Agentic Index
Cursor vs JetBrains AI (2026)
Cursor last verified ·JetBrains AI last verified
The AI first editor against the AI inside the editor you already use. That verdict is the Agentic Index coverage score, graded from each vendor's own published materials.
Cursor rebuilt the IDE around agents, with parallel background agents and predictive multi file editing, with a free plan and paid plans from $8 a month. JetBrains puts Junie and a CLI inside the IDEs your team already opens every morning, with bring your own key, MCP and a plan then execute then verify loop, with AI Free at $0 and AI Pro from $10 a month. If your team is on IntelliJ, PyCharm or Rider, the switching cost is the argument, not the feature list.
On the Agentic Index coding agent ranking, neither Cursor nor JetBrains AI clears the bar, which asks for all five merge loop capabilities documented in full. Neither documents knowledge grounding and RAG in full, nor testing, debugging and optimization. 3 of the 96 vendors in the lane clear it. See the coding agent ranking
This comparison is published by Agentic Index, an independent agentic AI vendor research platform. Cursor and JetBrains AI are each graded against the same 14 capability Agentic Index taxonomy, from the vendor's own public materials under the Agentic Index verification standard, alongside 1,084 researched vendors. No vendor pays for placement and no vendor has reviewed this page. How this evidence is graded
Choose Cursor if
- You will change editors to get deeper agent capability, including parallel background agents.
- Predictive editing across files is the capability you want every day.
- The VS Code extension ecosystem carries over and your team already lives there.
Choose JetBrains AI if
- Your team is on JetBrains IDEs and moving everyone to a new editor is the real cost.
- Bring your own key and MCP matter for how you want to control models and tools.
- At $10 a month against $20, a large team has a budget conversation it can win.
| Feature | C Cursor |
J JetBrains AI |
|---|---|---|
| Action & orchestration | ||
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Integrations & Tool Calling Ability to connect agents to real systems through native integrations, OAuth-authenticated actions, custom tools, APIs, webhooks, or MCP-compatible tools. |
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CursorIntegrations & Tool Calling 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 |
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JetBrains AIIntegrations & Tool Calling The agent acts through the IDE's own machinery. It edits across files, runs builds, tests and terminal commands, drives the real IDE debugger through a bundled Debugger MCP Toolset and reaches external systems through configured MCP servers, and the IDE itself is exposed as an MCP server to other clients. Sourcejetbrains.com/help/ai-assistant/junie-agent; jetbrains.com/help/ai-assistant/junie-agent.htmlread 2026-08-30 |
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Workflow Orchestration Ability to sequence, branch, retry, route, and combine deterministic workflow nodes with autonomous agent steps. |
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CursorWorkflow Orchestration 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 |
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JetBrains AIWorkflow Orchestration Junie autonomously plans and executes complex multi step actions from a single prompt, making large scale edits across files, running tests and terminal commands and using external tools while reporting progress. It works in a plan, execute and verify loop where the plan is an editable document approved before code is written, and the agent iterates when tests fail. Sourcejetbrains.com/help/ai-assistant/junie-agent and junie.jetbrains.com/docs; jetbrains.com/help/ai-assistant/junie-agent.htmlread 2026-08-30 |
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Triggers & Channel Coverage How agents wake up and where they work: schedules, webhooks, message events, CRM events, inbox events, chat, email, voice, and collaboration tools. |
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CursorTriggers & Channel Coverage 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 |
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JetBrains AITriggers & Channel Coverage The same agent engine is invoked from IDE chat, the Junie tool window, a standalone CLI in any terminal, CI/CD pipelines via GitHub Actions and GitLab, and third party ACP clients. Remote and asynchronous runs let a long task started on a workstation be monitored elsewhere. Sourcejunie.jetbrains.com/docs and jetbrains.com/help/ai-assistant/junie-agentread 2026-08-30 |
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| Knowledge & context | ||
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Knowledge Grounding & RAG Ability to ground agent behavior in company data through document ingestion, retrieval, external knowledge APIs, semantic search, or RAG layers. |
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CursorKnowledge Grounding & RAG 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 |
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JetBrains AIKnowledge Grounding & RAG The open file and selection reach Junie as automatic IDE context, with other files attached by @ mention, AGENTS.md guidelines added to every task and MCP servers for outside data. The Junie plugin also has an opt in setting for embeddings based codebase indexing. How that index persists or stays current is not described, so context is assembled per task. Sourcejetbrains.com/help/ai-assistant/junie-agent and junie.jetbrains.com/docs/junie-plugin-project-settings; jetbrains.com/help/ai-assistant/junie-agent.htmlread 2026-10-25 |
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Memory & State Persistence Ability to persist context across a run, conversation, workflow, user, team, or longer-term memory layer. |
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CursorMemory & State Persistence 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 |
