Cursor vs. Copilot vs. Claude Code: What Each Actually Costs

Most developers use at least two AI coding tools. Many use three. Almost nobody knows what they're paying across all of them because each tool bills differently.

Cursor charges a monthly subscription. Copilot charges per seat. Claude Code charges per token. OpenRouter charges per model per call. Add them up and you might be surprised.

We built the PromptReports scanner to give you one number: your total AI coding cost across every tool.

The Real Cost of Each Tool

GitHub Copilot — $19/mo (Individual) or $39/mo (Business)

Copilot is the simplest to understand. Flat monthly fee. Unlimited completions. The cost is predictable.

What you get: Inline code completions, chat in VS Code, pull request summaries.

Hidden cost: Copilot's suggestions sometimes introduce subtle bugs that take time to debug. If those debugging sessions happen in Claude Code, Copilot's "free" completions are generating downstream token costs.

Cursor Pro — $20/mo

Cursor includes 500 "fast" requests/month (GPT-4 or Claude Sonnet class) and unlimited "slow" requests. The Pro plan adds more fast requests.

What you get: Full IDE with AI built in, code generation from descriptions, codebase-aware chat.

Hidden cost: When you exceed your fast request quota, Cursor switches to slower models. Developers often don't notice the switch and keep working, unaware that output quality has dropped.

Claude Code — Usage-based ($15-75/MTok)

Claude Code has no monthly fee. You pay per token. That means your cost depends entirely on how you use it.

Typical monthly cost: $100-600 depending on usage patterns.

What you get: The most capable AI coding assistant available. Agentic workflow, tool use, plan mode, subagents.

Hidden cost: Session length compounding. Message 30 costs far more than message 1 because the entire conversation history re-processes on every turn.

OpenRouter — Usage-based (varies by model)

If you're building AI features into your product, OpenRouter routes your calls to the optimal model.

Typical monthly cost: $50-500 depending on traffic.

Hidden cost: Default model selection. If your code always routes to Opus when Sonnet would suffice, you're overpaying by 5x on those calls.

A Typical Vibe Coder's Total

Here's what a real stack costs when you add everything up:

Service | Monthly Cost

Claude Code (primary tool) | $320

Cursor Pro (secondary editor) | $20

GitHub Copilot (inline completions) | $19

OpenRouter (API calls in app) | $153

Total AI coding cost | $512

That's before infrastructure, monitoring, or data services. The full vibe coding stack typically runs $800-2,000/month.

Overlap and Waste

The biggest savings come from identifying overlap:

Cursor + Claude Code overlap: If you use Claude Code for most of your coding, Cursor's AI features are largely redundant. Many developers keep Cursor for its editor but never use its AI chat. That's $20/month for a text editor.

Copilot + Claude Code overlap: Copilot's inline completions are useful for boilerplate, but if Claude Code is open in a terminal next to your editor, you're getting completions from two sources. Some developers find that disabling Copilot and using Claude Code exclusively is both cheaper and more productive.

OpenRouter model selection: If 80% of your OpenRouter calls go to Opus when the task doesn't require it, you're paying 5x more than necessary.

How to Scan Your Full Stack

npx @promptreports/cli --all

This scans all your AI services at once — Claude Code sessions, Cursor subscription, Copilot usage, OpenRouter API calls — and gives you one unified cost view.

The output categorizes each service and identifies where you have overlap, waste, or optimization opportunities.

Making the Decision

We're not going to tell you which tool to use. Every developer's workflow is different. What we will tell you is that most developers are paying for features they don't use across 2-3 overlapping tools.

The PromptReports dashboard tracks all your AI tools in one place. See what you're actually using, what you're paying, and where the overlap is.

npx @promptreports/cli

Start free at promptreports.ai.