2 weeks ago
Wed Apr 16, 2025 10:38am PST
Ask HN: How does Cursor make money? Please ELI5
Cursor's Pro plan offers 500 "fast" GPT-4 level requests + unlimited "slow" requests for $20/month. I'm struggling to see how this is sustainable given LLM API costs.

A rough estimate for just the 500 fast requests:

Assume ~1,200 tokens/request (modest input/output). Total: 500 * 1,200 = 600,000 tokens/month.

Using even cheaper modern models like GPT-4o (~5/15 per M tokens), this is ~5/month. Using older GPT-4 models (30/60 per M) would push costs well over 20.

This basic calculation doesn't include: The cost of unlimited slow requests, Infrastructure, overhead, R&D, Longer context usage typical in coding.

How can Cursor offer this at $20/month? What's the likely strategy here? Seems like the raw API costs alone could easily approach or exceed the subscription fee for many users. What am I missing?

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