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JetBrains AIMemory & State Persistence Persistent project context is carried in an AGENTS.md instructions file that Junie adds to every task and that can be version controlled, and sessions can be managed and their status checked through slash commands. There is no cross session agent memory or learned state store. Sourcejetbrains.com/help/ai-assistant/junie-agent; jetbrains.com/help/ai-assistant/junie-agent.htmlread 2026-08-30 |
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| Control & trust | ||
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Human Oversight & Guardrails Approval steps, consent checkpoints, escalation rules, structured guardrails, policy constraints, and pause/resume controls. |
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CursorHuman Oversight & Guardrails 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 |
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JetBrains AIHuman Oversight & Guardrails Junie asks permission by default before running bash commands, changing files, performing file operations or using external tools, with approve, reject or always allow per command, and the user can open the diff or the full command in the editor before deciding. Changes can be rolled back per file or all at once, and .aiignore restricts which files the agent may process. Brave mode is an explicit opt in that JetBrains warns can cause data loss. Sourcejetbrains.com/help/ai-assistant/junie-agent; jetbrains.com/help/ai-assistant/junie-agent.htmlread 2026-08-30 |
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Security, Identity & Governance RBAC, SSO, auditability, encryption, least-privilege tool access, compliance posture, and data handling policy. |
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CursorSecurity, Identity & Governance 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 |
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JetBrains AISecurity, Identity & Governance User level controls cover .aiignore, which excludes files and directories from agent processing, AGENTS.md, which governs agent behavior under version control, and per command approval gates and .junie/mcp scoping, which limit what the agent may do. JetBrains offers an AI Enterprise tier but does not say what it adds. There is no SOC 2 or ISO attestation specific to the AI product, and no SSO, RBAC or admin governance surface. Sourcejetbrains.com/help/ai-assistant/junie-agent; jetbrains.com/help/ai-assistant/junie-agent.htmlread 2026-08-30 |
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Observability & Auditability Traces, logs, execution histories, metrics, audit events, and debugging detail for production agent behavior. |
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CursorObservability & Auditability 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 |
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JetBrains AIObservability & Auditability Junie CLI keeps each session's events log and a readable transcript on disk. It saves the full prompt, response and model usage history for resumable sessions and stores subagent transcripts, so a run can be reconstructed afterwards. These are local files rather than a central audit log. In the IDE, changes stay reviewable as diffs and can be rolled back one by one. Sourcejunie.jetbrains.com/docs/junie-cli; junie.jetbrains.com/docs/junie-cli.htmlread 2026-10-25 |
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Deployment & Data Residency Deployment modes and options, including SaaS, dedicated cloud, VPC, on-prem, hybrid, local runtime, and self-hosting. |
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CursorDeployment & Data Residency 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 |
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JetBrains AIDeployment & Data Residency Junie runs locally in the IDE or terminal, and Junie CLI can use Junie Local, a local inference engine for Apple Silicon, or a local Ollama, LM Studio or LiteLLM server, so code and inference stay on the customer's own machines. The Junie GitHub Action runs entirely on the customer's GitHub runners. JetBrains does not say what organization level hosting options AI Enterprise adds. Sourcejunie.jetbrains.com/docs/junie-local, custom-llm-ollama and junie-on-github; junie.jetbrains.com/docs/junie-local.htmlread 2026-09-29 |
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| Solution readiness | ||
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Prebuilt Agents, Templates & Packs Ready-made workflows, packaged employees, templates, blueprints, industry solutions, and role-specific agents that reduce time-to-value. |
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CursorPrebuilt Agents, Templates & Packs 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 |
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JetBrains AIPrebuilt Agents, Templates & Packs Several ready to use coding agents are selectable in AI Assistant chat, namely Junie, Claude Agent, Codex and the Copilot agent, and Junie ships a dedicated code review agent beside its coding agent. Most of these agents do the same job. Sourcejetbrains.com/help/ai-assistant/agents and junie.jetbrains.com/docs/junie-review-agent; jetbrains.com/help/ai-assistant/agents.htmlread 2026-09-29 |
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| Platform extensibility | ||
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Model Flexibility & Routing Ability to work across multiple foundation models, route tasks to different models, or let buyers bring their own providers and keys. |
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CursorModel Flexibility & Routing 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 |
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JetBrains AIModel Flexibility & Routing The model is selected from a list in the chat input with a configurable reasoning level, spanning frontier models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and xAI. The CLI adds bring your own key, including OpenRouter, and local models can be served through Ollama, LiteLLM or LMStudio. Sourcejetbrains.com/help/ai-assistant/junie-agent and junie.jetbrains.com/docs; jetbrains.com/help/ai-assistant/junie-agent.htmlread 2026-08-30 |
