Singularity vs Cursor: AI editor or ticket-based orchestration?

Many developers know Cursor as the editor built for AI: a familiar VS Code foundation, a built-in agent, and cloud agents that work in parallel and return a pull request. With the Agents window and Projects, it now also aims to coordinate several agents.

So the decision is not about having agents, but about how they are organised: conversations and cloud agents steered from an editor, or tickets on a board, run locally in Git worktrees, then reviewed and integrated by rebase. The two can also coexist, because Singularity can drive the Cursor CLI.

Comparison checked on October 10, 2026; Cursor pricing rechecked on October 27, 2026 against Cursor’s official documentation and Singularity’s documentation. It compares workflows, with no speed or generated-code quality benchmark. Public prices in USD/EUR as displayed, excluding taxes and usage; they may change.

In short

• Cursor is a full AI editor: an in-editor agent, the Agents window, a CLI, cloud agents in VMs and PR review with Bugbot.
• Singularity is organised around the ticket: a Kanban board, dependencies, a worktree per run, file-by-file review and rebase integration.
• Where work runs differs: Cursor leans heavily on the cloud (VMs, web, mobile, Slack); Singularity runs provider CLIs on your machine.
• The business model differs: Cursor sells plans with included usage; Singularity is free and uses your provider accounts, Cursor included.

Cursor overview

Cursor is built on the VS Code codebase, regularly rebased onto newer versions, and imports settings, keybindings and extensions in one click (VS Code migration). Its extensions come from the Open VSX registry through a scanning proxy, not from Microsoft’s marketplace (extensions). Anysphere, the company behind it, has been part of SpaceX since August 2026 (official announcement). The app runs on macOS, Windows and Linux, on x64 and ARM64 (download).

The Agent works in a side panel: search, editing, terminal, browser, clarifying questions, local checkpoints separate from Git, and queued or steering messages while it runs. The Agents window, generally available since Cursor 3 (April 2026), brings multiple workspaces, a diffs view with commit and PR, parallel cloud agents, local-to-cloud handoff and native worktrees, configurable through .cursor/worktrees.json. A Project hands a larger body of work to a coordinator agent that plans and delegates to other agents; it runs on cloud agents and requires a plan with Cloud Agents (Premium or above in the current lineup).

Cloud Agents (formerly Background Agents) run in isolated VMs with a cloned repository, dependencies, secrets and network access. You start them from the editor, the web, the iOS app, Slack, GitHub, Linear or the API; they work on a branch and return PRs with screenshots, videos and logs. Their usage follows the model and plan terms, with a spend limit. With My Machines, tool calls can run on your machine while the agent loop stays in Cursor’s cloud. The CLI agent offers Agent, Plan and Ask modes, a non-interactive mode and handoff to a cloud agent. Bugbot reviews pull requests on GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket and Azure DevOps.

Cursor pricing — checked October 27, 2026

For new customers, the official English pricing page and its French version list Free at no charge, Plus USD 8/month, Premium USD 30/month, Super USD 100/month and Ultra USD 200/month, excluding tax, billed monthly. The pricing documentation confirms these amounts and offers annual billing: Plus USD 80/year, Premium USD 300/year, Super USD 1,000/year and Ultra USD 2,000/year. Teams charges USD 30, 100 or 200 per seat/month for Premium, Super or Ultra respectively; Enterprise is custom-priced. Annual amounts are billed for a full year, rather than each month.

Current paid plans share a weekly usage pool for Cursor models with Grok. Third-party models are excluded: available from Premium upward, they are billed separately at API list price from prepaid credit. Plus excludes third-party models, Cloud Agents and Bugbot. Sources disagree about the first-party models in Plus: the FR/EN pricing pages say Grok only, while the documentation also lists Composer. Confirm this before subscribing; we do not assume a localization variant or a commercial experiment.

The legacy plans documentation explains the difference from our October 10 check: Hobby, Pro at USD 20/month, Pro+ at USD 60/month, Ultra at USD 200/month and Teams Standard/Premium at USD 40/120 per user/month remain legacy subscriptions. Their two monthly pools and on-demand billing do not describe the new plans. Switching is optional and permanent; comparable tiers do not guarantee identical features.

The same legacy documentation identifies Start as an India-only plan at INR 649/month including tax: this regional price does not replace the public USD lineup. The FR/EN pricing pages agree on the recorded amounts; no price difference between these two languages was observed. This does not establish the absence of other regional offers or commercial experiments.

For Teams and Enterprise, the pricing documentation adds a “Cursor Token Rate” of USD 0.25 per million tokens to eligible third-party models, on top of API pricing; individual plans do not pay this surcharge. Subscription prices alone therefore do not establish a team’s total cost.

Singularity at a glance

Singularity is a desktop ADE (Agentic Development Environment) by Meteor Factory: an editor with LSP, terminals, a Git client (graph, diffs, stash, worktrees), multi-project workspaces and a Kanban board that runs agents.

A ticket holds a description, priority, attachments, dependencies and agent configuration. Once started, it becomes an observable mission in a dedicated Git worktree, with a report and a short resolution; its commits are rebased onto the base branch after review when auto-merge is off. Singularity drives seven providers through their CLIs: Claude Code, Codex, Copilot, Cursor, Gemini, Mistral and Ollama.

The app is free (unlimited agents, projects and worktrees); the Singularity Licence, €24/month per workstation after a 14-day trial, only unlocks paid Marketplace plugins such as Pipelines (pricing). It runs on macOS, Windows and Linux (installation).

