Cursor vs Roo Code
A side-by-side comparison of capabilities, autonomy, integrations, and pricing to help you choose.
Short answer: choose Cursor if you want ai-first code editor with fast tab completion and a supervised coding agent (Supervised agent, freemium); choose Roo Code if you want open-source ai coding agent for vs code (a cline fork), now archived (Supervised agent, free).
| Cursor | Roo Code | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | AI-first code editor with fast tab completion and a supervised coding agent | Open-source AI coding agent for VS Code (a Cline fork), now archived |
| Type | agent | agent |
| Autonomy | Supervised agent | Supervised agent |
| Pricing | freemium · Free (Hobby); Pro $20/mo | free · Free (open source); pay your own model providers |
| Best for | developers, smb, mid-market, enterprise | developers |
| Deployment | saas | self-hosted |
| Modalities | text, code, browser, api | text, code |
| Models | model-agnostic, claude, gpt, gemini, proprietary | model-agnostic |
| Protocols | mcp, function-calling | mcp, function-calling, rest-api |
| Integrations | VS Code extensions, GitHub, MCP servers, Bugbot | VS Code, Anthropic, OpenAI, Google Gemini, OpenRouter, AWS Bedrock |
| Capabilities | 4 documented | 4 documented |
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
Roo Code
- +Open source and model-agnostic with no inference markup (bring your own keys)
- +Multi-mode architecture (Architect/Code/Debug/Ask/Orchestrator) with per-mode tool permissions
- +MCP support and customizable modes gave fine-grained control over the agent
- -Shut down and archived on May 15, 2026; the extension is no longer maintained
- -Was VS Code-extension only, so it depended on your IDE and local environment
Which should you choose?
Cursor is ai-first code editor with fast tab completion and a supervised coding agent, best for developers, smb, mid-market, enterprise. Roo Code is open-source ai coding agent for vs code (a cline fork), now archived, best for developers. The right choice depends on the autonomy level you want, your existing integrations, and your budget, all compared above.