Cursor vs Copilot: a year of daily use

I'm going to give you the honest take, not the one that gets retweets. I've been using GitHub Copilot since the beta and switched to Cursor as my primary editor about 14 months ago. I still have both active.

Where Copilot still wins

Autocomplete. Full stop. Copilot's line-by-line completion is still smoother and faster than Cursor's equivalent. When I'm in flow writing TypeScript, Copilot often finishes my thought before I'm done thinking it. Cursor's autocomplete feels like it's one generation behind.

Copilot also has better IDE integration if you're not a VS Code person. JetBrains support is actually solid now. Cursor is basically a VS Code fork and that's all it'll ever be.

Where Cursor wins, and it's not close

Everything else. Cursor's Cmd+K for inline edits, the multi-file context with @codebase, the ability to paste an error and have it find and fix the relevant code across five files — this stuff has actually changed how I work.

I recently refactored a 3,000-line module in about 40 minutes that I estimated would take half a day. I described what I wanted, reviewed the diffs, asked for changes, reviewed again. It felt like pair programming with someone who reads fast and doesn't get tired.

Copilot makes you faster. Cursor makes you think differently about what's possible.

The honest recommendation

If you're on a team with a Copilot Business license already, it's hard to justify the extra $20/month for Cursor personally — especially since Copilot is catching up fast. But if you're paying out of pocket or making the call for your team, Cursor's chat and multi-file edit is worth it right now. That gap is real.

I use Cursor for everything. I have Copilot installed for the autocomplete on days when Cursor's feels sluggish. That's probably not the answer you wanted, but it's the true one.