Cursor vs Factory (2026)

MCP servers connect the agent to external tools and data over stdio, SSE or Streamable HTTP with OAuth for remote servers, installed one click from the Cursor Marketplace or configured in mcp.json, and team admins can distribute servers through a team marketplace; tools, prompts, resources and elicitation are supported.

Sourcecursor.com/docs/mcpread 2026-09-29

MCP connects Droid to the customer's own tools and data, and Connectors add third party apps with managed authentication and organization level controls. Delegations take work from Slack, Linear, Jira, Microsoft Teams and Google Chat with shared instructions, plugins, identity and compute, and automations act on GitHub events and inbound webhooks, with org policy deciding which models, tools and integrations Droid may use.

Sourcedocs.factory.com/harness/mcp, harness/connectors, delegations and enterprise/identity-and-access; docs.factory.com/delegations/indexread 2026-10-28

The agent delegates to subagents that each run in their own context window, in the foreground or in the background and in parallel, with built in Explore, Bash and Browser subagents and custom subagents defined with their own prompts, tool access and models, in the editor, the CLI and Cloud Agents.

Sourcecursor.com/docs/subagentsread 2026-09-29

Custom droids are subagents with their own system prompt, model and tool policy that Droid delegates focused tasks to in a fresh context window. Missions plan and run large multi feature projects: the customer approves a plan of features and milestones, and an orchestrator in Mission Control assigns the work to workers, validates milestones and runs headless through droid exec --mission. Worktrees keep parallel sessions apart.

Sourcedocs.factory.com/harness/subagents, missions/overview and missions/referenceread 2026-10-28

Automations run cloud agents in the background on a schedule (preset or cron) or in response to events, a GitHub pull request opened or marked ready, Slack messages, Linear issue changes, PagerDuty incidents, Sentry errors and webhooks, with no person starting the run; Bugbot also reviews every pull request update automatically.

Sourcecursor.com/docs/cloud-agent/automations and docs/bugbotread 2026-09-29

Automations start a Droid session on a schedule (plain words or cron), a Slack message, a GitHub event or an inbound webhook, running on a Droid Computer, an Environment, the desktop app or GitHub Actions. Incident Response sets Droid to respond to production alerts in Slack, Triage classifies inbound work and routes it, and Droid Exec publishes GitHub Actions workflows for PR review and weekly cron runs.

Sourcedocs.factory.com/software-factory/automations, incident-response, triage and droid-exec/overviewread 2026-10-28

The agent finds code with Instant Grep, an exact match and regex search engine that builds and queries its index on the developer's machine, and an Explore subagent that runs parallel searches per task; files, folders and past chats are attached per conversation with @ mentions. Cursor does not store embeddings of the codebase for search, so context is gathered on each run, and the local grep index exists to speed up search.

Sourcecursor.com/docs/agent/tools/search and help/customization/contextread 2026-09-29

AutoWiki generates structured wikis of each repository's architecture, modules, APIs and conventions. The /wiki command builds one from the Droid CLI, /install-wiki sets up a CI action that regenerates it on every push to the default branch, the Wiki Browser in the Factory App searches and manages wikis, and the AutoWiki API creates runs, browses pages, searches and exports.

Sourcedocs.factory.com/software-factory/wiki/overview, wiki/auto-refresh, wiki/web-viewer and api-reference/wikiread 2026-10-28

Past agent transcripts can be searched from the Agents Window and attached to a new conversation with @Chats, and checkpoints snapshot modified files within a session. Cursor does not describe a memory layer of its own, project rules act as standing instructions, and subagents start without prior conversation history.

Sourcecursor.com/help/customization/context and docs/agent/overviewread 2026-09-29

Sessions are resumable across the app, CLI, web and mobile and drivable through the Sessions API, and AGENTS.md and hierarchical settings carry configuration across sessions. Session state stays within one session, AGENTS.md holds standing instructions, and the documentation index lists no memory layer of Factory's own.

