With so many AI coding assistants out there, picking one to commit to felt like a big decision. I didn’t want to hop between tools every time I hit a token limit. I’ve used a few tools at work. I landed on Cursor Pro as my first paid AI development tool. Here’s why.
Free tools aren’t enough for sustained work. The limits on free tiers—requests per day, context size, or model access—are fine for quick experiments. But when you’re actually building something, hitting a cap mid-session and having to switch to another tool or wait until tomorrow is real friction. I wanted something I could rely on as my main environment, not a fallback when the free quota runs out.
It matched what I was already doing at work. I’d been using Cursor in my job before I left, so I knew how it behaved. I like being in an IDE even if I’m not writing the code. Cutting down my learning curve lets me focus on the results.
Setup is minimal. I don’t want to configure plugins, API keys, or model endpoints before I can get going. With Cursor I open the app, open a project, and start prompting.
So for now, Cursor is my default. If I start finding limitations, I’ll reassess, but for now I’m happy to be getting straight into it.