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APIs, SDKs & MCP Extensibility Composability layer: stable APIs, SDKs, MCP tool consumption/serving, custom tools, and integration into internal systems. |
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CursorAPIs, SDKs & MCP Extensibility 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 |
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JetBrains AIAPIs, SDKs & MCP Extensibility MCP client support spans the IDE and CLI with project and user scoped mcp.json configs, a registry of pre configured servers and an MCP Installation Assistant. The IDE itself runs as an MCP server exposing IDE tools to external clients including Claude Code, Codex and Copilot CLI, a bundled Debugger MCP Toolset exposes debugger control, and the agent speaks ACP so the same engine drives IDE chat, the tool window and the CLI. Sourcejunie.jetbrains.com/docs/junie-cli-mcp-configuration and jetbrains.com/help/ai-assistant/mcp; junie.jetbrains.com/docs/junie-cli-mcp-configuration.htmlread 2026-08-30 |
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Testing, Debugging & Optimization Testing, debugging, scoring, retries, fallbacks, quality gates, and optimization loops for improving agent workflows before and after deployment. |
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CursorTesting, Debugging & Optimization 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 |
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JetBrains AITesting, Debugging & Optimization Debug mode drives the IDE debugger against the customer's running program to inspect runtime state, and the agent runs tests and terminal commands as it works. That is debugging, with the agent checking its own changes against the customer's existing gates. There is no harness, scored test set or optimization loop for evaluating Junie's behavior, and the benchmark results JetBrains publishes are its own measurements. Sourcejetbrains.com/help/ai-assistant/junie-agent; jetbrains.com/help/ai-assistant/junie-agent.htmlread 2026-09-29 |
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| Specialist automation | ||
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Browser & Computer Use Browser, desktop, or remote/local computer control for workflows that cannot be handled through stable APIs alone. |
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CursorBrowser & Computer Use 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 |
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JetBrains AIBrowser & Computer Use Junie CLI's /demo command launches the app in a Docker virtual machine with Chromium and a desktop. A computer use model drives the interface and records screenshots and video. It is a demo workflow and needs Docker. In the IDE, the agent works through the IDE, terminal and debugger APIs instead. Sourcejunie.jetbrains.com/docs/junie-cli-demo; junie.jetbrains.com/docs/junie-cli-demo.htmlread 2026-10-25 |
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Pricing snapshot
Sourced from the Index pricing dataset · open each vendor's profile for full detail.
| Pricing | C Cursor |
J JetBrains AI |
|---|---|---|
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Entry price Lowest public entry point |
Free plan, Plus at $8 a month with Grok models only, Premium at $30 a month, Super at $100, Ultra at $200, Teams from $30 per user a month, and Enterprise at custom pricing. | AI Free at $0, then AI Pro from $10 a month. |
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Pricing confidence How public the numbers are |
Public, partial | Public, exact |
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Billing Primary billing axis |
A monthly plan with a weekly usage pool for Cursor's own models, Grok and Composer. Models from other makers are paid from prepaid credit at API list price on Premium and above. | A monthly subscription per tier that carries a quota of AI credits, each worth $1, with extra credits bought beyond the quota. |
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Variable cost Workload / overage exposure |
Medium variable cost | Low variable cost |
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Free tier / trial Try before you buy |
Free tier
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Free tierTrial
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Buying motion Self-serve vs sales call |
Mixed | Self-serve |
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Pricing verified When this pricing was last checked |
Product updates
Newest first, each linked to its source.
Cursor
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· Human approval / guardrails
Cursor 3.24 makes Auto-review stop for approval before the agent runs a recursive, force, wildcard or mirror delete whose target could resolve differently than written, and commands that match a user's block instructions now always show the approval card.
Source -
· Agent capability
Cursor launched Rollouts and Security Review for Teams and Enterprise customers.
Source -
· Deployment / data residency
Cursor introduced self-hosted machines, allowing users to keep codebases, build outputs, and secrets on internal infrastructure while the agent handles tool calls locally.
Source
JetBrains AI
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· Deployment / data residency
Junie Local, the fully on device version of the Junie coding agent, moved from experimental to stable on Windows PCs with NVIDIA RTX GPUs of at least 24 GB and added native support for NVIDIA RTX Spark PCs on Windows on Arm.
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· Pricing / packaging
Junie Lite is a new free tier for the Junie coding agent, running on a free model in every JetBrains account with no trial or card required.
Source -
· Integrations
JetBrains updated its AI Assistant to natively integrate Claude Agent, powered by Anthropic's Agent SDK, directly into the IDE chat.
Source
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