Overview and positioning
Amp is developed by Amp Frontier Corporation, the independent company formed when Amp spun out of Sourcegraph in December 2025. The current product is positioned as a multi-model coding agent rather than as a Sourcegraph code-search feature or a single-model assistant. Developers can work with it from the command line and supported editor surfaces, preserve and share threads, call specialized subagents, connect external tools through MCP, and send work to remote orbs. This identity matters to buyers because Amp should now be evaluated on the independent company's current agent, commercial, and data-governance contracts rather than on its former corporate relationship.
Cursor is Anysphere's VS Code-based agent platform, with its most cohesive experience in the desktop editor and additional CLI, web, and mobile surfaces. Tab predicts multiline edits and likely next cursor locations, Agent can search a repository, change multiple files, run terminal commands, and inspect errors, and automatic indexing and search help retrieve relevant code beyond the files already open. Cursor also offers cloud agents for parallel or longer-running work outside the local editor. Instead of asking the buyer to make a terminal agent the center of the workflow, Cursor makes AI completion, interactive editing, autonomous implementation, repository retrieval, and remote execution parts of one product.
Core capabilities
Amp's defining capability is explicit multi-model orchestration. Its current low, medium, high, and ultra modes trade cost and latency for different amounts of reasoning and tool use, while Oracle can provide a second opinion on difficult problems and subagents can investigate bounded tasks in parallel. Threads make agent work inspectable and shareable, MCP extends the available tools, and orbs move delegated work onto remote compute. This surface is attractive to experienced users who want to choose how much reasoning a task deserves and who prefer an agent that can move between a shell, an editor, and asynchronous execution without pretending every request has the same cost profile.
Cursor's capability advantage comes from joining several interaction speeds in one product. Tab handles small predictive edits while the developer remains in control; Agent handles repository exploration, multi-file changes, terminal commands, and iterative fixes; semantic indexing retrieves code by meaning; and cloud agents let several tasks continue remotely. Rules, skills, hooks, and MCP connections can further shape how agents operate. Buyers do not need to accept a vendor performance percentage to see the distinction: Cursor covers quick completion, guided work, autonomous local changes, codebase retrieval, and remote delegation behind a consistent editor and account model.
Developer experience and workflow
Amp best fits developers who are comfortable treating an agent as a deliberate collaborator. They can start in the terminal, continue through an editor integration, select a reasoning mode for the task, split research among subagents, consult Oracle, and hand work to an orb when local execution is inconvenient. That flexibility is powerful, but it also exposes more choices: the user must understand which mode justifies its cost, when delegation helps, and how to review the resulting thread and changes. Amp therefore rewards teams that want an adaptable agent layer and are willing to define their own operating habits around it.
Cursor reduces those choices at the start. A developer opens a project in a familiar editor, receives Tab suggestions during ordinary work, calls Agent when a task expands, reviews diffs in place, and can move suitable work to cloud agents without adopting a second primary interface. Automatic semantic indexing improves retrieval without requiring the user to identify every relevant file in advance, although explicit context and project rules still matter for accuracy. This cohesive path is particularly valuable during team rollout because the default workflow is understandable before administrators or senior engineers add deeper customization.
Pricing and data governance
Amp's current commercial model combines subscriptions with usage credits. Megawatt costs $20 per month, includes $20 of agent usage, supports low and medium modes, and includes 750 hours of small-orb compute; Gigawatt costs $200 per month, includes $200 of agent usage, unlocks high and ultra modes, and includes 1,000 hours of large-orb compute. Pay-as-you-go credits are charged from actual model and tool use with zero markup for non-enterprise users, subject to a $5 minimum purchase. Enterprise ZDR applies to LLM inference inputs and outputs, but provider KV cache can persist for up to 24 hours and serious policy violations are exceptions. Thread data is stored separately on Amp's server, with explicitly deleted thread data removed within 30 days.
Cursor's public individual ladder starts with Hobby at no charge, followed by Pro at $20 per month, Pro+ at $60 per month, and Ultra at $200 per month. Current documentation lists $20, $70, and $400 of included Other Models usage for those paid tiers, respectively, alongside included Cursor Models usage and optional on-demand billing. Model selection and inference prices affect how quickly an allowance is consumed, so the subscription price is not an unlimited promise for every model. Privacy Mode prevents customer data from being used for training, while provider ZDR, abuse-classifier, and opt-in non-ZDR-model exceptions require attention. Indexing discards plaintext chunks after processing but may retain embeddings, metadata, and encrypted temporary cache data.
Ideal use cases and selection guidance
Choose Amp when model and reasoning-mode control are central to the workflow. It is a strong fit for terminal-oriented developers, teams that want visible choices among low through ultra effort, users who benefit from Oracle and parallel subagents, and organizations that want agent sessions to move between local tools and remote orbs. Enterprise buyers with a specific text-input ZDR requirement can also evaluate Amp's contract, provided they confirm the exact scope instead of assuming the same guarantee applies to lower tiers. Amp is most compelling when flexibility and explicit control outweigh the value of a single integrated editor experience.
Choose Cursor when the goal is to standardize a broad development team on one productive environment. It is better suited to developers who use predictive editing continuously, want Agent and terminal actions beside their code, depend on semantic retrieval across a repository, or need a managed path to cloud delegation. Centralized subscriptions, team administration, privacy controls, and enterprise options also simplify procurement compared with assembling separate editor, indexing, and remote-agent components. Teams should still budget for model-dependent usage and assess remote-agent data flows, but the everyday workflow arrives substantially more assembled.
Verdict
Cursor is the winner for the general buyer choosing one primary AI coding environment. Its advantage is not an unverified benchmark or a claim that every task is cheaper; it is the breadth and coherence of the workflow available from the first installation. Tab supports continuous editing, Agent handles local multi-file work and commands, semantic indexing supplies repository context, and cloud agents extend delegation beyond the workstation. That combination lowers the adoption burden for individuals and teams and makes Cursor the safer default when the requirement is a mature environment that can cover most daily coding interactions.
Amp remains the stronger alternative for buyers who value explicit orchestration more than editor integration. Its independent, multi-model design, selectable low-to-ultra modes, Oracle, subagents, shared threads, and orbs give expert users meaningful control over how work is reasoned about and executed. Its subscription and pay-as-you-go options also make costs legible at the mode and usage level, while Enterprise offers a narrowly defined ZDR path. Those are substantive strengths, but they serve a more specialized operating style. For the widest group of developers and teams, Cursor's cohesive experience justifies naming it the concrete winner.