What is our primary use case?
My main use case for Cursor is building products for our company; we write all our code mainly in Cursor now.
A quick specific example of a product I have built using Cursor is the maintenance of our current systems and also building new parts. For example, we recently created a presentation generation part of our product, and the entire presentation generation microservice and the other supporting services are written in Cursor. The entire development team of our company uses Cursor for writing code.
I mainly use Cursor for code writing, and debugging is a part of that, of course. However, we sometimes find it easier to use native IDEs such as PyCharm for Python and PHPStorm for PHP for debugging purposes, especially because those have full-powered debuggers. Cursor we mainly use for writing new code.
What is most valuable?
The best features Cursor offers are Cursor Agent and Cursor tab; those are exceptional AI features. After that, it is a really good IDE because it is basically a VS Code fork, so everything good about VS Code is there. It is pretty easy to use and the AI is very good.
Cursor Agent and Cursor tab specifically help me and my team by providing auto completion when I am writing code, where Cursor suggests the code and I can just hit tab and it will complete the code block. Basically, eighty percent of the time, it is giving the perfect code block that I am thinking. Cursor Agent allows me to ask it to do whatever I want, such as write code for something, fix a bug, or explain why something is happening. It will go through my code, analyze it, read it, edit it, and possibly tell me what to do, cutting down our development time by about eighty percent now. Previously, tasks that would take weeks or months can now be completed within days because of these AI tools. The main point is they have been reducing the time I spend writing code.
Cursor has positively impacted my organization by speeding up development time; everything from an idea to deployment has been very fast due to Cursor. It has impacted our efficiency a lot because the number of features we ship within a given time period has increased significantly.
What needs improvement?
I have been noticing recently that Cursor introduced their own model, which is pretty limited; it is very fast, but it is not smart. They might have to improve that, along with the agent selection methodology. When you select auto, you expect it to use the best agent possible and think of the money savings, but it does not always work as expected, sometimes providing bad code or code that has bugs. I think the auto mode selection can improve.
Another concern is the pricing; we have been paying a lot for Cursor recently, which I feel has increased within the last few months, possibly due to our usage going up. We are paying an amount similar to a developer's salary for Cursor now. I believe all the needed improvements are primarily around the auto agent selection mode and pricing. If they could be more transparent about it, that would be appreciated. We only see the bill at the end of the month, and it is often a high amount, so transparency in the pricing would be very helpful for us as developers.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Cursor for almost a year now, more than ten months.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Cursor is stable; the only time it went down was during the recent AWS outage, which was not Cursor's fault. It has been very stable otherwise.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability of Cursor is pretty good; I do not think we have to worry about it. Currently, about ten employees in our organization are using it without any issue, so it seems scalable.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We previously used GitHub Copilot, but we found Cursor to be more improved. While Copilot was built into VS Code as an extension, Cursor is mainly an AI-focused code editor, which is why we switched since Cursor has better AI features available.
How was the initial setup?
We did not purchase Cursor through the AWS Marketplace. The experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is managed by our organization admin, so we were not involved in that.
What was our ROI?
I have seen a return on investment similar to the salary of a single employee, and it does the work of about ten employees right now. Fewer employees are needed, and it has saved a lot of time; it sped up our processes by three times.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We evaluated other options before choosing Cursor, including Google's Anti-Gravity, OpenAI Codex, and Vincerf, but ultimately, Cursor and Codex are the ones I use currently.
What other advice do I have?
My advice for others looking into using Cursor is that it is a really good code editor; you can use it for everything, but make sure to read the code it generates because otherwise, you will not know what type of code you are pushing. When giving instructions, ensure they are as detailed as possible, as this will help Cursor return very good code that does exactly what you want. It is important to spend a little more time writing the prompt and explaining what you want; Cursor will handle the rest. However, remember that it is not a replacement for a developer; it is an assistant for developers. I would rate this product a nine out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
