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Comment by gazagoal | Hacker News Reader

As someone who has two annual subs of Cursor Pro (one from student account and another from Lenny's newsletter), I just spent $100 on Claude Code and I haven't touched Cursor AI for any coding tasks since. If you already spend anything near or over $100 on Cursor, it's no brainer. The agent experience is night and day. No more wrong tool-calling, premature ending of conversation, failure to apply changes or overwriting a whole file with the update snippet. I'm considering upgrading to $200 Claude Max next month for more concurrent sessions. If anyone reading this thinking this is a paid comment, go search for other users' feedback. Claude Code is that good.

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As a long-time Cursor user, I just tried Claude Code for the first time two days ago and I found it:

- Burning tokens with constant incorrect command-line calls to read lines (which it eventually gets right but seemingly needs to self-correct 3+ times for most read calls)

- Writing the string "EOF" to the end of the file it's appending to with cat

- Writing "\!=" instead of "!="

- Charged me $7 to write like 23 lines (admittedly my fault since I forgot I kept "/model opus" on)

Minus the bizarre invalid characters I have to erase, the code in the final output was always correct, but definitely not impressive since I've never seen Cursor do things like that.

Otherwise, the agent behavior basically seems the same as Cursor's agent mode, to me.

I know the $7 for a single function thing would be resolved if I buy the $100/month flat fee plan, but I'm really not sure if I want to.

The Pro account is only $20/month and works with Claude Code.

I learned about it from this thread and will buy a month's worth to keep playing with it. (48 hours ago the documentation said it was only supported for Max.)

I received the e-mail exactly 15 hours ago:

   Hello,
   
   Your Pro plan just got way more powerful with three major upgrades previously available only to Max, Team, and Enterprise users. 
   
   Claude Code is now included
   
   Claude Code is a command line tool that gives you direct access to Claude in your >terminal, letting you delegate complex coding tasks while maintaining full control. You can now use Claude Code at no extra cost with your Pro subscription.

yes, it changed yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44179604

Not quite. You pay ala carte for it with API pricing.

The $100/mo max plan lets you use a Claude Code with a fixed bill. There’s some usage limits though.

They add Claude Code to the pro plan yesterday: https://x.com/_catwu/status/1930307574387363948

Ha! That’s what I get for hallucinating using two day old data.

I'm not sure an x.com link to a GIF really helps clarify the status of Claude Code on Pro plans. Here's the actual anthropic docs on it: https://support.anthropic.com/en/articles/11145838-using-cla...

> Burning tokens with constant incorrect command-line calls to read lines

See this sort of asinine behavior with cursor too sometimes although it's less grating when you're not being directly billed by the failed command line attempt. Also it's in a text editor it fully controls why is it messing around in the command line to read parts of files or put edits in, seems to be a weird failure state it gets into a few times a project for me.

Yes, this is a paid comment, in the sense that it's probably a bot. 22 day old account, with 1 post, praising Claude.

For more than a year, Anthropic has engaged in an extensive guerrilla marketing effort on Reddit and similar developer-oriented platforms, aiming to persuade users that Claude significantly outperforms competitors in programming tasks, even though nearly all benchmarks indicate otherwise.

> Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data. [0]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I believe that's talking about general insinuations, e.g. "you're just a russiabot" and the like.

The GP account above with only one comment that is singing the praises of a particular product is obviously fake. They even let the account age a bit so that wouldn't show up as a green account.

The most alarming to me thing is that it seems to be happening at scale. This is one of dozens similar posts I've seen all over the programming communities with similar characteristics (high praise, new-ish accounts, little if any other activity).

seems justified in this case

Well, I’m not a paid comment, and I agree 100% with the op, and have the exact same experience. I haven’t touched Cursor since paying for Claude Code (max or whatever the $100/mo plan is). That said, I never found Cursor very useful. Claude Code was useful out of the gate, so my experience may not be typical.

I recently wrote a 5+ page internal guide on how I do vibe coding and one of the first sections is cost

Keep in mind much of the guide is about how to move from 30s chats to doing concurrent 20min+ runs

----

Spending

Claude Code $$$ - Max Plan FTW

TL;DR: Start with Claude Max Pro at $100/mo.

