--- title: "Claude Code vs Cursor — AI hype compared · Above the Fog" canonical_url: https://abovethefog.app/compare/claude_code-vs-cursor as_of: 2026-10-29 updated: 2026-10-30T16:24:07Z --- # Claude Code vs Cursor [Home](https://abovethefog.app/index.md) › [Compare](https://abovethefog.app/compare.md) › Claude Code vs Cursor [Claude Code](https://abovethefog.app/topics/claude_code.md) and [Cursor](https://abovethefog.app/topics/cursor.md) side by side on Above the Fog’s AI hype radar, on Oct 29, 2026: Claude Code is 🚀 Rising with a hype score of 36 and Cursor is 🚀 Rising with 25. The radar’s curated relations list them as competitors. **Data note:** 7 of the last 14 days were not collected live. No collection ran on Oct 22–Oct 28, or a later run refilled those days at once. Every hype score is measured against the 14 days before it and those days are thin, so the scores, the stages and the week-over-week theme trends may read higher than they are until they leave that window on Nov 12. ## At a glance | Measure | Claude Code | Cursor | |---|---|---| | Stage | 🚀 Rising | 🚀 Rising | | Hype score | 36.4 | 25.2 | | 7-day change | +29 | +20.2 | | In hype since | Oct 29, 2026 | Oct 29, 2026 | | Peak, 30 days | 56.9 on Oct 16, 2026 | 45.5 on Oct 13, 2026 | | Stories in 7 days | 626 | 167 | | Share of voice, 7 days | 4.5% | 1.5% | | Sources above normal | 3 of 19 | 2 of 18 | | Category | 🤖 Agents | 🤖 Agents | ## Hype score, last 30 days Both hype scores by day, newest first; on the page’s chart, Claude Code is the solid line and Cursor the dashed one. | Day | Claude Code | Cursor | |---|---:|---:| | Oct 29, 2026 | 36.4 | 25.2 | | Oct 28, 2026 | 3.5 | 8.9 | | Oct 27, 2026 | 2.7 | 0.4 | | Oct 26, 2026 | 1.4 | 0 | | Oct 25, 2026 | 0 | 0 | | Oct 24, 2026 | 2 | 0 | | Oct 23, 2026 | 5.1 | 5 | | Oct 22, 2026 | 7.3 | 5 | | Oct 21, 2026 | 15.9 | 15.6 | | Oct 20, 2026 | 38.6 | 22.2 | | Oct 19, 2026 | 49.4 | 9.3 | | Oct 18, 2026 | 25.6 | 9.6 | | Oct 17, 2026 | 39 | 12.3 | | Oct 16, 2026 | 56.9 | 40.6 | | Oct 15, 2026 | 54.8 | 35.8 | | Oct 14, 2026 | 52.6 | 32.6 | | Oct 13, 2026 | 28.3 | 45.5 | | Oct 12, 2026 | 7 | 29.5 | | Oct 11, 2026 | 10.4 | 17.5 | | Oct 10, 2026 | 2.6 | 35.3 | | Oct 9, 2026 | 17.3 | 27.4 | | Oct 8, 2026 | 18.2 | 30.9 | | Oct 7, 2026 | 20.3 | 27.6 | | Oct 6, 2026 | 8.4 | 28.4 | | Oct 5, 2026 | 6.2 | 25.4 | | Oct 4, 2026 | 9.9 | 26.6 | | Oct 3, 2026 | 10.1 | 15.2 | | Oct 2, 2026 | 1.6 | 26.6 | | Oct 1, 2026 | 10.7 | 27.5 | | Sep 30, 2026 | 21.7 | 28.4 | ## Shared themes What the stories of both topics in the last 7 days are about, as classified by the Jev model (a story can carry several themes): - [Agents](https://abovethefog.app/themes/agents.md) — 61% of Claude Code’s stories, 49% of Cursor’s - [Security & safety](https://abovethefog.app/themes/security_safety.md) — 28% of Claude Code’s stories, 50% of Cursor’s - [Protocols & infra](https://abovethefog.app/themes/protocols_infra.md) — 29% of Claude Code’s stories, 16% of Cursor’s - [Usage & adoption](https://abovethefog.app/themes/usage_adoption.md) — 42% of Claude Code’s stories, 11% of Cursor’s - [Models](https://abovethefog.app/themes/models.md) — 4.2% of Claude Code’s stories, 4% of Cursor’s - [Identity & auth](https://abovethefog.app/themes/identity_auth.md) — 2.4% of Claude Code’s stories, 3.3% of Cursor’s ## Claude Code: stories behind it 1. [My Claude Code now calls my phone when it needs me. No Twilio, no phone number, free](https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeCode/comments/1xhvnjw/) — Reddit (r/ClaudeCode) · Oct 28 · score 377 · 74 comments 2. [Claude Code regularly sends each background agent’s transcript to its model](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50284255) — Hacker News (gist.github.com) · Oct 29 · score 572 · 232 comments 3. [Claude Code’s $100/month plan — 73% of my weekly limit gone in 2 days](https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeCode/comments/1xhfch4/) — Reddit (r/ClaudeCode) · Oct 28 · score 82 · 147 comments 4. [Backdoor in Claude Code for VS Code extension on the Cursor Marketplace](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50300683) — Hacker News (phorion.io) · Oct 30 · score 230 · 328 comments 5. [Asked Claude Code to find every secret on my laptop and it found 63](https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeCode/comments/1xi0cma/) — Reddit (r/ClaudeCode) · Oct 28 · score 109 · 45 comments ## Cursor: stories behind it 1. [Backdoor in Claude Code for VS Code extension on the Cursor Marketplace](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50300683) — Hacker News (phorion.io) · Oct 30 · score 230 · 328 comments 2. [Claude Code VS Code extension with backdoor released on Cursor marketplace](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50301983) — Hacker News (doublepulsar.com) · Oct 30 · score 393 · 1 comment 3. [Show HN: Arsaze – Cursor for video editing \(Tab-complete and agent edits\)](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50300618) — Hacker News (arsaze.com) · Oct 30 · score 60 · 0 comments 4. [Will agentic coding harnesses \(Claude Code, Codex, Cursor\) stay locked to their parent models, or will we get cross-model support?](https://www.reddit.com/r/Anthropic/comments/1xhzgyi/) — Reddit (r/Anthropic) · Oct 28 · score 2 · 12 comments 5. [PSA / Warning: Switched to "The X Subscription" on Cursor Ultra — Claude/OpenAI revoked, support admitted lack of transparency in writing, yet refused rollback/refund \(FTC Report filed\)](https://www.reddit.com/r/cursor/comments/1xhsrgm/) — Reddit (r/cursor) · Oct 28 · score 6 · 8 comments ## More comparisons - [Antigravity vs Claude Code](https://abovethefog.app/compare/antigravity-vs-claude_code.md) - [Claude Code vs Cognition](https://abovethefog.app/compare/claude_code-vs-cognition.md) - [Claude Code vs DeepSeek Harness](https://abovethefog.app/compare/claude_code-vs-deepseek_harness.md) - [Claude Code vs GitHub Copilot](https://abovethefog.app/compare/claude_code-vs-github_copilot.md) - [Claude Code vs Grok Build](https://abovethefog.app/compare/claude_code-vs-grok_build.md) - [Claude Code vs OpenAI Codex](https://abovethefog.app/compare/claude_code-vs-codex.md) - [Claude Code vs OpenCode](https://abovethefog.app/compare/claude_code-vs-opencode.md) - [Antigravity vs Cursor](https://abovethefog.app/compare/antigravity-vs-cursor.md) - [Cognition vs Cursor](https://abovethefog.app/compare/cognition-vs-cursor.md) - [Cursor vs GitHub Copilot](https://abovethefog.app/compare/cursor-vs-github_copilot.md) - [OpenAI Codex vs Cursor](https://abovethefog.app/compare/codex-vs-cursor.md) - [Cursor vs OpenCode](https://abovethefog.app/compare/cursor-vs-opencode.md) --- Updated Oct 30, 2026, 16:24 UTC · Data: Above the Fog hype radar [HTML page](https://abovethefog.app/compare/claude_code-vs-cursor) · [llms.txt](https://abovethefog.app/llms.txt) · [About & methodology](https://abovethefog.app/about.md) · [Privacy](https://abovethefog.app/about.md#privacy)