Cursor joins SpaceX and moves to the X Subscription

The Cursor X Subscription is the biggest change to the popular AI code editor since it launched. Cursor became part of SpaceX on August 14, and on October 12 its plans moved into a single X Subscription that bundles Cursor with Grok and X Premium, with Grok models included and third-party models such as Claude and GPT billed separately at API list prices ^{[1, 3, 4]}.

If your team, or your agency’s developers, rely on Cursor, this changes how you budget for it and which models you will default to. Here is what happened and how we are thinking about it.

From partnership to acquisition

Cursor announced on August 14, 2026 that it is now part of SpaceX ^[1]. Bloomberg reported the same day that the $60 billion deal had become effective, two months after SpaceX formally announced it had agreed to buy the company ^[2].

Cursor’s own post focused on compute. The team wrote that it will have “access to the largest fleet of GPUs in the world,” which it expects to use to build stronger models that are cheaper to run ^[1]. The first model from that work, Grok 4.6, shipped the day before the announcement ^[1].

On September 21, Grok 4.7 followed, described as the most capable model yet for long-running coding and knowledge work and available in Cursor on day one ^[5]. Its API price is listed at $2 per million input tokens and $6 per million output tokens, and the announcement reports a 46.3% score on CursorBench 4.0 ^[5].

What the Cursor X Subscription changes

On October 12, Cursor staff announced the X Subscription on the official Cursor forum ^[3]. The core changes:

• One shared usage pool covers Grok and Cursor, and the allowance refreshes weekly instead of monthly ^[3].
• Each plan includes at least twice as much coding usage with Grok models as the comparable old Cursor plan ^[3].
• On Premium and above, third-party models stay available in Cursor, but that usage is billed separately at API list prices through top-ups, with optional spending caps ^{[3, 4]}.
• People on a current Cursor plan keep their included third-party usage until they switch ^[3].
• Team users get Premium, Super and Ultra at the same per-seat prices as individuals, with three times more coding usage than the older Teams plan ^[3].

Cursor’s pricing page now lists a free tier, Plus at $8 a month, Premium at $30, Super at $100 and Ultra at $200, with Teams starting at $30 per user per month ^[4]. The page also notes that subscriptions are sold through X Subscription Corp ^[4]. The option to switch is rolling out to existing Cursor, SuperGrok and X Premium subscribers ^[3].

Why the model mix matters more than the price

At first glance the headline is more usage for similar money. The detail that matters is where that usage goes. Included usage now buys Grok models. If your developers have settled on Claude or GPT models for day-to-day work, every request to those models on a new plan is paid at API rates on top of the subscription ^{[3, 4]}.

For a solo developer who is happy with Grok, this may be a good deal. For a team that has tuned prompts, rules files and review habits around another model, it is a real change in cost and behaviour. Switching models is never free: output style, how a model follows project rules and how it handles large refactors all differ, and a team needs time to learn a new one.

There is also a procurement angle. A coding tool that used to be a standalone developer subscription is now part of a bundle that includes a social network membership ^{[3, 4]}. Some clients, especially in regulated industries or government work, will want to review that before they approve it.

How we are handling it at the studio

We treat AI coding tools the way we treat any dependency: something we pick per project and can replace. For client work we keep project rules, design tokens and component conventions in plain files in the repository, not inside one tool’s settings. That way a change in pricing or ownership affects which tool we open, not how the project is built.

We are also writing model choice into project briefs. If a client’s security review approves specific models or vendors, the brief says so, and the editor configuration follows.

Key takeaways

• SpaceX’s $60 billion acquisition of Cursor became effective on August 14, 2026 ^{[1, 2]}.
• Grok 4.7 launched September 21 and is available in Cursor ^[5].
• The X Subscription bundles Grok, Cursor and X Premium with a weekly shared usage pool ^[3].
• Third-party models like Claude and GPT now cost extra at API list prices on new plans ^{[3, 4]}.
• Teams should measure their real model usage before switching and set spending caps.

Quick answers

Can we still use Claude or GPT in Cursor? Yes, on Premium and above, billed separately at API list prices ^{[3, 4]}.

Do we have to switch now? No. Existing plans keep their included third-party usage until you switch ^[3].

Is Grok 4.7 good enough for client work? Test it on your own code. Published benchmark scores are a starting point, not a decision ^[5].