I was about $70/day starting day 2 via the pay-as-you-go plan. I bought in $25 increments to help pace. The Max Plan ($100/mo) became attractive around day 2-3, and on week 2 I shifted to $200/mo.

Annoyingly, you have to make the plan decision during your first login to Claude Code, which is confusing as I wanted to trial on pay-as-you-go. (That was a mistake: do Max Pro.) The upgrade flow is pretty broken from this perspective.

The Max Plan at the $100/mo level has a cooldown of 22 question / 5 hour: That does go by fast when your questions are small and get interrupted, or you get good at multitasking. By the time you are serious, the $200/mo is fine.

Other vibe IDEs & LLM providers $$$

I did anywhere from about 50K to 200K tokens a day on Claude 3.7 Sonnet during week 1 on pay-as-you-go, with about a ratio of 300:1 of tokens in:out. Max Plan does not report usage, but for periods I am using it, I expect my token counts to now be higher as I have gotten much better at doing long runs.

The equivalent in OpenAI of using gp4-4o and o3 would be $5-40/day on pay-as-you-go, which seems cheaper for using frontier models… until Max Pro gets factored in.

Capping costs

Not worrying about overages is typically liberating. Max Pro helps a lot here. One of my next experiments is seeing about self-hosting of reasoning models for other AI IDEs. Max Pro goes far, but to do automation and autonomy, and bigger jobs, you need more power.

Creating a post that convincingly appears human on HN probably is considered a benchmark task there

I was spending around $800 in Cursor and I’ve switched to Claude Code with a $200 subscription and I couldn’t be happier. The experience is way better (although tbh Claude Code is missing some critical features like being able to rollback changes (or, as Cursor calls them “checkpoints”)) but for 99% of my “Vibe Coding”, it’s just great. I usually run 2 to 4 parallel sessions using git worktrees and the speed is absolutely crazy. Of course not everything is perfect and I still have to check most of the code but if you create a good enough set of “memories” (Claude Code’s version of .cursorrules) it gets stuff right almost all the time.

Hold on a second... are you spending hundreds and hundreds of dollars of your own money to pay for AI? People are doing that?

That sum is ridiculous, but not everyone is only programming for bigcorp. I've had Cursor Pro for something like 3 years on my own dime. So yes hundreds of hundreds of dollars.

> I've had Cursor Pro for something like 3 years

How do you own Cursor for 3 years, when even ChatGPT is not that old? The earliest Cursor submission to HN was on October 15, 2023 --- not even 2 years old [0].

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37888477

Pro since Aug '23 based on my invoices. Sorry, dang can update my wildly wrong timeline if wished :). Not sure when my account was created but feels like forever.

And no I'm not a bot but feel as you wish.

Not accusing anyone of anything, but this thread feels filled with automated marketing from all over the place.

I've left plenty of criticism on the cursor forums. Do you honestly believe they'd engage in such practices though? That seems highly unlikely to me.

I don't see why cursor or their affiliates would be above the practice. It seems generally accepted that many discussions online devolve into, or were initiated as, marketing campaigns. It is probably particularly effective on software developers that claim to be blind to advertisements.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing

You said automated marketing. I mean I can get why you think I could be a shill for Cursor given my horrible sense of time. But for it to be automated is an interesting claim.

I definitely wouldn't be surprised if a small startup was engaging in their own posts, something I do find shameful. But that's quite a far shot from a wildly successful startup with 100M ARR engaging in some kind of scheme where accounts with active history are making automated comments. Just seems not only unnecessary but also unlikely given the risk and effort involved.

I think it's much more likely that out of the 300k users or whatever they have, a lot of them are on hackernews and have good things to say about the product and a 1.0 is a significant event.

I stage anything I care about, and use git to rollback. Works for me, and I get to stay in the terminal.

I use frequent git staging to get a rolling checkpoint. It works with any code or environment.

also with claude code yesterday i just told it a few times "hey that didn't work, let's go back to what we had before." works just fine also!

