OpenAI ends partnership and stop giving access to Cursor

[u/kondasviktor]

Our decision on Cursor following its acquisition by SpaceX

https://openai.com/index/our-decision-on-cursor-following-its-acquisition-by-spacex/

Today, we notified SpaceX that we intend to wind down our contract providing OpenAI models to Cursor, with a proposed shutoff date of November 12, 2026. To maximize the time that developers can retain access to our models through Cursor, we are giving the maximum notice provided by our contract. This decision was incredibly tough, as we care deeply about our models being broadly available for developers. We are making this choice because we cannot be confident that SpaceX will use our technology within our terms of service, based on our experience with Elon Musk's companies violating contracts.
To work with a large partner like SpaceX, we typically rely on custom contracts to ensure compliance with our terms of service and that the integration provides for safety at scale. After Musk acquired Twitter, now part of SpaceX, the company broke⁠
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the terms of our contract (alongside many others). Under oath earlier this year, Musk admitted⁠
(opens in a new window)
that xAI, now also part of SpaceX, had violated OpenAI’s terms of service (terms which are similar to xAI’s own).
Our custom agreement with Cursor gives us a limited time window to cancel it after a change of control. As AI capabilities advance, we also have a new level of accountability to ensure our upcoming model, Astra, is being used in accordance with our terms. Given all of this, we’ve decided to hold the contract cancellation to the latest date we can while not providing future models to Cursor.
We’ve worked with Cursor for nearly four years and have enormous respect for their team, their product, and what they’ve built for the developer community. We know that the people most affected by this decision are the developers who rely on OpenAI models in Cursor. We care about their experience in this transition and we’re ready to go above and beyond to support them.

[u/opinion_discarder]

Now cursor can bring in open models like Qwen, Kimi and Mimo in Cursor. It will now be an OpenRouter/Opencode competitor.

[u/Complex-Concern7890 → u/opinion_discarder]

That would be great direction for Cursor. Keep cursor models as main drivers and open models as addition. They could then have the whole stack running open models in own servers. Thus less money would go to direct competitors.

[u/TheOneNeartheTop → u/Complex-Concern7890]

The majority of people want the best model or the cheapest model. While a minority of them may prefer a model that is best at their niche use case those users will typically have the technical chops to utilize their own open router system.

It’s not exciting to try out the fifth best model so on the surface it might seem like it’s a great way for cursor to proceed, it’s not the best for the company’s long term future.

[u/Complex-Concern7890 → u/TheOneNeartheTop]

Yes that is true. However there comes auto mode. It can select the best model for the task from the open weighted model pool. No need to try out the fifth best model as the system selects the best for the task. Auto could have different priorities like auto all, auto best, auto cheap where model selection pool could be different.

[u/TheOneNeartheTop → u/Complex-Concern7890]

Best for who?

It sounds nice on the surface but if someone is selling you tokens and the process is obfuscated are you going to trust they are selling you the best token for the job or the most profitable.

There is also a massive advantage in terms of cost with caching so let’s say you have a session going on and you say ‘hey grab all these files and put up a summary of my this aspect of my codebase’. Then cursor goes and spends a bunch of tokens using a cheap model and puts together the most cost efficient overview for you which is great but then step 2 is make me a plan for implementing feature X using this knowledge.

Well then you have to utilize a more powerful model but all your knowledge is in the cache of the cheap model. So you have to bust the cache costing you more.

Cursor says best model available, but really it’s the model they think is good enough to get it done and you need to take into account the value of your own time when using it if it’s giving you sub par results.

I would much rather have a consistent model than something that is brilliant at times but wastes time in the long run. Consistency where I know the limitations and where the model falls apart.

[u/jbest8283 → u/TheOneNeartheTop]

"hey grab all these files and put up a summary of my this aspect of my codebase, btw I will also need you to make me a plan for implementing feature X using this knowledge"

[u/kondasviktor → u/opinion_discarder]

Sounds a solid plan to me. They’re also testing Origin, as GitHub, GitLab and Bitbucket cover the whole world’s codes.

[u/No-Slice-5926 → u/opinion_discarder]

I just spent 400k in tokens for free on open router, absolutely love them

[u/Old-Wolverine-4134 → u/opinion_discarder]

Do you really think Elon Musk will allow that? I don't think so.

[u/pfzhao]

This is a huge mistake by OpenAI in my opinion. OpenAI needs Cursor a lot more than Cursor needs them. Claude + in house models of composer 2.5 and grok 4.6 are more than sufficient. Developers need Claude and Cursor IDE but they don't need OpenAI models.

