What are the limits of Cursor free plan?
Cursor's free Hobby plan gives you limited Tab autocompletes (community-reported around 2,000/month) and a small pool of Agent and Chat requests using premium models. There's no fixed public number, and heavy or slow requests get throttled. Privacy Mode is included. New users also get a two-week Pro trial (as of 2026-07).
Why — the first-principles explanation
The free plan's limits exist for one reason: compute costs money. Every premium AI request Cursor runs on your behalf is billed to Cursor by a model provider. To give away a free tier without losing money, Cursor must cap how much of that expensive compute each free user consumes.
The caps fall into two buckets. Tab autocomplete uses a fast, cheap in-house model, so the free plan can afford to give you a lot of it, community estimates hover around 2,000 completions per month. Agent and Chat requests using frontier models like Claude or GPT are far more expensive, so the free pool for those is small and can be throttled during busy periods.
Cursor has moved away from publishing a single hard number, which is why you'll see "limited" rather than an exact figure. The practical effect is the same: light use fits, but running the agent on big tasks will exhaust the premium pool quickly.
Importantly, the free plan is not stripped of safety features, Privacy Mode is included, so free users can still keep their code from being trained on. The limits are about quantity of AI usage, not about weaker protection.
An example that makes it click
The free plan is like a food-court sampler booth. The cheap snacks, the little pretzel bites, you can grab a lot of them (that's Tab autocomplete). But the premium item, the steak sample (Agent and Chat with top models), only a few pieces are set out, and during the lunch rush they run low and you wait longer. Nobody's watering down the food; there's just a limit on how much of the expensive stuff you get for free. Come back next month and the booth refills.
Key facts
- The free Hobby plan requires no credit card (as of 2026-07).
- Tab autocompletes are limited, with community-reported figures around 2,000 per month.
- Premium Agent and Chat requests draw from a small monthly pool and can be throttled.
- Cursor no longer publishes a single fixed number, describing free usage as 'limited'.
- Privacy Mode is included on the free plan, so code isn't used for training.
- New users get a roughly two-week Pro trial before falling back to Hobby limits.
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What are the limits of Cursor's free Hobby plan? It comes down to two buckets, because compute costs money. First, Tab autocomplete, the AI finishing your lines as you type. That uses a cheap, fast in-house model, so the free plan gives you a lot of it, community estimates say around two thousand completions a month. Second, the premium stuff: Agent and Chat requests that use top models like Claude or GPT. Those are expensive for Cursor to run, so the free pool is small and can get throttled when servers are busy. Cursor doesn't publish one exact number anymore, they just call it limited. The key thing: light or occasional coding fits fine, but running the agent on big tasks will burn through the premium pool fast. And good news, Privacy Mode is included even on free, so your code isn't used for training. The limits are about how much AI you get, not weaker protection.
What authoritative sources say
People also ask
How many free requests does Cursor give?
There's no single published number. Tab completions are generous (around 2,000/month by community reports); premium Agent/Chat requests are a small pool.
Does the free plan expire?
No. The Hobby plan is free forever, though your monthly usage caps reset each month.
Is my code protected on the free plan?
Yes. Privacy Mode is available on free, so your code isn't stored or used for training when enabled.
What happens when I hit the free limits?
AI features pause or throttle until the next reset, and Cursor prompts you to upgrade for more usage.