> I was spending around $800 in Cursor

What are you doing that costs that much?

I refactored a whole code base in cursor for < $100 (> 200k lines of code).

I don't use completions though. Is that where the costs add up?

I think if you use premium models you can run up a bill depending on your plan

You can configure it so that you use your API keys, which means you just pay cost but o3 is expensive

press esc twice, you get a list of previous checkpoints you can revert back to.

Copilot at $10/mo. lets you use Sonnet 4 in VS Code, which has been working very well for me in agent mode. Curious what Claude Max offers that sets it apart.

I believe Copilot Agent isn't yet generally available outside of GitHub (the website)?

Also, Copilot's paid version is free for developers of popular FOSS projects.

I use gh copilot at work, so the enterprise version I guess, and it has agent mode in vs code with various models to select from.

You're right. Agent mode with select models (no o3 or Opus unfortunately) is available to Copilot Pro users (also provided for free to eligible FOSS developers) on latest VSCode (I hadn't updated it in over 5 months). Per docs, the newly announced Coding Agent (available on the website only) however isn't. And this was the source of my confusion.

https://docs.github.com/en/copilot/about-github-copilot/plan... / https://archive.vn/HxHzc

Can you elaborate why Claude Code is that much better in regard to also the missing in built IDE functionality?

It can use any command line tool very well. I just told him "Look up the status of the created systemd servive". It ssh-d to the machine, run "systemctl status", read the output and fixed issues based on that! That was totally unexpected.

I hope this question doesn't sound snarky, it's a legitimate concern that I want to address for myself: how do you ensure that once it ssh's to the machine, it does not execute potentially damaging commands?

Claude code asks you permissions for every command. It also gives you the possibility of marking commands as safe so next time it can use them without asking .

So these agents that people are so excited about spawning in parallel stop and ask you before executing each command they choose to execute? What kind of life is that. I'd rather do something myself than tell 5 AI agents what I want and then keep approving each command they are going to run.

I'm not saying it is better if they run commands without my approval. This whole thing is just doesn't seem as exciting as other people make it out to be. Maybe I am missing something.

It can literally be a single command to ssh into that machine and check if the systemd service is running. If it is in your history, you'd use ctrl+r to lookback anyway. It sounds so much worse asking some AI agent to look up the status of that service we deployed earlier. And then approve its commands on top of that.

I think it's something you have to try in order to understand.

Running commands one by one and getting permission may sound tedious. But for me, it maps closely to what I do as a developer: check out a repository, read its documentation, look at the code, create a branch, make a set of changes, write a test, test, iterate, check in.

Each of those steps is done with LLM superpowers: the right git commands, rapid review of codebase and documentation, language specific code changes, good test methodology, etc.

And if any of those steps go off the rails, you can provide guidance or revert (if you are careful).

It isn't perfect by any means. CC needs guidance. But it is, for me, so much better than auto-complete style systems that try to guess what I am going to code. Frankly, that really annoys me, especially once you've seen a different model of interaction.

Sure, if you already have the knowledge and can do it faster than the AI, you can do it yourself.

But a beginner in system administration can also do it fast.

I do not think that is a good thing in the long run. More people in fields they know absolutely nothing about? That does not sound like a good thing to me. I am going to become a chemical engineer (something I know absolutely nothing about) or some shit and have an LLM with me doing my job for me. Sounds good I guess?

It’s smarter.

And as of the latest release, has VSCode/Cursor/Windsurf integration.

How can it be smarter? Cursor can use Claude 4 as model, so it should be the same?

The system prompt, agent landscape and fundamental behavior is different. Its just like using chatgpt vs openai api. A single chatgpt conversation can go forever because it's not just doing one call for each message you send.

It has a totally different way of dealing with context

I mostly use it to understand and fix my bugs/Rust compilation problems that I can't be bothered to fix. 95% happy with the results so far. For coding I use Claude in chat though, as my thoughts are mostly not clear enough at the start to finish a component to my liking. Fixing bugs is easier, though I had to tell it to "not remove features" sometimes. Feature gone, bug gone. ;)

Claude code now automatically integrates into my ide for diff preview. It's not sugar, but it's very low friction, even from the cli.