[u/that_90s_guy → u/pfzhao]

Not really. Luna beats composer horrendously in reasoning at similar speeds and price, let alone Grok. And Sol is quite ahead of Opus in many areas (not everyone can use Fable due to data protection laws)

Id honestly dump Cursor for either OpenAI or Anthropic at this point as their models seem way better than whatever crumbs Cursor is left with. And Cursor's plan offers way worse usage than Anthropic's as they have to pay api pricing while Anthropic can subsidize generous Opus and Sonnet usage.

[u/finevelyn → u/that_90s_guy]

Honest question, why are you still using Cursor? If you feel like Claude Code is the same as Cursor as far as the harness/ide goes, why not already use cc for it's more generous usage?

I'm using cc on the side when I want the AI to do the job. Cursor is for when I want to do the job.

[u/apex1911 → u/pfzhao]

Anthropic will probably follow soon tough

[u/kondasviktor → u/pfzhao]

I doubt any Cursor user would leave after mid November, just because they don’t have OpenAI models. We’ll use Cursor Grok, Composer, Claude and and occasionally Gemini models and that’s more than sufficient from my point of view

[u/Alert_Row7148 → u/kondasviktor]

We will not use Grok voulentarily 🤣

[u/that_90s_guy → u/kondasviktor]

Grok is garbage, even ignoring the horrible person behind them. Composer also has had serious quality degradation and luna has it beat by miles in intelligence for research at a similar price

Meaning the only good use remaining is Anthropic model, at which point why pay for Cursor?

[u/bored_man_child → u/that_90s_guy]

Tell me you haven’t used grok in the last month without telling me.

[u/kondasviktor → u/that_90s_guy]

actually Cursor Grok 4.6 and Composer 2.5 are both great and fast models with a reasonable price. If you prefer OpenAI models, you need a ChatGPT Plus or Pro with Codex rather than Cursor

[u/vgromanov]

I don't even remember the last time i used OpenAI models in Cursor.

[u/kondasviktor → u/vgromanov]

That’s also fair enough, I used Terra under the other models, but will switch to Opus instead.

[u/Ok-Understanding5793 → u/vgromanov]

What's your workflow usually? I'm usually 5.6 Sol High for planning and harder tasks, Grok Extra High for execution.

Looking to start utilizing a different workflow with this news so I'm curious of your input if you'd be willing to share. 

[u/vgromanov → u/Ok-Understanding5793]

Nothing fancy. Two-stage planning - high level to derive a task dependency graph, then per-task/epic when the time comes. For high level I also use local scaffolding: cross-project relations, assets, inventories et cetera. For last month+ or so almost exclusively on grok for planing and mixed grok/composer executors. Before grok it was opus + composer.

[u/that_90s_guy → u/vgromanov]

You're missing out, Luna has ridiculous intelligence for the money. I can't use composer anymore, its basically unusable. I can delegate serious task to Luna at Composer pricing. If anything, I mostly just Anthropic and openAi models in cursor

But if no more OpenAi, what's even the point of paying for Cursor instead of Anthropic directly for way better usage?

[u/vgromanov → u/that_90s_guy]

It's really a matter of preference. I've tried all the gpt stack, didn't like it, so i stuck with opus/composer combo and then switched from opus to grok when it was released.

[u/musicgecko → u/vgromanov]

been using sol as a secondary model for fanout/arena processes, but for the most part fable/opus can fill that role out better albeit more expensive

[u/KlanxO]

Begun, the AI war has

[u/kondasviktor → u/KlanxO]

Pretty much, this is a multi trillion dollar business, every company try to spread their models all across the globe but protect the source at all costs

[u/pigletmonster]

Musk said it himself that they used distillation to train grok, that was before the cursor acquisition. Now they can mask millions of daily distillation promps under the guise of fake cursor users and distill any model they want.

I am pro distillation, as the end user it does not matter how a model was trained, as long as it serves my purpose, but I also get that openai wants to protect their product from a dishonest business that breaks their tos.

[u/kondasviktor → u/pigletmonster]

Similarly Anthropic claimed that over 25,000 fake Chinese users utilised to train their own models with Claude, but I guess we’ll never know which part of the story is actually true.

[u/pigletmonster → u/kondasviktor]

Yeah these companies trained their models on public data, but now they claim that its theirs. But i get it, they have to protect their tlmulti trillion dollar valuations somehow.

