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.
This comparison is generated from the sourced Bolt.new and Cursor profiles. Open either profile to review its evidence and last-reviewed date.