Does anyone know how Claude code compares to using Aider with anthropic API?

I have been using the Claude.ai interface in the past and have switched to Aider with Anthropic API. I really liked Claude.ai but using Aider is a much better dev experience. Is Claude Code even better?

CC is more autonomous, which can be a double edged sword. In big codebases you usually don't want to make large changes and edit multiple files. And even if you do, letting the LLM decide what files to edit increases the chance for errors. I like Aider better aswell. It's a precision tool and with some /run it is pretty flexible for debugging.

Claude Code (and Cursor, for that matter) don't commit to git. Fundamentally that's just bonkers to me. Aider does, so each prompt can be /undo'd. I had a chance to use Cursor at work, and if that's how people are interacting with LLMs, it's no wonder we can't agree on this whole "are LLMs useful for programming" thing.

ChatGPT Codex is on another level for agentic workflow though. It's been released to (some?) "plus" ($20/month) subscribers. I could do the same thing manually by making a new terminal, making a new git worktree, and firing up another copy of aider, but the way codex does it is so smooth.

I haven't used Jujutsu / jj much at all. But it seems like a great match to Aider. I wonder how the surrounding dev tooling ecosystem changes as agentic coders become more popular.

MCP for Claude code that asks ChatGPT O3 for help. This is the way.

Cursor can commit just fine if you tell it.

C.C. can commit if you ask it

it did tons of commits when i started to have a really big session yesterday, and i didn't even have to ask!

Claude Code is much more aggressive at doing stuff than aider is (with sonnet and gemini) in both good and bad ways. You can tell Claude to do a thing and it might churn for many minutes trying to achieve it, while aider is much more likely to do a lot less work then come back to me. Aider feels more like a small sharp tool vs Claude Code as a bulldozer.

They both can just use api credits so I’d suggest spending a few dollars trying both to see which you like.

I just recently got $200 sub for Claude and it really is worth it. I work with very large codebases and to be honest Cursor is horrible at those. Claude takes time but in the end it can explain how things work in detail, unlike Cursor.

What about the Cursor tab? You can't get that from Claude code which is terminal based. For small changes tab is much faster than asking the agent + it's free.

Same experience here. I got a Cursor Pro sub towards the end of 2024. Once Claude Code because available, my Cursor usage dropped _dramatically_ as I got up to speed on how Claude Code worked.

I still prefer Cursor for some things - namely UI updates or quick fixes and explanations. For everything else Claude Code is superior.

Honestly, once you try aider, no other AI coding tool can reach that level of productivity.

What's the best about it, it's open source, costs nothing, and is much more flexible than any other tools. You can use any model you want, either combine different models from different vendors for different tasks.

Currently, I use it with deepseek-r1-0528 for /architect and deepseek-v3-0325 for /code mode. It's better than Claude Code, and costs only a fragment of it.

Once something, like in this case AI, becomes a commodity, open source beats every competition.

Where are you running those models? I'd like to try aider with alternate models, but they seem so much slower than Claude API.

I used to use Cursor and just deal with the slow requests for most of the month because it was the most affordable way to leverage an agent for coding, but I didn't find it so much better than Cline or Roo. When I first tried Claude Code, it was immediately clear to me that it worked better, both as an agent and for me, but it was way too expensive. Now with the $200/mo. Max plan, I couldn't be happier.

That said, I still approach it with the assumption that Claude Code is just mashing its fists on the keyboard and that there needs to be really strong, in-loop verification to keep it in line.

I think the focus on Cursor Agent is misplaced. I always turn to Ask and find it annoying they keep reverting it to Agent any time I'm not looking.

You can set the Default Mode to Ask in Cursor settings -> Chat

Same! :)

Well, sure. Except that in most of the world outside SV, $200/month is expensive.

