Cursor

Cursor is the default recommendation for most working developers, and the reason is that it feels like an editor rather than a plugin. Because it is a VS Code fork, your extensions, keybindings and settings come with you — migration takes about ten minutes — and because the AI was designed in from the start, the codebase indexing genuinely changes the output quality. Ask for a new API route and you get one that uses your existing error handling and your validation helper, not a generic example from a tutorial.

Tab completion is the feature people stay for. It predicts multi-line edits, including the next place you were going to change, and after a fortnight it is the thing you notice most when you switch to something else. Agent mode handles multi-file work well, runs your tests, and reads the failures. Pro at $20 a month is the tier almost everyone should be on.

The frustrations cluster around cost predictability and pace of change. Usage-based pricing on top of the subscription means a heavy week can produce a bill you did not model, and Cursor ships changes fast enough that workflows occasionally shift under you. Some reviewers also report the indexer struggling on very large monorepos.

Our guidance: if you write code daily in a graphical editor, start here. Move to Claude Code if you prefer working in a terminal and want more autonomy; stay on GitHub Copilot if organisational inertia or cost makes switching editors impossible.