I tried 5 top Cursor alternatives to find the best AI code editor in 2025

AI code editors like Cursor are seriously shaking things up. Turning a simple English prompt into working code feels like magic and definitely speeds up the workday. But that magic isn't always cheap. Those usage-based plans can get pricey, and sometimes the tool feels a bit boxed in when you're dealing with a huge, messy project.

This wave of AI assistants isn't just for developers, either. Specialized AI agents are popping up everywhere, from sales to customer support, taking over the boring stuff so teams can focus on what matters.

If you've started to notice Cursor's costs or its constraints, you've landed in the right spot. I went down the rabbit hole for a few weeks, testing out the best Cursor alternatives to help you figure out what works for your wallet, workflow, and privacy standards in 2025.

What are AI-powered code editors?

So, what exactly are these things? AI code editors are way more than just a souped-up autocomplete. They're Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) or plugins built from the ground up with AI at their core. The best way to think about it is having an AI pair programmer on call 24/7.

Their whole purpose is to get the context of your project and help out with all sorts of things:

• Smarter code completion: They don't just guess the next word; they suggest whole lines or even functions based on the code you've already written.

• AI chat: You can ask questions about your codebase, track down bugs, or brainstorm new features just by typing in plain English.

• Quick edits and refactors: Just highlight a chunk of code and tell the AI to fix or improve it right there on the spot.

• Agentic workflows: You can give the AI a bigger goal, and it will figure out the steps and make changes across multiple files to get it done.

Why look for Cursor alternatives?

Look, Cursor is a fantastic tool, there's no denying that. But as I used it more, a few things started to bug me, and I bet I'm not alone.

First up is the price tag. The pay-as-you-go model for premium models like Claude 3.5 Sonnet can be a rollercoaster for your wallet, especially on a team plan.

When you're deep in a project, you're just burning through tokens.

Then you have the context problem. Cursor is solid for edits inside one file, but it sometimes got lost when I was jumping around a big monorepo with tons of shared libraries. I had to keep spoon-feeding it files to keep it on track, which kind of defeats the purpose.

And we have to talk about privacy. For a lot of companies, sending your secret sauce (your code) to some third-party cloud is a total non-starter. This alone pushes teams to look for self-hosted or open-source tools where they control everything.

Lastly, it just comes down to having control. A lot of us developers like to tinker and bend our tools to fit our exact workflow, which is tough when you're locked into one company's way of doing things.

How we picked the best Cursor alternatives

With so many tools popping up, I needed a way to sort the good from the "meh". I basically judged them on the stuff that actually impacts your daily coding life:

• The AI stuff: How good is it at chatting, generating code, and handling more complex tasks on its own?

• Workflow fit: Is it a whole new IDE, a simple plugin for VS Code or JetBrains, or something for the terminal?

• The cost: Is it free? A flat monthly fee? Or another one of those pay-as-you-go plans?

• Privacy and openness: Can I host it myself? Is the source code out there for me to look at?

• The overall feel: How clunky is it to learn? Does it feel polished or like a beta?

Comparison of the top Cursor alternatives in 2025

Here’s a quick rundown of how the top players stack up.

Tool	Best For	Pricing Starts At	Open Source
GitHub Copilot	Deep VS Code integration & reliability	$10/month	No
Zed	Performance & real-time collaboration	Free	Yes
Aider	Power users & terminal-based workflows	Pay-per-use (API keys)	Yes
Codeium	Free, unlimited autocompletion	Free	No (core is proprietary)
Tabnine	Privacy & self-hosting for enterprises	$9/month	No (offers self-hosted)

The 5 best Cursor alternatives for developers in 2025

After spending a good amount of time with each of these, here’s my take on the best Cursor alternatives you can get your hands on today.

1. GitHub Copilot

As one of the first and most well-known AI coding assistants, GitHub Copilot is a reliable choice, especially if you're already living in the Microsoft world. It fits perfectly into VS Code and other big IDEs, giving you strong code completions, a built-in chat, and a new "agent mode" that can tackle tasks with multiple steps.

For me, the best part is the predictable price. It’s way more affordable than Cursor's upper tiers and basically gives you unlimited access to top models like GPT-4o for a flat monthly fee. I also found it was consistently quicker and more responsive than Cursor for just standard autocompletion.

Pros:

• Feels native inside VS Code and JetBrains IDEs.

• Flat-rate pricing means no surprise bills.

• You get access to several top-tier language models.

Cons:

• It’s a closed-source product.

• The agent features don't feel quite as developed as what Cursor has.

Pricing: GitHub Copilot has a few options for individual devs:

• Free: Gives you 50 agent/chat requests and 2,000 completions per month.

• Pro: For $10/month, you get unlimited completions and chats, plus access to better models.

• Pro+: At $39/month, you get access to everything, including Claude Opus 4.1, and a much higher limit on premium requests.

2. Zed

Zed is a completely different animal. It’s a code editor built from scratch in Rust, and it's obsessed with speed, performance, and real-time collaboration. It’s not just another VS Code clone, so the user experience is clean and minimal, and the AI features feel like they belong there, not like an afterthought.