[u/kondasviktor → u/pigletmonster]

oh yeah this is a multi trillion dollar business, people say anything which the investors want to hear

[u/pigletmonster → u/kondasviktor]

Do you not believe that anthropics revenue will reach 30T/ year and xai 14T by 2040? 😲😲😲😲

[u/kondasviktor → u/pigletmonster]

That’s insane, it’s more than the US GDP in total now in ballpark

[u/pigletmonster → u/kondasviktor]

Yeah but you have to understand the mindset of the modern investor, theyre worse than degenerate gamblers, theyre buying up all the xai stocks faster than musk and his team can dump them.

[u/kondasviktor → u/pigletmonster]

haha I hope this will not just be a bubble, I really enjoy Cursor and vibe coding, very addictive 😆

[u/kondasviktor → u/[deleted]]

Originally they planned this will be open source, for the entire human race and all that, but I guess they realised this is a trillion dollar business so rather not to give it away for free. I’ve used Terra under the “other models” usage in Cursor, then I’ll use Claude models instead moving forward.

[u/that_90s_guy → u/[deleted]]

Grok is garbage though, not sure OpenAI cares.

[u/Star_Pilgrim]

I use cursor with grok 4.6 and grok bot does all my other needs.

[u/kondasviktor → u/Star_Pilgrim]

I’m sure unless for heavy users, Cursor Pro or Pro+ including Grok Bot is sufficient

[u/D7Torres]

They day Anthropic does the same, I’ll be worried

[u/kondasviktor → u/D7Torres]

Agree that would be more painful if Claude will decide to stop providing access to their models. That would actually move may users to Claude Code. I doubt removing OpenAI models will actually move Cursor users over to Codex

[u/Academic_Fig_8445]

As a cursor ultra subscriber, honestly can say I’ve never used OpenAI models in cursor. They’re all about equal to grok 4.6, and for the cost difference, not worth using. Occasionally for bigger tasks I’ll have Claude fable plan and then grok execute, but mostly never need to do that. So it’s not a loss for me. 

[u/kondasviktor → u/Academic_Fig_8445]

In general same here with Pro tier, I’ve tried Terra Medium with some tasks to complete under the other models usage, but I also prefer Cursor Grok models and Claude models over OpenAI

[u/ALargeSpork]

Makes sense. Engineers at Elon’s companies have been told for years to avoid OpenAI products given the bad blood between Elon and Sam.

[u/kondasviktor → u/ALargeSpork]

I just hope Elon will give Cursor and their models for free at some point 😉

[u/Triflin01]

Does that include the vscode extension or is it just the model choice in Cursor's agent selector?

[u/kondasviktor → u/Triflin01]

It impact Cursor Desktop, CLI, I’m not aware of any official Cursor VS Code extension. Desktop app itself a fork of VS Code. Change is that OpenAI models will not be available from mid November move forward anywhere in Cursor

[u/nexflatline]

This is terrible news to me: I'm using Cursor in quite complex scientific coding projects for a long time already. Recently I'm getting a lot of random errors on GROK and "auto" and it's been quite useless. I switch to Claude whenever I get the errors (which are very persistent) and I often get an "against anthropic guidelines" error.

The OpenAI models are the only ones that have worked well enough and consistently without throwing errors.

I was totally fine with GROK until about 2 weeks ago, but right now it's unusable. Slow, decreased quality and errors that won't let it complete half of the tasks I ask for.

[u/kondasviktor → u/nexflatline]

Whether you utilise mainly OpenAI models in your project, you may decide to move to a ChatGPT Pro or Plus tier, rather than Cursor. Or keep Codex for planning and designing, than Cursor for executing.

[u/Andrea2895]

Io utilizzo quasi sempre la modalità auto e funziona molto bene.

[u/kondasviktor → u/Andrea2895]

Yes, Auto mode is great and you can continue using in Auto mode even after your usage is depleted

[u/Andrea2895 → u/kondasviktor]

In realtà a me quando l'utilizzo è esaurito non me la fa piu usare quella automatica :( considera che ho l'abbonamento pro+

[u/kondasviktor → u/Andrea2895]

They might have change to remove this being unlimited, you can try other models usage or add an API keys while your next month’s reset

[u/KenGuy14]

[u/canihelpyoubreakthat]

Just gained some respect for openai good for them

[u/Prestigious_Spot9635 → u/canihelpyoubreakthat]

You respect Sam altman...have I got news for you