Quick answer
If you're a developer, the closest alternatives are other coding agents: Claude Code and OpenAI Codex come with the Claude or ChatGPT plan you may already pay for, GitHub Copilot is $10 a month, Google Antigravity is free for individuals, Devin takes whole tasks and returns pull requests (its editor, Devin Desktop, is what Windsurf became), and Cline is open source.
If you're not a developer, you want an app builder, not an editor. Capacity, which we make, builds a working app with hosting from a description or straight from Claude or ChatGPT. Lovable and Bolt.new are the best-known prompt-to-app tools, Replit adds a code workspace you can grow into, and Base44 has the cheapest entry plan.
| Tool | Best for | Paid plans from | Free plan | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Capacity | people who don't code and want a working app online, built from a description or from Claude or ChatGPT. | $25/month | Web app: no. Desktop: 1 project | No free plan on the web; login via Clerk or Supabase |
 Lovable | a web app from a chat, with the code synced to GitHub. | €25/month | Yes, 5 credits a day (up to 30 a month) | Builds web apps, not native ones |
 Bolt.new | building in the browser with a free plan generous enough to try a real idea. | $25/month | Yes, 1M tokens a month | Token use grows with the project |
 Replit | people who want an AI agent, a real code workspace and hosting in one place. | $20/month | None listed | Heavier Agent work billed by effort |
 Base44 | non-technical builders who want an all-in-one app with the backend handled. | $16/month (yearly) | Yes, 25 message credits a month | Two kinds of credits to track |
| Claude Code | developers who'd rather run an agent in the terminal than in an editor. | Claude Pro (€18/month) | No | No hosting; built for developers |
 OpenAI Codex | developers who already pay for ChatGPT and want an agent in the cloud, the terminal and the IDE. | ChatGPT Plus (€23/month) | Limited, on ChatGPT Free | Limits follow your ChatGPT plan |
 GitHub Copilot | developers whose code already lives on GitHub, at the lowest paid price here. | $10/month | Yes, 2,000 completions a month | Agent use draws on monthly credits |
 Google Antigravity | developers who want several agents working in parallel, free to start. | Free; more with Google AI Pro | Yes, with weekly rate limits | Limits depend on your Google AI plan |
 Devin | teams handing whole tasks to an agent, and Windsurf users (its editor is now Devin Desktop). | $20/month | Yes, light quota | Returns pull requests, not a hosted app |
 Cline | developers who want an open-source agent and to pay only for the AI they use. | Free + AI usage | Yes, open source | You pay for AI inference as you go |
Why people look for a Cursor alternative. The reasons that come back most often.
The plans changed shape
Cursor's plans now pair AI usage pools with Grok models and features from X, from Plus at $8 to Ultra at $200 a month. Some developers would rather pay one model provider, or use a subscription they already have.
They want the agent outside the editor
Terminal agents like Claude Code and the Codex CLI, or cloud agents that return pull requests like Devin and Copilot's, fit people who'd rather review results than watch an editor.
They want open source or their own keys
Cline is open source and runs on your own API keys or at-cost inference, so the bill is exactly what the model provider charges.
They don't code
Cursor expects you to read the code and deploy the app yourself. People who want an app online without that look at app builders that write, host and publish it.
How we compared them. The same questions for every tool.
- Who it's for: a developer working on a codebase, or someone who never wants to see code.
- Where it runs: an editor, the terminal, the cloud, or a hosted builder.
- How you pay: a subscription you already have, a plan with usage, or the AI you use.
- Whether hosting, a database and a custom domain are included.
- Where the code lives, and whether you can take it with you.
Easier, for people who don't code
01 · our product
Capacity
Best for people who don't code and want a working app online, built from a description or from Claude or ChatGPT.
Capacity turns a plain-language description into a working app: a React front end, a server and its own database, published at a capacity.studio address or on your own domain. You change it by chatting and watch each change in the preview. You choose the model (Claude Opus 5.5, Claude Sonnet 5.5, Fable 5.1, Mistral Large 4 or Kimi K3) or leave it on Auto.