If editors like Cursor feel a bit slow or bloated to you, Zed will feel like a breath of fresh air. It's ridiculously fast, and the built-in collaboration tools are a game-changer for teams that want to code together. The fact that it's open source is just the icing on the cake.

Pros:

• Blazing fast and responsive, even with massive files.

• Real-time collaboration and screen sharing are built right in.

• It's open source and has a growing community.

Cons:

• The extension library is still tiny compared to VS Code.

• Its AI features are still growing and aren't quite as powerful as Cursor's yet.

Pricing: Zed has a great free plan and a simple pro option:

• Personal: Free forever. You can plug in your own API keys for the AI features.

• Pro: For $10/month, you get unlimited edit predictions and $5 in monthly credits for using Zed's own models.

3. Aider

Aider is a chat tool that lets you pair program with an AI right from your terminal. It hooks into your local Git repository, which makes it incredibly easy to tell the AI to build a feature or fix a bug. Then you can review the proposed changes as a clean Git diff before you commit anything.

This became my go-to tool for remote work. If you basically live in the terminal or do a lot of work on servers over SSH, Aider just clicks. It’s a powerful, scriptable way to use AI without ever touching a GUI. The tight Git integration is its killer feature, making it super straightforward to see exactly what the AI did.

Pros:

• Perfect for anyone who prefers the terminal or works remotely.

• It generates clean Git commits, so reviewing is easy.

• It's super flexible and supports over 100 languages.

Cons:

• There's a bit of a learning curve if you're not a command-line junkie.

• You have to provide your own API keys, so the cost can vary.

Pricing: Aider is free and open source. Your only cost is what you pay for API calls to whatever model you use (like OpenAI or Anthropic).

4. Codeium

Codeium has a pretty straightforward goal: give fast, quality AI code completion to every developer, for free. It gives you unlimited autocomplete and a chat assistant that works with pretty much every popular IDE you can think of.

If your main issue with Cursor is the cost and the limits, then trying Codeium is a no-brainer. It gives you the core autocomplete feature that I use most often, but without the budget stress. It's a great way to get started with an AI assistant without having to pull out your credit card.

Pros:

• Totally free for individual developers with no limits on completions.

• It supports a massive list of IDEs (over 40).

• They offer self-hosted versions for companies worried about privacy.

Cons:

• The AI models might not be quite as cutting-edge as the latest from OpenAI or Anthropic.

• Its chat and agent capabilities are a bit more basic than the paid tools.

Pricing: Free for individuals. They also have custom Team and Enterprise plans.

5. Tabnine

Tabnine is an AI assistant that was built with privacy as its top priority. Its main selling point is that you can run it on your own server or even right on your local machine. This guarantees your code never has to leave your private network, which is a must-have for companies in finance, healthcare, or any place with tight security rules.

For teams where data privacy is the top concern, Tabnine is one of the best Cursor alternatives you can find. It delivers solid AI-powered code completions and gives you complete control over your data. You can even train it on your company's private codebases so its suggestions perfectly match your team's style.

Pros:

• Can be fully self-hosted for total privacy and security.

• Can be trained to learn your team's specific coding styles.

• It works offline, which is handy in places with flaky internet.

Cons:

• It's mainly focused on code completion and has fewer of the fancy agent features.

• Setting up the self-hosted version requires some infrastructure work.

Pricing: Tabnine's pricing is aimed at professional teams:

• Dev: $9/month for individuals, which includes AI chat and some basic agents.

• Enterprise: $39/user/month for more advanced agents, private deployment options (including totally offline setups), and deeper context from your codebase.

This video explores the top 10 Cursor alternatives available for developers in 2025.

Beyond Cursor alternatives: AI agents are for every team

Seeing the productivity jump from these AI coding tools is pretty amazing, but this whole AI assistant thing isn't just for developers. The same idea is being applied all over the place, especially in departments that are drowning in repetitive work, and customer support is a prime example.

Think about it: support teams answer the same questions day in and day out, manually sort tickets, and hunt for answers in messy knowledge bases. It's the perfect job for a specialized AI.

That’s exactly what a tool like eesel AI is for. It connects to the help desk you already use, like Zendesk or Intercom, and learns from your knowledge sources like Confluence to handle those frontline questions automatically.

The best part? It's not one of those clunky enterprise tools that takes months to set up. You can genuinely get it working in a few minutes. It gives you full control over which tickets get automated, and you can even run simulations on your past tickets to see how it'll perform before it ever chats with a real customer.

Choose the right AI assistant among the Cursor alternatives

So, while Cursor is a seriously impressive AI code editor, it's pretty clear that its price and limitations mean it's not a one-size-fits-all solution. The good news is that the world of Cursor alternatives is packed with great options. Whether you want the predictable pricing of GitHub Copilot, the sheer speed of Zed, the privacy of Tabnine, or the free-for-all approach of Codeium, there’s something out there for you.

It all comes down to picking the right tool for the task at hand. You wouldn't use a screwdriver for a nail, right? The same logic applies here.

Just as you’re searching for the perfect AI sidekick for your developers, don't forget about your support team. If you want to give them the same kind of productivity boost, go and try eesel AI for free. You can get an AI agent running in minutes and see for yourself how much time it can free up.