Sourcedocs.factory.com/api-reference/sessions, harness/agents-md and llms.txtread 2026-10-28

Run Modes decide when the agent stops for approval on shell, MCP and fetch calls: Allowlist runs only listed actions without asking, Auto-review sandboxes shell commands and sends other calls to a classifier that can ask the user to approve, plain English block instructions route named actions to approval, and a team configuration set in the dashboard overrides user and project settings; browser tools require approval by default.

Sourcecursor.com/docs/agent/security/run-modes and docs/agent/tools/browserread 2026-09-29

Autonomy levels (Off, Low, Medium, High) decide what Droid may do without confirmation, and permission rules allow, require approval for, or block matching shell commands, with an ask rule requiring approval even at High autonomy. Missions start only after the customer approves the plan, org managed settings enforce these as hard policy, and OS level sandboxing and Droid Shield secret scanning sit beside them.

Sourcedocs.factory.com/autonomy-and-safety/permission-rules, auto-run and missions/planningread 2026-10-28

Cursor holds a SOC 2 Type II attestation and AIUC-1, ISO/IEC 27001:2022 and ISO/IEC 42001:2023 certifications, with certificates and reports available on request at trust.cursor.com, and offers SSO, SCIM and enforced multi factor authentication. SAML and OIDC SSO come on Teams, and SCIM, repository and model access controls and audit logs on Enterprise.

Sourcecursor.com/security and cursor.com/pricingread 2026-09-29

Factory lists SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001 and ISO 42001 with reports, architecture documents and subprocessor lists in its Trust Center at trust.factory.com, and offers SSO over SAML or OIDC, SCIM directory sync, organization roles flowing from the identity provider, service accounts with their own API keys and an organization audit log that records authentication, SSO and SCIM changes and policy changes.

Sourcedocs.factory.com/enterprise/compliance-audit-and-monitoring and enterprise/identity-and-accessread 2026-10-28

Hooks fire on every step of the agent loop (preToolUse and postToolUse, shell and MCP execution before and after, file reads and edits, subagent start and stop, agent responses and thoughts), auditing is one of their named uses, and Enterprise admins distribute team hooks from the dashboard.

The Admin API returns per request usage events with model, tokens and conversation ID, and its audit log covers logins and user and settings changes, with no agent actions among them. Cursor does not ship a log sink for the per step hook record, so the customer builds one to keep that record as an audit trail.

Sourcecursor.com/docs/hooks and docs/account/teams/admin-apiread 2026-09-29

Droid exports OpenTelemetry to the customer's collector: each user turn produces a trace whose child spans are the model calls and tool runs, with droid.tool and droid.message spans when message content logging is on, plus tool, MCP and blocked command metrics tagged by session and user. An organization audit log records who did what, including who started a Droid session from a connected tool, and Factory Analytics reports usage, credits and tool use per session.

Sourcedocs.factory.com/enterprise/telemetry/data-reference, audit-log and compliance-audit-and-monitoringread 2026-10-28

Self-Hosted Machines move Cloud Agent tool execution to machines the customer manages, such as a Linux VM in the customer's AWS account, a Kubernetes cluster or its own devices, with the checkout, build cache and machine local credentials staying there (Team Pools on Enterprise). Cursor still runs the agent loop, inference and planning, and Enterprise customers can enroll in US only data residency.

Sourcecursor.com/docs/cloud-agent/self-hosted and help/security-and-privacy/regionsread 2026-09-29

Factory offers two deployment options. Factory Managed runs the control plane in Factory's cloud while Droid runs on developer machines, CI, machines the customer registers through Remote Control and Factory managed Droid Computers, with LLM traffic routed to the customer's own providers or gateways and a dedicated EU deployment (api.eu.factory.ai, EU session storage and EU only inference) for enterprise customers.

Factory Private, in private preview, runs Droid sandboxes inside the customer's own VPC through OpenCompute, a self hosted service that provisions sandboxes on Kubernetes, EC2 or Lambda microVMs on demand. A fully airgapped Custom Deployment uses in network model endpoints with no Factory cloud at runtime, and Enterprise adds data residency, dedicated compute and on premises options.

