It has access to all top models, great IDE integration and their AI based autocomplete is still unbeaten.
I have no desire to use a TUI, feels like a downgrade to me.
CC is mostly my default for large tasks / features (ex. Plan > execute plan ) Biggest gripe with Claude Code is that it is painfully slow relative to the other two.
Cursor for small stuff like bug fixes since it has a lot of models to choose from. I love the review/ diff / checkpoint features. It's planning feature is on par with CC. I'd probably use Cursor as primary driver if it had better cost efficiency. Next version or two of Composer may fill that gap in cost/quality/speed.
Codex isn't allowed at my work, but I use it for personal projects. It has the best balance of quality / cost / speed even if it's planner is poor and quite frankly the codex harness needs to catch up with the other two.
CC for quality / cost. Cursor for quality / speed. Codex for balance of the 3.
Good: - Composer 2.5 is pretty decent for the quality / price ratio. - Easy to assign an issue to it in Linear (I know Linear just added this natively for linear agent, but it seems rubbish compared to Cursor) - Bugbot actually finds some useful issues (things Claude and Codex will miss) - Using @cursor in github usually works well, and better than @copilot. - Working with Python Monorepos with UV in their IDE. VSCode and Cursor work well here (Antigravity managed to screw it up somehow).
The Bad: - Usage/billing dashboards - These are are opaque and you can't attribute what actions map to what spend. - cursor won't follow PRs well like Claude Codes does. - Setting up environments is less good than Claude Code - Their IDE fork is woefully out of date, it'd be nice if it had more of the codeium fixes.
The Ugly: - Settings - Try to turn off bugbot, there's multiple places you have to do it. Good luck figuring them all out. - Support - they are polite, but gas light you and tell you it's your fault their product's settings are awful.
Cheers!
largely lags behind opus4.7/gpt5.4, but is respectable, and generally outperforms the glm/qwen equivalents anecdotally despite benchmarks.
fails to follow instructions more often, and is less code critical, but performs okay if you can decompose the task to smaller problem spaces. i.e. only do manual review, only do typechecking, only do specific component. etc
https://artificialanalysis.ai/agents/coding-agents?coding-ag...
I think my relationship with cursor was the shortest of all.
Claude Code is like... I dunno, something better than magic because it actually exists.
I like the ability to switch between any models, Composer 2.5 is really solid, I like having my agents coworking in the IDE with me, the plan mode is great, Cloud Agents are great, especially with slack, linear, web, etc integrations. I routinely tag an error report in slack and Cursor fires up a Composer 2.5 cloud agent that has readonly db access, access to error reporting, etc, and it can triage the issue, issue a PR, and tag me in slack.
The only thing I’ve felt like I’m missing out on is the subsidies of the CC/Codex subscriptions, but it seems like that is rapidly eroding anyway.
Without revealing what your product is; how did you come across a good problem statement?
I've started on the bootstrapped train as well, also a senior engg.
I'd launched a pre AI software which grew to 5000 users and more and made me some money.
but post AI, I'm finding it hard to get into a non competitive industry. Like everything seems super captured already.
Isn't that kind of Elon's thing?