Bolt.new vs Cursor
A side-by-side comparison of capabilities, autonomy, integrations, and pricing to help you choose.
Short answer: choose Bolt.new if you want prompt, edit, and deploy full-stack web apps in the browser (Supervised agent, freemium); choose Cursor if you want ai-first code editor with fast tab completion and a supervised coding agent (Supervised agent, freemium).
| Bolt.new | Cursor | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Prompt, edit, and deploy full-stack web apps in the browser | AI-first code editor with fast tab completion and a supervised coding agent |
| Type | agent | agent |
| Autonomy | Supervised agent | Supervised agent |
| Pricing | freemium · Free (1M tokens/mo); Pro from $25/mo | freemium · Free (Hobby); Pro $20/mo |
| Best for | consumers, developers, smb | developers, smb, mid-market, enterprise |
| Deployment | saas | saas |
| Modalities | text, code | text, code, browser, api |
| Models | claude, model-agnostic | model-agnostic, claude, gpt, gemini, proprietary |
| Protocols | rest-api | mcp, function-calling |
| Integrations | Netlify, Supabase, GitHub, Expo | VS Code extensions, GitHub, MCP servers, Bugbot |
| Capabilities | 3 documented | 4 documented |
Bolt.new
- +Full dev environment runs in the browser via WebContainers, with the AI controlling filesystem, terminal, and server
- +Generates true full-stack apps (not just UI) and can deploy via Bolt Cloud
- +No local setup; fast for prototyping and iterating by chatting
- -Token-based usage cost can rise quickly on complex or long-running builds
- -Output needs human review and iteration; it is not a hands-off autonomous engineer
Cursor
- +Best-in-class Tab completion and tight, in-runtime AI integration that an extension-based tool can't fully match
- +Strong codebase-wide context, multi-file agent edits, Plan Mode, and parallel/cloud agents
- +Model flexibility plus fast in-house models (Composer) optimized for agentic coding
- -Pricing has been a sore point: a 2025 shift to credit metering caused surprise overage charges and backlash
- -Can hallucinate non-existent APIs and slow down on very large projects
Which should you choose?
Bolt.new is prompt, edit, and deploy full-stack web apps in the browser, best for consumers, developers, smb. Cursor is ai-first code editor with fast tab completion and a supervised coding agent, best for developers, smb, mid-market, enterprise. The right choice depends on the autonomy level you want, your existing integrations, and your budget, all compared above.