3.0-or-later |
| GitHub stars | n/a | 91,181 |
Which one would each critic pick
| Critic | Cursor | Zed | Pick |
|---|---|---|---|
| El Juez | — | — | not enough reviews |
| El Amigo | 7.8 | 7.8 | no preference |
| El Crítico | 6.5 | 7.0 | Zed — The agent runs a terminal tool on your working tree with sandboxing off by default, and the fetch tool stays outside the sandbox even when you turn it on. |
| El Profesor | 6.0 | 7.3 | Zed — No benchmark claim, and an architecture worth studying: the Agent Client Protocol lets foreign agents run inside the editor, so the design does not depend on Zed's own loop. |
| La Inversora | 8.3 | 7.3 | Cursor — Real revenue, real pricing power, an in-house model, and a dependency on the labs it competes with for every frontier request. |
| La Jefa | 7.5 | 6.5 | Cursor — Teams at $40 per user with SSO, but SCIM, audit logs and auto-run controls sit behind a custom Enterprise quote. |
| El Hacker | 4.5 | 9.0 | Zed — GPL-3.0, MCP servers in a context_servers block in settings.json, Ollama and LM Studio as providers, and ACP to plug my own agent in. |
Picks are derived from each critic's own scores. Humans vote on matchups on the duels page.