Why pick Capacity over Cursor
- A fixed monthly price: each plan comes with a set number of credits, and building from Claude, ChatGPT or Mistral is unlimited on every paid plan, because your own subscription writes the code while Capacity hosts the app.
- Native mobile apps: Expo projects that you submit to TestFlight and Google Play from the publish dialog, with your own store accounts.
- Hosting, a database and a custom domain are part of every paid plan, with a full version history to roll back any change.
- Capacity Desktop ($249 once, macOS) runs the same builder on your Mac with your Claude Code or ChatGPT plan, and pushes the code to your own GitHub.
Watch out for
- The web app has no free plan for building: paid plans start at $25 a month. Capacity Desktop has a free plan with one project.
- Login isn't built in: you add it with the Clerk extension or a Supabase connection.
- In the web app, your code downloads as a zip; pushing to your own GitHub is a Desktop feature.
- It's not an editor: developers who want to drive every change in their own codebase will prefer Cursor or a coding agent.
Pricing
Starter $25/month (100 credits), Growth $69/month (250 credits), Professional $129/month (500 credits), Business $299/month (1,000 credits). Every plan includes unlimited projects, custom domains and unlimited building from Claude and ChatGPT.
Lovable builds web apps from a chat with a live preview beside it. Lovable Cloud adds the backend, with a database, user login, file storage and server functions on a Supabase foundation, and your code syncs both ways with GitHub on every plan.
Why pick it over Cursor
- The tool most 2026 guides name first for non-technical founders building a web app.
- The chat and the preview are the whole interface, and Lovable Cloud adds the database, login and storage.
- Two-way GitHub sync on every plan, including Free, so a developer can take over later.
Watch out for
- Each message uses credits, and Lovable Cloud usage is billed in credits too once its monthly grant is used.
- For the App Store or Google Play, Lovable points you to a PWA or a Capacitor wrapper you set up yourself.
Pricing
Free: 5 build credits a day, up to 30 a month. Pro: €25/month for 100 monthly credits, with rollovers, top-ups and custom domains. Business: €50/month, adding a team workspace and SSO. Prices shown in euros from France.
03
Bolt.new
Best for building in the browser with a free plan generous enough to try a real idea.
Bolt, from StackBlitz, builds websites and web apps from a chat in your browser and deploys them. Like Replit, the code sits right there if you want it; unlike Replit, the chat and the preview stay in front.
Why pick it over Cursor
- One of the most generous free plans here: 300K tokens a day, 1M a month.
- You can start from a prompt, a Figma file, a GitHub repository or a team template.
- On Pro, unused tokens roll over to the next month.
Watch out for
- Billing is in tokens, and long fix-and-retry sessions on a large project use them up faster.
- Teams pay per member, $30 a month each.
Pricing
Free: 300K tokens a day, 1M a month. Pro: $25/month, no daily limit, from 10M tokens a month, unused tokens roll over. Teams: $30 per member per month.
04
Replit
Best for people who want an AI agent, a real code workspace and hosting in one place.
Replit Agent builds web and mobile apps from a chat, sets up the database and user login, tests its own work in a browser, and publishes the app with hosting, monitoring and custom domains. The code sits in a full cloud workspace you can open whenever you want.
Why pick it over Cursor
- Everything from the first prompt to hosting lives in one product.
- The Agent tests and fixes its own work in a browser while it builds.
- Up to ten agents working in parallel on the Pro plan.
Watch out for
- Plans include monthly credits ($20 on Core); beyond them, usage is billed by effort, so a long build is hard to price in advance.
- The workspace shows the technical side, which can be a lot for non-technical founders.
Pricing
Core: $20/month ($18/month billed yearly), with up to 30 hours of chat on Free Mode and $20 of usage for the more powerful models. Pro: $100/month ($90/month billed yearly). Enterprise on request. No free plan is listed on the pricing page.