Sourcedocs.factory.com/enterprise/network-and-deployment, opencompute/overview, enterprise/airgapped-deployment and factory.com/pricingread 2026-10-28

Plugins bundle rules, skills, agents, commands, MCP servers and hooks, and the Cursor Marketplace lists manually reviewed official plugins installed per project or user from Customize, including Amplitude, Datadog, Figma, Linear, Sentry, Stripe, Supabase and Vercel plugins. Teams and Enterprise can run private team marketplaces, and three subagents ship built in.

Sourcecursor.com/docs/plugins and cursor.com/marketplaceread 2026-09-29

Plugins package skills, commands, custom droids, output styles, hooks and MCP servers, and Factory maintains an official marketplace at Factory-AI/factory-plugins naming droid-control (terminal, browser and computer automation for QA and demos), droid-evolved (skills for navigation, writing, design and frontend work) and security-engineer (security review, threat modeling and vulnerability validation). Organizations run internal approved marketplaces, and since 27 October admins pick plugins from their registered marketplaces.

Sourcedocs.factory.com/harness/plugins, enterprise/internal-plugin-marketplaces and changelog/release-notesread 2026-10-28

Cursor's own models, Grok and Composer, run from a weekly usage pool on every paid plan. On Premium and above, users also pick Anthropic, OpenAI and Google models at API list price from prepaid credit. On Teams and Enterprise, Cursor Router picks among Cursor and third party models by cost, balance or intelligence, and admins allow or block models. Plus is limited to Grok models.

Sourcecursor.com/docs/models-and-pricing and cursor.com/pricingread 2026-10-25

The customer picks among Factory hosted models from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, xAI and Factory's own pool, lets the Factory Router choose per task, or brings its own OpenAI, Anthropic, open source or local models by key, and enterprise controls restrict which models, base URLs and providers a fleet may use.

Sourcedocs.factory.com/models and model-independence/byokread 2026-10-28

The Cloud Agents API at api.cursor.com, with Basic or Bearer authentication on user or service account keys, creates, lists, follows up, streams, cancels, archives and deletes agents and their runs and returns artifacts, and TypeScript and Python SDKs are published beside it.

Sourcecursor.com/docs/cloud-agent/api/endpointsread 2026-09-29

A REST API at api.factory.ai with bearer API keys creates and drives Droid sessions, wiki runs, CI automations and readiness reports (the Sessions API is enabled for selected organizations), beside the Droid SDK and headless droid exec for scripts and CI.

Sourcedocs.factory.ai/api-reference/sessions and droid-exec/overviewread 2026-09-29

Bugbot reviews each pull request for bugs, security issues and quality problems and publishes a CI check status, and a custom verifier subagent can run the tests and report what passed. Both test the customer's code, and Cursor does not describe a harness, scored test set or optimization loop for evaluating the agent's own behavior.

Sourcecursor.com/docs/bugbot and docs/subagentsread 2026-09-29

The Agent Readiness model scores how ready the customer's repository is for agents, Agent Effectiveness measures throughput, output and spend across the organization, and code review, security review and Automated QA test the customer's code. Factory publishes its own benchmark results (Agent Arena, Legacy Bench, Terminal Bench). Factory does not describe a harness, scored test set or optimization loop for evaluating Droid's behavior on the customer's work.

Sourcedocs.factory.com/agent-readiness/overview, agent-effectiveness/overview and benchmarksread 2026-10-28

The browser tool lets the agent control a browser pane inside Cursor, navigating, clicking, typing, scrolling and taking screenshots to test applications, audit accessibility and check visual changes, through Cursor's own MCP server, with approval required by default and an admin origin allowlist; a built in Browser subagent runs these steps, and self hosted workers run computer use tools.

Sourcecursor.com/docs/agent/tools/browser and docs/subagentsread 2026-09-29

Droid Control, an official Factory plugin, lets Droids launch and operate web apps and Electron apps through end to end flows. The Droid clicks, types and captures screenshots as QA and demo evidence, and Automated QA tests the application as a real user would with visual evidence. The CLI also ships an agent-browser skill for browser automation, the browser pane in Factory's desktop app takes Droid's clicks and keystrokes directly, and since 20 October the built in browser can import Chrome cookies on macOS so Droid stays signed in.

Sourcedocs.factory.com/software-factory/droid-control, automated-qa and changelog/release-notesread 2026-10-28