What is Cursor?
Cursor is an AI-native code editor — a polished VS Code fork built around AI from the ground up. You get unlimited tab completion, the Composer agent (Cursor's own coding model), Bugbot for automated code review, and Cloud Agents, all inside one app. Individual plans run $20/mo (Pro), $60/mo (Pro Plus) and $200/mo (Ultra), with team plans from $40/user/mo.
Each plan bundles a dollar amount of model usage — about $20 on Pro, ~$70 on Pro Plus, ~$400 on Ultra. Cursor runs two usage pools: a cheaper Auto / Composer pool for everyday agentic coding, and an API pool billed at each model's published rate. Cross the included amount and you continue pay-as-you-go at API rates.
What you're really buying with Cursor is the experience: a finished editor where the AI is woven into every keystroke.
What is DevPass?
DevPass by LLM Gateway isn't an editor — it's the model layer underneath your editor. One API key unlocks 200+ models — Claude Opus 4.7, GPT-5.5, Gemini 3.1 Pro, plus the open-weight coders like GLM, Kimi and Qwen — for a flat monthly price: $29 (Lite), $79 (Pro) or $179 (Max).
Instead of bundling usage into opaque credits, DevPass meters every request at the provider's own published rate and shows you the dollar cost in real time. The allowance is generous: roughly $3 of model usage for every $1 you pay (so ~$237 of usage on the $79 Pro plan). It plugs into anything OpenAI- or Anthropic-compatible — Claude Code, OpenCode, Zed, Cline — and even into Cursor itself.
The real difference: an editor vs a model layer
This is the comparison in one line:
- Cursor is an app. You adopt its editor, and the models come bundled in. Brilliant if you want one finished tool that does everything — but you're inside Cursor, on Cursor's curated model set, with usage you can't see in plain dollars.
- DevPass is your model access. You keep whatever tools you already use and point them at one key for every model, at provider rates, with a transparent per-request bill — no editor lock-in.
Neither is strictly "better." They sit at different layers of your stack.
Pricing: what your money actually buys
Cursor folds usage into the subscription. On Pro, $20/mo includes roughly $20 of API-rate usage — about break-even — though the cheaper Auto/Composer pool stretches it further for everyday work. Ultra gives the best ratio at about 2× ($400 of usage for $200).
DevPass gives roughly 3× on every plan, metered at the providers' published rates:
- Lite — $29/mo → ~$87 of model usage
- Pro — $79/mo → ~$237 of model usage
- Max — $179/mo → ~$537 of model usage
Every request shows its exact dollar cost in your dashboard, and SoulForge — graph-powered context that cuts roughly half the tokens — stretches that allowance even further.
Model catalog: 200+ vs a curated set
Cursor curates around 40 models — the major Claude, GPT, Gemini and Grok releases, plus its own Composer. It's a tight, well-chosen list, but it's a list someone else picks.
DevPass carries 200+ models under the same key, frontier and open-weight, and you choose freely per request — Claude for a hard refactor, GPT-5.5 for reasoning, GLM or Qwen when you want cheap throughput. No model is gated behind a different subscription.
Can you use them together?
Yes — and it's often the smart move. Because DevPass is OpenAI-compatible, you can point Cursor's custom API key setting at DevPass and run all 200+ models from inside the Cursor editor you already like, while getting DevPass's provider-rate pricing and real-dollar cost dashboard. You keep Cursor's UX; you swap in DevPass's catalog and economics.
Who should choose which
Choose Cursor if you want a finished AI editor — unlimited tab completion, the Composer agent, Bugbot review — and you're happy living inside one polished app with a curated model set.
Choose DevPass if you already work in Claude Code, OpenCode, Zed or Cline (or want to bring 200+ models into Cursor itself), and you value transparent provider-rate pricing, ~3× usage value, and zero model lock-in over a bundled editor experience.