Cursor Student Discount 2026: What Students Get, Current Pricing, and the Credits That Cover It

Cursor's student page currently points to campus promotions rather than a standing discount. Here is what a student can get from Cursor today, what each plan costs, and why a student founder should look at model credits instead of an IDE coupon.

Free plan $0 Limited Agent and Chat, Cursor models only
Plus $8/mo Grok and Cursor models; Premium is $30 for Claude and GPT
Standing student discount None Campus-event promotions only; a free year of Pro has run before
Founders Free Anthropic and OpenAI API credits cover the models, not the seat

What you can actually get

Free credits that open up the day you start a company.

What Cursor offers students right now

Cursor's page at cursor.com/students is short. It says anyone can get started with Cursor for free, that students should look out for promotions at on-campus and online events starting this fall, and that the campus newsletter gets you early access to upcoming events, exclusive discounts, and beginner guides. It does not list a verification flow, a discount percentage, or eligible countries.

That is a change from the past. Cursor has previously run a promotion giving verified students a free year of Pro, and most searches for a Cursor student discount come from people who heard about that offer. Cursor appears to run student pricing as periodic campaigns tied to campus events rather than as a permanent tier. If the free-year offer is live when you read this, it will be on the students page; if not, the newsletter is where the next one will be announced.

The reliable part is the Free plan: $0, with limited Agent and Chat usage on Cursor's own models. For coursework it is often enough. For a semester-long project where you lean on the agent all day, you will hit the limit and be looking at Plus at $8 a month, or Premium at $30 if you want Claude and GPT.

Cursor pricing in 2026

From cursor.com/pricing as of October 2026, when Cursor replaced Hobby, Pro and Pro+ with new tiers bundled into the X Subscription. Full breakdown in our Cursor pricing guide.

PlanPriceUsageWhat you get
Free $0 Limited Agent and Chat with limited usage. No Claude or GPT. The plan most students should start on.
Plus $8/month ($80/year) Base pool Shared weekly Cursor and Grok usage pool. Grok and Cursor models only; no cloud agents, code review or third-party models.
Premium $30/month ($300/year) 4x Plus Latest Grok models, cloud agents, AI code reviews, and Claude, GPT and Gemini billed at API list price.
Super $100/month ($1,000/year) 15x Plus Everything in Premium plus priority model access at peak times.
Ultra $200/month ($2,000/year) 50x Plus Everything in Super plus earliest access to new products and models.
Teams $30, $100 or $200/seat/month Per seat tier Premium, Super or Ultra seats, centralized billing and admin, analytics, privacy settings, SAML/OIDC SSO.
Enterprise Custom Custom Invoice and PO billing, SCIM, access controls, audit logs, priority support.

The pricing page lists no student, education or startup tier. Any student pricing is a promotion layered on top of these plans.

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How to get the best Cursor deal as a student

There is no verification form to fill in today, so the steps are about positioning yourself for the next promotion and not paying for what you do not need.

  1. 1

    Install Cursor on the Free plan

    Download from cursor.com and sign up with your school email. Use it for a few weeks before deciding whether the usage limit is actually a problem for you.
  2. 2

    Sign up for the campus newsletter

    On cursor.com/students. This is where Cursor says it announces student discounts and events. If a free-year-of-Pro promotion returns, it will land in that list first.
  3. 3

    Watch for on-campus and online events

    Cursor runs campus events in the fall term with promotions attached. Computer science societies and hackathon organizers usually hear first; ask them whether Cursor is sponsoring anything at your school.
  4. 4

    Check the students page before paying

    If a student offer is live, it is listed at cursor.com/students with its own verification link. Claim it on your school email. If nothing is listed, Plus is $8 a month and Premium, the cheapest plan with Claude and GPT, is $30.
  5. 5

    Do not stack Cursor on top of Copilot you already have

    The GitHub Student Developer Pack gives you GitHub Copilot free with AI credits. If Copilot covers your work, you do not need to pay for Cursor as well. Try both on the free tiers and keep one.
  6. 6

    If you are building a company, look at model credits

    Cursor is the editor. The models your product calls are what cost money at scale, and startup credit programs cover that. See the founder section below.

What stage are you at?

Building something? Founders who incorporate unlock far more than any student plan. See what you qualify for in 60 seconds.

Student / just an idea Pre-seed Seed Series A+

Four quick questions. Free, and your matches land in your inbox.

Cursor vs GitHub Copilot vs Claude Code for students

Students have three serious options for an AI coding tool, and two of them have a real student price.

GitHub Copilot Free for students
Free for verified students through the GitHub Student Developer Pack, with AI credits included. Works inside VS Code, JetBrains and the terminal. This is the one with a guaranteed student offer.

Cursor

Free · Plus $8 · Premium $30
A full editor built around the agent. Student pricing is promotional; Claude and GPT bill at API list price on Premium and above. The most popular choice among students doing agentic, multi-file work, and the one with the most demand for a discount that does not currently exist.
Claude Code $20/mo
Anthropic's terminal agent, included in Claude Pro at $20 a month ($17 annual) with no student discount. Model-locked to Claude and runs alongside whatever editor you use. Our Claude Code pricing guide covers the plan allowances.

