Cursor vs VS Code: We Ran Both for 30 Days

Why we did this

We're publishing weekly reviews of AI dev tools. Cursor is the most-asked-about one, so
we ran both editors in parallel for a real month.

All screenshots and timings come from our daily logs. No vendor briefings, no
affiliate-driven cherry-picking.

Headline numbers

The cases where Cursor pulled away

When refactoring across 4+ files, Cursor's chat-driven multi-file edit reduced our
sequence of operations from ~12 steps to 3.

// Before: open file, find usage, edit, save, repeat...
// After:
// "Rename `getUser` to `getCurrentUser` across the repo, update callers"

Cursor lets you plug in your own Anthropic / OpenAI key — useful if you already
have a budget.

Where VS Code still wins

Cold-start memory, plugin ecosystem (Copilot is no longer Cursor-only), and the
sheer reach of "VS Code Server in a browser" for remote/dev container work.

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Originally published at pickuma.com. Subscribe to the RSS or follow @pickuma.bsky.social for new reviews.