At least Cursor is affordable to any developer. Because most of the time, even if it’s totally normal, companies act like they’re doing you a favor when they pay for your IDE so most people aren’t going to ask an AI subscription anytime soon.

I mean, it will probably come but not today.

You can subcribe to the Max with 90€ a month, which isn't bad considering the effectiveness of Claude Code.

Claude Code Pro ($17 per month) now supports it, just ends earlier

Pro does not support Claude Code, the agent. The docs say it does, but it wouldn't work yesterday when I actually tried it.

it absolutely does, as of 18 hours ago or so. the docs were out of date wrt reality for a few hours at least.

Hah ok. I then just happened to try it out during their feature rollout.

Claude Code was added to the Pro tier in the last day or two; they've been working out some kinks with it

Honestly, $200 is not expensive. Even just offloading some small tasks to a junior dev every now and then is incredibly cheap at $200.

Did you choose to not read his full reply? I'll repeat it again for you:

> Except that in most of the world outside SV

Even in a European with lower wages compared to US, total cost of a developer will be minimum 5000 euros/per month. And that's just salary with all taxes, not accounting laptop costs, office space, etc.

You just need a 4% increase of productivity to make those $200 worth it.

> Even in a European with lower wages compared to US, total cost of a developer will be minimum 5000 euros/per month. And that's just salary with all taxes, not accounting laptop costs, office space, etc.

lolololol

> You just need a 4% increase of productivity to make those $200 worth it.

who “needs” that and who pays for it?

the employer for both?

high school economics class is not how the world works, regrettably.

I guess the world doesn't work like that because employers don't even understand high school economics.

They'd rather have an employee spend 2 weeks on a task than shell out a few bucks at it, because they don't realize the 2 weeks of salary is more expensive than the external expense.

You’re making the erroneous assumption that the productivity gains would meaningfully generate revenue for the business to offset additional costs.

Plus development work is quite bursty — a productivity gain for developers does not necessarily translate into more prospects in a sales pipeline.

> so most people aren’t going to ask an AI subscription anytime soon

It's companies asking programmers to use AI, not vice versa.

I was almost exclusively using Claude Code for a couple of weeks, and after recently trying Cursor with Sonnet 4 in MAX mode, I think it now comes close. Those are requests paid on top of the sub price though.

Claude Code is always quite slow for me. I'm on Windows though so I'm not sure if the performance hit comes from WSL. Anyone experienced differences between Windows/Mac/Linux?

Claude Code has been pretty poky for me running under WSL 2 on my Server 2022 box (admittedly, with pretty outdated hardware). It would routinely hang after a lot of use and performance would degrade over time.

Since the last couple of updates I don't seem to have those problems as prominently any more. Plus it seems to have greatly improved its context handling as well -- I've encountered far fewer occurrences where I've had to compact manually.

It's slow between each UI interaction compared to auto-complete type systems. But CC can do much more per step. That's especially true if you use it to write scripts that encapsulate multiple steps of a process. Then it can run the scripts.

Perhaps not coincidentally, that's what efficient (or "lazy", you choose) developers do as well.

100% without forgetting the very "GOOD" idea of forking VScode, and thinking all devs will drop their tools and use the Fork :D

Yeah, and it's stupid that I still have to pay $20/mo just for Cursor Tab.

I like cursor but I have this disabled 90% of the time.

Likewise. Either I'm writing the code or the model is, but never both.

i get cursor pro sub from work but i feel claude code fomo from reading all the comparisons on the internet.

am i missing that much ?

In a similar position – I get Cursor Pro on a free student plan, which means a lot on a student budget. It looks like Anthropic can afford not to offer a cheaper education plan directed to students do so for now.

How are you using more concurrent sessions?

For each file in files: claude prompt with file

You can generally do map-reduce, also you can have separate git worktrees and have it work on all your tickets at the same time.

This here, exactly. Cursor is late to the party with their IDE-based approach, especially after the MS-blocked extension fiasco.

counterpoint: I burned through $20 in a couple hours of claude code

$10/hr for work that saved you how much time? And how much do you charge? ;)

But there are other options that are far cheaper.

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