05
Base44
Best for non-technical builders who want an all-in-one app with the backend handled.
Base44, owned by Wix since 2025, builds the front end, backend, database, user login and payments from a plain-language description, runs the apps on its own infrastructure, and connects to tools like Gmail, Slack, Notion and HubSpot. It makes websites, internal tools, online stores and mobile apps.
Why pick it over Cursor
- The lowest entry price for an app builder on this list: Starter is $16 a month billed yearly.
- Login and payments are part of what it builds, not an add-on.
- It wraps your app for the App Store and Google Play and helps you submit it.
Watch out for
- Plans count two kinds of credits, message credits and integration credits, so check both before a busy month.
- GitHub integration starts on the Builder plan ($40 a month billed yearly).
- Store apps are your web app in a native web view, not a native rebuild.
Pricing
Free: 25 message credits a month. Billed yearly: Starter $16/month (100 message credits), Builder $40 (250), Pro $80 (500), Elite $160 (1,200). Monthly billing costs about 20% more.
Other coding agents, for developers
06
Claude Code
Best for developers who'd rather run an agent in the terminal than in an editor.
Claude Code is Anthropic's coding agent. You give it a task, from a bug fix to a multi-day migration, and steer it from your terminal, your IDE, Slack or the web. It runs on macOS, Linux and Windows and comes with a Claude subscription.
Why pick it over Cursor
- Included in Claude Pro and Max, so the price is a flat subscription rather than a meter per task.
- Works on any codebase, with the code on your machine and in your repository.
- If you'd rather not run it yourself, Capacity Desktop runs Claude Code for you on a Mac, and Capacity's web app builds from Claude.ai.
Watch out for
- There's no hosting or database: you deploy and run the app yourself.
- It's built for developers and expects you to review code.
Pricing
Included in Claude Pro: €18/month, or €15/month billed yearly (prices shown in Europe). Max from €90/month for 5x or 20x more usage.
07
OpenAI Codex
Best for developers who already pay for ChatGPT and want an agent in the cloud, the terminal and the IDE.
Codex is OpenAI's coding agent, included in ChatGPT plans. It runs in the ChatGPT app on macOS, on the web as Codex cloud, as an extension in your IDE and as a command-line tool, all tied to the same ChatGPT account.
Why pick it over Cursor
- Included in ChatGPT Plus, Pro and Business, so you may already have it.
- Cloud tasks keep running when you close your laptop, with a reusable environment for each repository.
- It runs several agents in parallel and reviews pull requests automatically.
Watch out for
- It works on a repository: there's no hosting or database, and you deploy the app yourself.
- OpenAI sizes Plus for focused coding sessions each week; for full workdays it points to Pro, from €103 a month.
Pricing
Free: limited Codex access. Plus: €23/month. Pro: from €103/month, with three usage tiers. Business: €21 per user per month billed yearly, for 2 seats or more. Prices shown in euros from France.
08
GitHub Copilot
Best for developers whose code already lives on GitHub, at the lowest paid price here.
GitHub Copilot started as autocomplete and is now a set of agents: a desktop app, Copilot in VS Code and other editors, a command-line tool, and a cloud agent with code review on GitHub. It works where your repository, issues and pull requests already are.
Why pick it over Cursor
- Pro is $10 a month, the lowest paid plan on this list.
- Pro can also run third-party agents, Claude Code and Codex, from Copilot.
- Works in VS Code, Visual Studio, JetBrains IDEs, Xcode, Neovim, Eclipse and Zed.
Watch out for
- Chat, agent mode, code review, the cloud agent and the CLI all use GitHub AI Credits, so heavy agent work can need extra credits.
- It's a developer tool: no hosting, no database, you ship the app yourself.
Pricing
Free: 2,000 completions a month, Copilot CLI. Pro: $10/month with the cloud agent, code review and $15 of monthly credits. Pro+: $39/month with premium models including Opus and $70 of credits. Max: $100/month with $200 of credits. Extra credits can be bought.
