Cursor launches a $7-a-month plan for India as it eyes the world's second-largest developer market

Key points

• Cursor launched an India-only subscription called Cursor Start at ₹649 (roughly $7) a month on Monday, well below its standard $20-a-month Pro tier.
• India is already Cursor's third-largest market globally, with its user base there more than tripling over the past year.
• GitHub reported earlier this year that India has more than 27 million developers on its platform, second only to the United States.
• SpaceX agreed to acquire Cursor in a $60 billion all-stock deal, with the transaction expected to close in the third quarter of 2025.
• The lower-priced plan runs on Cursor's own AI models, which cost less to operate than frontier models from outside providers, making $7 commercially viable.

Cursor, the AI-assisted coding tool that helps software developers write and fix code faster, now has a plan priced specifically for India. At ₹649 a month (about $7), Cursor Start costs roughly a third of what the company charges everywhere else.

The gap is deliberate. Simon Green, Cursor's head of Asia-Pacific and Japan, told TechCrunch that India's engineering talent and sheer market size made it the obvious place to try localised pricing first. "We felt that we had an opportunity there to right-size the commercial model and drive scale," Green said.

What do Indian developers actually get for $7?

Cursor Start includes access to Cursor's own Composer 2.5 model and Grok 4.5, higher usage limits than the free tier, cloud agents (software that can carry out multi-step tasks on its own), an iOS app, and plugin support.

What it doesn't include matters too. The $7 plan locks out frontier models from OpenAI and Anthropic, and advanced features such as Bugbot, Automations, and Auto Mode stay behind the $20 Pro paywall. Green says the plan is sustainable precisely because it avoids those pricier outside models. Running Cursor's own AI keeps operating costs low enough to make $7 work without subsidising each subscriber.

The plan is billed in rupees and supports UPI, India's mobile payment system, alongside standard cards.

Is this just a discount, or something bigger?

It's a calculated bet on a very large market. India had more than 27 million developers on GitHub earlier this year, second only to the United States, with over two million joining in 2026 alone. Cursor's Indian user base more than tripled in the past year, and the company says Indian users already rank as its most intensive power users anywhere.

Cursor isn't the first to try this. We covered Anthropic's move to local rupee pricing for Claude in India on 13 July, and OpenAI launched a sub-$5 ChatGPT Go plan there before rolling it out to other countries. The race for India's developer market is already crowded.

Green told TechCrunch that Cursor could expand localised pricing to other markets if the India model proves successful, but made no firm commitment.

What about the SpaceX deal?

Cursor's India push comes roughly a month after Elon Musk's SpaceX agreed to acquire the startup in a $60 billion all-stock deal. Green says the India expansion was already underway before the deal was announced, and Cursor will operate independently until it closes.

One practical upside after closing: SpaceX already runs Starlink, its satellite internet service, in India, and Green suggested that existing footprint could lower the cost of expanding Cursor's commercial operations there.

Cursor is also hiring locally. Its first Indian salesperson is already on board, a second leader is planned for Delhi, and three technical support roles are being filled across Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, and Mumbai.

The honest read: If you're an Indian developer bumping against the free tier's limits, $7 a month is a reasonable test. Know what you're not getting, though. The most powerful OpenAI and Anthropic models stay in the pricier plan, so upgrade only when you genuinely need them, not just because the entry price feels low.