replacing Cursor

Open Source Cursor Alternatives

AI-first code editor built on VS Code — Cursor pricing: Free tier; Pro $20/month; Business $40/user/month. Below: 3 free, self-hostable open source projects that cover the same ground, ranked by real GitHub adoption.

There are 3 open source Cursor alternatives tracked on this registry, against Cursor pricing of Free tier; Pro $20/month; Business $40/user/month. The most-adopted is vscode with 194,544 GitHub stars under MIT, written in TypeScript. Together the set has 280,881 stars across 2 languages and 2 licences. All 3 are free to self-host with no licence fee, and 2 of 3 received a commit in the last 90 days. 3 head-to-head Cursor comparisons are available.

Cursor is a closed-source fork of VS Code, so you depend on one vendor for editor updates and for the AI layer at once. Its value depends on sending code context to a hosted model, which some teams cannot accept, and the free tier's request limits are tight enough to interrupt real work.

Other hosted options

The open source projects below are free to self-host. If you would rather pay for a managed service, these are the hosted products in the same space — listed with the vendor's own pricing.

Claude Code hosted Anthropic's terminal coding agent Included with Claude Pro/Max ($20-$200/month); API usage billed separately OpenAI Codex hosted OpenAI's cloud coding agent Included with ChatGPT Plus/Pro ($20-$200/month); API billed separately

Our top 3 Cursor alternatives

vscode ★ 195K

This repository, referred to in the README as `Code - OSS`, is where Microsoft and the wider community develop the Visual Studio Code product together. The source is published under the standard MIT license, and the project ships its roadmap, monthly iteration plans, and endgame plans in the open on the project wiki, so the direction of the editor is visible rather than decided behind closed doors. The codebase is TypeScript running on Electron, and the surrounding topics list — editor, electron, microsoft, typescript, visual-studio-code — reflects that stack exactly.

MIT · TypeScript · Cursor vs vscode →

Aider ★ 50K

Aider is an open-source AI pair programming tool that runs in the terminal. It connects to large language models—cloud-based or local—to assist with writing, editing, and debugging code directly within a developer’s existing workflow. Built in Python and licensed under Apache-2.0, it integrates with popular LLMs including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini, and open-source models like Llama.

Apache-2.0 · Python · Cursor vs Aider →

Continue ★ 36K

Continue is an open-source coding agent designed to assist developers directly within their IDE or terminal. It operates as a CLI tool, VS Code extension, and JetBrains plugin, enabling natural-language interaction with codebases to generate, edit, and explain code. The project lives in the AI-assisted developer tools ecosystem and is built with TypeScript under the Apache-2.0 license.

Apache-2.0 · TypeScript · Cursor vs Continue →

vscode ★ 195K

Visual Studio Code

rank001 licenseMIT written inTypeScript

Aider ★ 50K

AI pair programmer that works inside your terminal

rank002 licenseApache-2.0 written inPython

Continue ★ 36K

Open-source coding agent for your IDE and terminal

rank003 licenseApache-2.0 written inTypeScript

last updated nightly · ranking method: github stars, live-tracked

Frequently asked questions

What is the best open source alternative to Cursor?

vscode is the most-starred open source alternative to Cursor in this registry, with 194,544 GitHub stars. 3 alternatives are compared here in total.

Are there free alternatives to Cursor?

Yes. Every project listed on this page is open source and free to self-host — there is no licence fee. Some projects also sell a managed hosted version, but the self-hosted path costs nothing.

What should I look at when replacing Cursor?

Compare licence terms, community size (stars), primary language and release activity. A fast-moving project with a compatible licence and an active maintainer base matters more than raw star count when you are committing to a migration.