A sensible student setup

$0–$30/mo
Copilot from the pack for completions, Cursor Free, Plus or Premium for agentic work if you need it, and the Claude or OpenAI free API credit on a Console account for anything you build that calls a model.

Is a paid Cursor plan worth it for a student?

It depends on how often you hit the Free plan's limit, and which models you want. Cursor's value is the agent doing multi-file edits, running commands and fixing its own errors. If you use it for autocomplete and the odd explanation, Free covers you and Copilot from the GitHub pack covers the rest.

If you are in the agent for hours on a semester project, Plus at $8 a month gives you a weekly pool on Grok and Cursor's own models, which is cheap. Premium at $30 adds cloud agents, code review and access to Claude and GPT, but note that those third-party models bill at API list price on top of the subscription. Two habits keep the cost down: pay only in heavy months and drop back to Free in quiet ones, and check the students page before each renewal in case a promotion has opened.

What a Cursor plan does not change is model cost when you build something that calls an API yourself. Cursor's plan covers the tokens Cursor spends inside the editor, not the tokens your app spends in production. For that, a free Console credit from Anthropic or OpenAI is the student answer and startup credits are the founder answer.

For founders

Building a company? The IDE is cheap. Get the models free.

Cursor does not run a startup program, and there is nothing in our directory that discounts a Cursor subscription for a company. For a two-person startup, two Premium seats are $60 a month, which is not the number to optimize.

Stage
Pre-seed to Series A
Equity
None taken
Referral
Not needed
See eligibility & how to apply Apply
The fine print

The number to optimize is model spend. Cursor calls frontier models from Anthropic, OpenAI and others, and if your product does the same, that is your real cost. Claude for Startups is currently closed to new applicants; our page tracks when it reopens, and startups backed by an Anthropic partner VC can ask their investor about partner credits. OpenAI for Startups credits come through partner VCs with a referral code rather than a public application, and Microsoft for Startups Azure credits cover OpenAI models on Azure. None of these pays for your Cursor seat; they pay for the tokens your product consumes, which is where the money goes.

If you have not incorporated yet, that is the first step for every program above. Once you have a company email and website, you can apply. Our Cursor pricing guide covers the team plans, and the Claude API pricing and OpenAI API pricing guides show what the credits are worth in tokens.

Claude for Startups

Up to $100,000

  • 1 year of Claude Team free for up to five Premium seats (if new to Team)
  • $1,000 in Claude API credits, plus higher API rate limits
  • Up to $45,000 in partner offers (Claude Startup Stack)

Questions founders ask

Does Cursor have a student discount?
Not as a standing offer. As of our verified date, cursor.com/students says anyone can start for free and tells students to watch for promotions at campus and online events, with a campus newsletter for early access to discounts. Cursor has run a free year of Pro for verified students in the past as a promotion.
Is Cursor free for students?
The Free plan is $0 for everyone, students included, with limited Agent and Chat usage on Cursor's own models. There is no separate permanent free tier for students, but Cursor periodically runs student promotions through campus and online events.
How much is Cursor Pro?
Cursor retired Pro in October 2026. The current plans are Free, Plus at $8 a month, Premium at $30, Super at $100 and Ultra at $200, with Teams seats at $30, $100 or $200 per user. Premium is the closest equivalent to the old Pro and the cheapest plan with Claude and GPT, which bill at API list price.
How do I get the Cursor student offer when it is running?
It is announced on cursor.com/students and through the campus newsletter, with a verification link tied to your school email. Sign up for the newsletter now so you hear when the next promotion opens.
Is GitHub Copilot free for students?
Yes. GitHub Copilot Student is included in the GitHub Student Developer Pack, free with AI credits for verified students. It is the most reliable free AI coding tool for students and a reason many do not need to pay for Cursor Pro.
Does Cursor have a startup program?
No. There is no Cursor startup credit or discount in our directory. Startups reduce their AI cost through model credits instead, such as Microsoft for Startups Azure credits for OpenAI models and partner-VC routes into OpenAI and Anthropic credits.
Can I use Cursor with startup API credits?
Startup credits from Anthropic or OpenAI apply to API usage on your own account, not to a Cursor subscription. They cover the tokens your product consumes. Your Cursor seat is billed by Cursor separately.

Related guides

Cursor pricing

Every plan, usage rules and team options.

GitHub Student Developer Pack

Free Copilot and 70+ other student offers.

Claude Code pricing

The other agentic coding tool and what it costs.

Claude student discount

What students can get from Anthropic.

Claude for Startups

Anthropic's startup program, currently closed to new applicants.

OpenAI for Startups

API credits for GPT models.

More student guides

Programs in this guide

Anthropic Up to $100,000 OpenAI Up to Varies GitHub Up to $10,000