Cursor vs Antigravity: two agentic coding platforms compared

What is the difference between Cursor and Antigravity?

Cursor is a coding agent built around its own desktop editor; Antigravity is Google's agentic development platform, spread across a desktop app, a CLI, extensions for five IDEs and a standalone IDE. Both plan and write code, run commands, offer Tab completions and read AGENTS.md and Agent Skills. They differ most in models, pricing and where you do your work.

Cursor's docs open with "Cursor is a coding agent for building ambitious software." Google's Antigravity overview says it "delivers native agentic assistance across purpose-built product surfaces, with dynamic reasoning controls, multi-agent orchestration, and enterprise-grade security." Everything below comes from the official docs and pricing pages as of 24 October 2026.

How does Cursor work?

Cursor's main home is Cursor Desktop, a code editor with AI throughout:

• Tab: "Tab is Cursor's AI-powered autocomplete." It suggests code from your recent edits, the surrounding code and linter errors.
• Agent: plans and builds changes, with a Plan Mode for larger work.
• Cloud Agents: per the cloud agent docs, these "run in isolated VMs in the cloud with full development environments." You start them from cursor.com/agents, the editor, Slack, a GitHub or Bitbucket comment, Linear, the iOS app or the API.
• Cursor CLI: the agent command runs Cursor's agent in a terminal, with -p for scripts.

# macOS, Linux, WSL
curl https://cursor.com/install -fsS | bash

agent                        # interactive session
agent -p "find and fix performance issues"   # one-shot, for CI

Cursor has its own models, including Grok 4.7 and Composer 2.5. On Premium and higher, the models page adds third-party models from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google and others "at the model's API list price from the first request."

How does Antigravity work?

Antigravity is a set of surfaces that share one account:

• Antigravity App: "A standalone desktop application for launching, orchestrating, and inspecting autonomous agent teams" with visual diff and plan inspection.
• Antigravity CLI (agy): "A keyboard-first terminal client that runs Antigravity workflows in local shells, remote cloud environments, and SSH sessions."
• IDE extensions for VS Code, Visual Studio, JetBrains IDEs, Zed and Xcode, with inline completions and a side panel. VS Code and Visual Studio are generally available; the others are in Preview.
• Antigravity IDE, a standalone editor you download separately.
• Antigravity SDK, a Python package for building your own agents.

Antigravity's agents produce artifacts, which the artifacts docs define as "a structured deliverable created by the agent to accomplish its task": implementation plans, side-by-side code changes, architecture diagrams, images and recordings of browser actions. You review them as the work progresses.

The CLI's reference lists default, accept-edits, auto (Preview) and plan modes, cycled with Shift+Tab, and agy -p for headless runs with text, json or stream-json output. See the Antigravity CLI guide for setup.

How do Cursor and Antigravity compare side by side?

What do they cost, and which models do you get?

Cursor. The pricing page, as of October 2026:

• Free: $0, limited agent requests.
• Plus: $8 a month, a shared AI usage pool, Grok models only.
• Premium: $30 a month, 4x Plus usage, cloud agents, and third-party models billed separately.
• Super: $100 a month, 15x Plus usage.
• Ultra: $200 a month, 50x Plus usage.
• Teams: from $30 per user a month. Enterprise: custom pricing.

Third-party models such as Claude, GPT and Gemini "aren't part of the included pool," so they draw on prepaid credit.

Antigravity. The pricing page lists a $0 Individuals plan with "Unlimited Tab completions," "Unlimited Command requests" and "Basic weekly rate limits." Google AI Pro adds "More rate limits" and Ultra "Even more rate limits," both with a flexible AI credit pool; the page doesn't print their prices. The plans page says bring-your-own-key is not currently supported. Teams can use Antigravity through Google Cloud, with Standard and Plus "plans starting at $30 USD per seat per month" or a pay-as-you-go option.

Model access depends on your plan. The models page lists:

• Free and Google AI Plus: Gemini 3.8 Flash, Claude Sonnet 4.6, Claude Opus 4.6 and GPT-OSS-120b. The last three "Will be removed on November 2, 2026."
• Google AI Pro: adds Gemini 4 Argon, and Claude Sonnet 5.5 and Opus 5.5 on non-trial subscriptions.
• Google AI Ultra: Gemini 4 Argon and the Claude 5.5 models.

Two cautions. Gemini 4 Argon is not available in the Antigravity IDE, only in the App, CLI and IDE extensions. And the plans page lists "Access to third-party models" as an Ultra benefit, so confirm what your plan shows in the app before you count on Claude models.

How do rules, skills and MCP compare?

Rules. Cursor's rules docs use .mdc files in .cursor/rules/, applied always, intelligently by description, by file glob or manually by @-mention. Cursor also reads AGENTS.md at the root and in subfolders. Antigravity's rules docs load AGENTS.md or GEMINI.md in each folder as it walks up from the file it is editing, plus .agents/rules/*.md with triggers named always_on, model_decision, glob and manual. The two systems map closely, and AGENTS.md works in both. The Cursor rules guide covers the .mdc format.

Skills. Both support SKILL.md folders. Cursor's skills docs load .agents/skills/ and .cursor/skills/, and "For compatibility, Cursor also loads skills from Claude and Codex directories." Antigravity's skills docs default to .agents/skills/ in the workspace, with global folders under ~/.gemini/. A skill in .agents/skills/ is picked up by both. See Cursor skills.

MCP. Cursor reads .cursor/mcp.json for a project and ~/.cursor/mcp.json globally, and supports stdio, SSE and Streamable HTTP. Antigravity's CLI and IDE read .agents/mcp_config.json and ~/.gemini/config/mcp_config.json, while the App manages servers in its settings. You need to configure each tool separately.

Which should you pick?

Pick on where you want to work and which models you want to pay for.

Cursor tends to fit when:

• You want one editor as your home, with Tab, an agent and a Plan Mode in the same window.
• You want cloud agents you can start from Slack, GitHub, Linear or your phone.
• You want to mix Cursor's own models with Claude, GPT and Gemini on one plan.
• You want a low-cost paid tier with Plus at $8 a month.

Antigravity tends to fit when:

• You want to start at $0 with Gemini models, or you already pay for Google AI Pro or Ultra.
• You want to keep your current IDE, including Visual Studio, JetBrains, Zed or Xcode, and add agent features through an extension.
• You prefer reviewing plans, diffs and browser recordings as artifacts in a desktop app.
• Your company buys through Google Cloud.

Because both read AGENTS.md and .agents/skills/, you can try one without rewriting your setup for the other. For Google's tools against Anthropic's, see Claude Code vs Antigravity.

Keep your prompts and skills portable

Rules and skills you write are worth more than any one editor. Kipt keeps your prompts and Agent Skills as Markdown in a private GitHub repo you own, and installs every skill into Claude Code or Codex with one npx skills add command. If you have a prompt you keep pasting into an agent, the free SKILL.md generator turns it into a skill folder you can drop into .agents/skills/, where both Cursor and Antigravity look.