Comparison table

The same feature in both tools

Example: add a CSV export for invoices, with an API endpoint filtered by date range, a UI button and tests.

In Cursor, you can stay in the editor and ask the Agent, in plan mode if needed, to handle the API and then the UI, with checkpoints to roll back. To parallelise, the Agents window starts two agents in worktrees, or two cloud agents that each return a pull request with UI screenshots. With a Project, a coordinator can split and delegate the work itself. Bugbot then reviews the PRs.

In Singularity, you create a ticket with acceptance criteria and an attached mock-up, split into two children: API, then a UI ticket “blocked by” the API. The scheduler starts the API in its worktree; the UI waits until the API is done and integrated. Each card shows its phase, and the Review tab shows each diff: per-file approval, notes on a selection, rerun with feedback. You can pick Cursor as the provider for these tickets.

Either way, tests and human review remain essential: isolation stops agents from editing the same files, not from producing incompatible changes.

Local or cloud: where the work runs

Cursor’s cloud agents have real advantages: they keep going with your laptop closed, start from a phone or Slack, get a VM to build, test and demonstrate the result, and can span several repositories. In return, the repository is cloned in the cloud, the environment and secrets must be configured there, and usage depends on the plan and model (weekly pool or prepaid credit on current plans). The Projects documentation notes that cloud agents store code in the cloud while they run.

Singularity runs agents on your machine, in worktrees of your repositories, with your tools, local database and dependencies. Singularity clones nothing elsewhere; however, the prompts and excerpts an agent needs go to the chosen AI provider, except with local Ollama. The limit is your machine, which is exactly what the concurrent-agent limit is for.

Projects, the Agents window and the board

With Projects, Cursor hands planning to a coordinator agent: you chat with it, it creates agents, maintains shared context that grows over time, and can watch a Slack channel or a schedule. Coordination is conversational, delegated to AI and executed in the cloud.

Singularity makes coordination explicit. Tickets, their dependencies, priorities and children are visible and editable on the board; the scheduler respects those links and the agent limit; a blocking question parks the ticket until you answer. A parent ticket can also delegate to children, but each step remains a card you can read, reorder or rerun.

Review and integration

In Cursor, review happens in the Agents window diffs view, then in the pull request, enriched by cloud-agent artefacts and by Bugbot, which publishes a check status on the PR. That fits teams that merge through PRs.

Singularity integrates locally: after review, each worktree’s commits are replayed onto the base branch by rebase, with no merge commit, in the order of a per-project integration queue. You can merge only the approved files. Your forge and PRs stay downstream if your team requires them.

Where Cursor is stronger

• Assisted editing: Tab completion, an in-editor Agent and a familiar VS Code base with Open VSX extensions.
• The cloud: agents in VMs, work that continues with the laptop closed, launch from web, iOS, Slack, GitHub or Linear, visual artefacts.
• Automated PR review with Bugbot across the main forges.
• One integrated plan giving access to many models without managing several accounts.

Where Singularity stands out

• The ticket as the unit of work: dependencies, priority, children, status, report and resolution in one card.
• Local execution in your worktrees, with an optional sandbox and an MCP gateway scoped to each session.
• Review designed for agents: per-file approval, partial merge, rerun with feedback, then ordered rebase.
• Per-ticket provider choice among seven CLIs, Cursor included, with no model subscription imposed.
• Tool cost: the app is free; only paid plugins require a licence.

Can you use both?

Yes. Singularity drives the Cursor CLI as a provider: install it, run agent to sign in, then pick Cursor on a ticket. The models offered are those Cursor publishes, and usage counts against your Cursor account. Settings cover permissions (force, shell or plan), web search and session history.

Conversely, a Singularity worktree is an ordinary Git folder under .singularity-worktrees/: open it in Cursor to finish a change by hand. For the original editor, see Singularity vs VS Code; for another AI editor, Singularity vs Windsurf.

Which tool should you choose?

• You write a lot of code yourself and want AI as you type: Cursor.
• You want to delegate with your laptop closed or from Slack and mobile: Cursor’s cloud agents.
• You prefer code and execution to stay on your machine: Singularity.
• You manage a stream of related tasks across repositories with human review: Singularity and its board.
• You like Cursor’s models but want a board: Singularity with the Cursor provider.

Trial protocol

1. Pick a real feature touching an API and a UI, with acceptance criteria and existing tests.
2. In Cursor, build it from the Agents window, in a local worktree or a cloud agent; note the environment setup effort.
3. In Singularity, create the same ticket with the Cursor provider and the same model, auto-merge off.
4. Compare tracking, review quality, the number of corrections and the final Git history.
5. Record the usage Cursor actually bills in each case.

Frequently asked questions

Can Singularity use my Cursor subscription?

Yes, through the Cursor CLI. Singularity runs it locally; your Cursor plan and limits apply.

Does Singularity accept VS Code extensions like Cursor?

No. Singularity has its own Marketplace of signed modules. For a specific extension, open the worktree in Cursor or VS Code.

Does Singularity have cloud agents?

No: agents run on your machine. The chosen provider processes model calls on its side.

Do Cursor Projects replace a board?

They coordinate agents through a cloud coordinator agent. Singularity makes that coordination explicit and editable as linked tickets.

To go further: all Singularity comparisons, the getting started guide, or download Singularity to try it on your repository.