09
Google Antigravity
Best for developers who want several agents working in parallel, free to start.
Antigravity is Google's agent development platform: a desktop app to run several local agents in parallel, an agentic IDE with an agent manager, IDE extensions, a command-line tool and an SDK for building your own agents. It gives access to a variety of agent models, including Google's latest Gemini models.
Why pick it over Cursor
- Free for individuals, with unlimited Tab completions and command requests.
- The app runs several agents in parallel, organised by project, with scheduled messages for routine work.
- One platform across an app, an IDE, extensions for other IDEs, a CLI and an SDK.
Watch out for
- The free plan has basic weekly rate limits; higher limits come with Google AI Pro or Ultra.
- It works on your code: hosting and a database are yours to set up.
Pricing
Individual: $0/month with basic weekly rate limits. Google AI Pro and Google AI Ultra raise the limits and add a flexible AI credit pool. Organisations: through Google Cloud, with Gemini Enterprise Standard and Plus plans from $30 per seat per month, or pay as you go.
10
Devin
Best for teams handing whole tasks to an agent, and Windsurf users (its editor is now Devin Desktop).
Devin calls itself an autonomous software engineer: it runs in the cloud or on your machine, tests its work in its own browser and keeps going until the pull request is ready to merge. Devin Desktop is the editor, with unlimited Tab completions; windsurf.com's pricing page now leads to it.
Why pick it over Cursor
- Hands-off: you assign a task and review a pull request.
- Pro includes Devin Cloud and frontier models from OpenAI, Claude, Gemini and SpaceXAI, plus open-source models.
- Team plans add sharing and collaboration, centralized billing and an admin dashboard, for up to 200 users.
Watch out for
- It works on a codebase and opens pull requests; it doesn't host a finished app for you.
- Usage beyond your plan's quota is bought at API pricing.
Pricing
Free: a light agent quota and unlimited Tab completions. Pro: $20/month. Max: $200/month. Teams: $80/month plus $40 per full developer seat. Enterprise on request.
11
Cline
Best for developers who want an open-source agent and to pay only for the AI they use.
Cline is an open-source coding agent you use as a VS Code extension, in your terminal, as a desktop app or embedded in your own product through its SDK. You bring your own API keys from providers like Anthropic, OpenAI or Google, or buy inference through Cline at cost.
Why pick it over Cursor
- Free and open source for individual developers, with no subscription or seat fee.
- Works with many providers (Anthropic, Gemini, OpenAI, OpenRouter, AWS Bedrock, DeepSeek and more), so you can switch whenever you like.
- Runs where you work: VS Code, the terminal or a desktop app, with JetBrains on Enterprise.
Watch out for
- Usage-based: what you pay is what the model provider charges for the work, so a heavy month costs more.
- No hosting or database: you deploy the app yourself.
Pricing
Free for individual developers: you pay only for AI inference, with your own API keys or through Cline. Enterprise (SSO, JetBrains extension, centralised billing, team dashboard): custom pricing.
Cursor and its alternatives, side by side. From each official site, October 15, 2026.
