How long the Cursor free plan lasts depends on how intensely you write code. The official wording only says limited usage and gives no specific numbers; community testing puts it at roughly 2,000 Tab completions and about 50 slow premium model requests per month. Light use can stretch for a week or two, while heavy use can run dry within days. Usage resets every month.
Tab completions: 2,000 sounds like a lot
Tab completions are the code suggestions that pop up automatically as you write; each accepted suggestion counts once. The figure of 2,000 per month from community testing is only a rule of thumb — the company has not published this number, and the remaining allowance can differ from one account to another. Someone writing code for several hours a day can accept twenty or thirty completions an hour, so making 2,000 last a whole month is hard. Once the allowance runs out, completions stop, but the editor itself keeps working.
Premium model requests: use the 50 carefully
The other allowance is premium model requests: community testing puts it at about 50 slow requests per month, and again this is not an official number. The free plan only offers the Auto model — you cannot pick frontier models such as Claude or GPT yourself — and cloud agents require Pro or higher. A complex task can burn through several requests in one multi-turn conversation, so 50 requests do not survive daily heavy use; break a large refactoring job into small tasks first.
After the allowance runs out, is Pro worth it?
Running out does not trigger automatic charges; features simply stay on the free tier until the allowance resets next month, unless you upgrade. Pro costs $20 a month, with unlimited Tab completions and a $20 monthly allowance for frontier models; Pro+ costs $60 and Ultra costs $200, for individuals and teams with heavier usage. New accounts often see a Pro trial when signing up — the length shown on the sign-up page applies, and once the trial ends you return to the free plan allowance. The test is simple: if your work gets blocked by the allowance twice in a month, Pro is worth it; if you only edit small scripts now and then, the free plan is enough.
