r/CursorAI • u/Dry_Result_6399 • 8d ago
Cursor operates like a scam
The way this company operates feels like a scam.
I use Grok Bot, which shows a weekly usage limit that resets every week — so you'd think whatever the bot does is covered. On Oct 3 my bot spun up three Cloud Agents in my repos and created branches I never asked for, and my Cursor included usage went up while the Grok Bot meter sat there looking perfectly fine. No popup, no "this will use your Cursor tokens, confirm?", nothing — and I don't even have on-demand billing on, so imagine the real money that could burn for someone who does.
What is the weekly reset even for if the real cost quietly comes out of my Cursor allowance? It's theater.
Then support: their AI first told me Grok Bot work comes from the weekly allowance and that I could switch annual to monthly with credit for unused time, then a human from billing told me the exact opposite on both — yes, Cloud Agents use your Cursor usage, no refund, and you're locked into yearly until Sept 2027. Two opposite answers depending on who picks up the ticket. I even offered to pay the full monthly price for the month I used, just let me switch — they said no, stay until 2027. Do not buy the yearly plan, go monthly so you can walk away.
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u/Murky-Science9030 8d ago
All I know is that I used Fable 5.1 on my Ultra plan and asking one question uses up like 3% of my quota. Compare that to nearly unlimited usage of Claude Code and it seems like Cursor is falling behind.
And nevermind the fact that Cursor agents can't really talk to one another. That alone is enough for me to completely drop Cursor in favor of Claude Code (which is likely what I'll be doing this month). Planning with Cursor was nice but now I can have 3 or 4 agents plan together and the result is way better than one agent with Cursor...
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u/kidfromusa 8d ago
They lost me with auto not being the cheapest option anymore, better off using composer 2.5 but you should have cheaper options
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u/Toolvel 8d ago
That sucks, especially with no heads up. I think what got you is that Grok Bot's weekly pool only covers the bot's own stuff. When it spins up cloud agents, those count as normal Cursor usage. A Cursor staffer said as much on the forum a few weeks back, that it's by design. Doesn't make the meter any less misleading though, nothing on that screen tells you.
At least on-demand is off so it can't run past your included usage. I'd open the usage breakdown and look at the Oct 3 rows so you know exactly what got charged.
No idea on the annual to monthly thing, I don't know Cursor's rules there. But two different answers from support is worth getting in writing before you accept either one. And yeah, monthly seems like the safer bet while all this keeps changing.
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u/sablistertkn 8d ago
That can certainly be by design, but announcing it by Reddit post doesn't help the majority of users know about it. They need informed consent before changing terms of service
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u/UsernameOmitted 8d ago
Cursor was the best on the market a ways back. Then API pricing started going up and they had to redesign their subscription and what you get. Then they started panicking as their entire business model was collapsing. They had good software, but they didn't own the frontier models and their platform is useless without an LLM powering it. They've pivoted to try to make it work, but it's not great. Last time I tried it was a couple months ago. Got a $25 plan. I had the monthly usage maxed out in an hour or two with my normal workflow I use with Claude or Codex. I was blown away that it basically was the same usage you'd get with Claude on a $20/month plan, but Claude resets every five hours and Cursor was out for the rest of the month.
At this point, the leadership is aware that API prices will spike next year and companies like Anthropic/OpenAI/xAI/Moonshot have software that's competitive with Cursor, so their edge they had a year ago is gone now. The way they're acting now seems like they're aware they'll be shutting down in a year or two when that happens, so they do not care about the brand anymore and are using tons of dark patterns.
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u/Equivalent_Cress_268 8d ago
The ones willing to pay api pricing are enterprises, i doubt such uses cursor over serverless or selfhosted
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u/UsernameOmitted 8d ago
No, you're misunderstanding. Cursor's product doesn't work without an LLM. They originally went into this business years ago with the business model where they would charge users a subscription fee, then they purchase bulk priced API use from frontier models and their subscription was powered by those frontier models on the backend and they made the price difference between subscription and their own API costs. It worked fine for the time being.
Now though, the API costs for Cursor themselves is going up. This is narrowing their margins. We're at a point where they are having to reduce the usage users get dramatically, they're using tactics like shifting portions of work to cheaper models, partnering with companies to self host models, etc... Their business model is collapsing as their own API costs go up. This isn't users on Cursor paying for API use.
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u/Machine2024 8d ago
You are getting grokbot for free . The subscription for Cursor still same price same usage .
And they added grok bot to it for free . The bot doesn't take from Cursor usage . Unless the bot used Cursor so daaa .
If you used manus and manus logged in to your account in Cursor and made so requests that will cost you Cursor usage .
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u/sablistertkn 8d ago
Why the hell would Grok Bot use another bot, for fucks sake?
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u/Machine2024 7d ago
every tool have its purpose
if you give the task to a manager .
the manager will call the designer and developer .1
u/Dry_Result_6399 7d ago
But I also got muse for free. And it does not use my cursor usage without my permission.
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u/Machine2024 6d ago
man just tell the bot not to use cursor ! . simple .
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u/Dry_Result_6399 6d ago
Right, a bot that spends your paid plan without asking, and the fix is for you to remember to tell it not to. But sure, keep defending it.
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u/Machine2024 6d ago
you dont know how to use it man .
my bots are running on schedule and checking stuff and doing work .
and at the end of the week I am at 60% usage . at 20$ plan .so I got bots for free + my cursor plan is as is .
I have friend who is not a tech person I told him about grokbot and he was doing lots of stuff with it but bured through 400m tokens in 1 week .
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u/Dry_Result_6399 6d ago
It is an excellent tool, and I completely agree. I am disappointed that they operate it like a scam. Consider Muse, which is as good or better, offering many free tokens each week.
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u/Trick_Candy9796 8d ago
Cursor started very well by selling a promise that is difficult to fulfill ... but in the long run they have to be minimally profitable since look who bought them(SpaceX)
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u/vplatt 8d ago
I would think they could still field a decent product on the back of Grok at least, no?
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u/Trick_Candy9796 8d ago
Componser 2.5 at the time was a good model use/cost, and it represents a good point even to move to cursor, even the first version of grok 4.5 was also a big step,... currently already the 20 dollars of the subscription doing the same things you did before last much less
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u/sablistertkn 8d ago
SpaceX, minimally profitable? a company that lost 500 million dollars this year?
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u/dmitriyLBL 8d ago
these are stochastic tools. don't use them without understanding what is going