| Feature |  Cursor | Capacity | Lovable | Bolt.new | Replit | Base44 | Claude Code | OpenAI Codex | GitHub Copilot | Google Antigravity | Devin | Cline |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Paid plans from | $8/month | $25/month | €25/month | $25/month | $20/month ($18 yearly) | $16/month (yearly) | €18/month (Claude Pro) | €23/month (ChatGPT Plus) | $10/month | Google AI Pro | $20/month | Free + AI usage |
| Free plan | Yes, limited | Desktop only (1 project) | Yes | Yes | None listed | Yes | No | Limited access | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes (open source) |
| Where it runs | Its own editor, plus cloud agents | Hosted builder, or inside Claude and ChatGPT | Hosted builder | In the browser | Cloud workspace | Hosted builder | Terminal, IDE, Slack, web | ChatGPT app, web, IDE, CLI | Desktop app, editors, CLI, GitHub | App, IDE, extensions, CLI, SDK | Cloud or your machine (Devin Desktop) | VS Code, terminal, desktop app |
| How usage is billed | AI usage pools, bundled with Grok and X | Monthly credits; building from Claude or ChatGPT unlimited | Monthly credits | Tokens | Plan credits, then effort-based pay-as-you-go | Message and integration credits | Your Claude subscription | Your ChatGPT plan's limits | Monthly GitHub AI Credits | Weekly rate limits by Google AI plan | Plan quota, extra at API pricing | The AI you use, at cost or with your keys |
| Hosting included | No | Yes, custom domain on every paid plan | Yes | Yes | Yes, metered deployments | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | No |
| Where the code lives | Your own repository | Zip download; GitHub push from Desktop | Two-way GitHub sync | In Bolt; import from GitHub | Your Replit workspace | GitHub from the Builder plan | Your own repository | Your own repository | Your GitHub repository | Your own repository | Pull requests to your repository | Your own repository |
How to choose. Start from what you need, not from the ranking.
A web app from a chat, code synced to GitHubLovable
An app builder you can grow into the code withReplitAn agent in the terminal, on your Claude planClaude Code
An agent included in ChatGPTOpenAI Codex
The cheapest paid agent, for code on GitHubGitHub Copilot
A free agent platform from a big labGoogle Antigravity
Whole tasks handed off, or Windsurf's editorDevin
Open source, paying only for the AIClineWhen to stay on Cursor
If you work in an editor, like reviewing diffs as the agent edits, and your plan's AI usage covers your month, Cursor remains one of the most complete AI editors, with cloud agents and automations on its higher plans and Teams from $30 per user.
Questions people ask. Short answers, with the details above.
What is the best alternative to Cursor?
For developers, Claude Code and OpenAI Codex are the closest: both are agents that work on your codebase and come with Claude or ChatGPT subscriptions. GitHub Copilot is the cheapest paid option at $10 a month, and Cline is open source. For people who don't code, an app builder like Capacity, Lovable or Bolt.new is easier than any editor.
What's an easier alternative to Cursor if I'm not a developer?
An app builder that keeps you in a chat and a preview and hosts the app for you: Capacity (which we make) builds from a description or from Claude or ChatGPT, Lovable syncs the code to GitHub, Bolt.new has a generous free plan, Base44 has the lowest entry price, and Replit lets you grow into the code.
Is there a free Cursor alternative?
Yes. Google Antigravity is free for individuals with weekly rate limits, Cline is free and open source (you pay the AI you use), GitHub Copilot Free includes 2,000 completions a month, and Devin has a free plan. Among app builders, Lovable, Bolt.new and Base44 have free plans.
Cursor vs Claude Code: which should I use?
Both work on a codebase you own. Cursor is an editor with agents built in, from $8 a month. Claude Code is Anthropic's agent for the terminal, IDE, Slack or web, included in Claude Pro and Max. Pick by where you like to work and which subscription you already have.
What happened to Windsurf?
Its editor now lives on as Devin Desktop: windsurf.com's pricing page leads to Devin's, where Devin Desktop has a free plan and a Pro plan at $20 a month.
Is GitHub Copilot a good Cursor alternative?
For code that lives on GitHub, yes: Copilot Pro is $10 a month with a cloud agent and code review, works in VS Code, Visual Studio, JetBrains IDEs, Xcode and more, and can run Claude Code and Codex as third-party agents. Agent work draws on monthly GitHub AI Credits.
Can I build an app without code instead of using Cursor?
Yes. App builders write, host and publish the app from a description. Capacity also works from inside Claude or ChatGPT and builds native mobile apps; it needs a paid plan for building, from $25 a month.
Related comparisons
Try the alternative we build.
Describe your app in a sentence and Capacity builds it, or connect it to Claude or ChatGPT and build from the chat. Plans from $25 a month.