Cursor for Students in 2026: What Replaced the Free Pro Year
Update (July 2026): Cursor first announced its free one-year student Pro offer on May 6, 2025. That automatic free-year program closed to new sign-ups on June 25, 2026 after becoming a target for fraud. If you redeemed it before that date, you keep your rate until the plan expires. New students now get access through Cursor's free tier plus event-based credits and discounts, which we cover below.
What the Student Offer Looks Like Now
Cursor is an AI code editor used by professional developers, and anyone can get started with it for free. The automatic "verify your student email, get a free year of Pro" path is no longer open to new sign-ups, but students still have several ways to access more of Cursor:
- Everyone can use the free Hobby tier with no credit card required.
- Undergraduates should watch for promotions, credits, and discounts at Cursor's on-campus and online events starting in the fall.
- Master's and PhD students, researchers, and educators can request credits to support their work through Cursor's credit-request form.
- Students who already redeemed the free year before June 25, 2026 keep their current rate until the plan expires, after which it renews at the standard $20/month Pro price unless cancelled.
For the latest details and any active promotions, visit Cursor's dedicated student page at Cursor for Students and sign up for the campus newsletter to hear about upcoming events and discounts.
Complete Cursor Pricing Plans
Cursor's lineup now spans several tiers to meet different development needs. Prices below are monthly; annual billing saves 20% on the paid plans. Always check cursor.com/pricing for the current terms.
1. Hobby Plan (Free)
- No credit card required
- Limited Agent requests and Tab completions
- A good way to try Cursor before upgrading
2. Pro Plan ($20/month, or $192/year with 20% savings)
- Extended Agent limits and unlimited Tab completions
- A monthly usage pool for frontier models (roughly equal to the plan price)
- Unlimited use of the "Auto" model selection
- Access to MCPs, skills, hooks, and cloud agents
3. Pro+ Plan ($60/month)
- Everything in Pro
- A larger monthly usage pool for heavier workloads
4. Ultra Plan ($200/month)
- Everything in Pro+
- Around 20x the usage of the Pro plan
- Priority access to new features for the heaviest users
5. Teams Plan ($40/user/month)
- All individual features
- Centralized team billing and usage analytics
- Team marketplace for shared rules and skills, plus agentic code reviews
- Organization-wide privacy mode and SAML/OIDC SSO
6. Enterprise Plan (Custom pricing)
- Pooled usage across the organization
- Invoice/PO billing, SCIM user management, and access controls
- Audit logs and priority support
Note: the "Business" plan referenced in older guides is now branded Teams. Pro+ and Ultra were added for developers who run through their usage pool quickly.
Benefits for Student Developers
For students learning programming, using professional-grade tools can accelerate the learning process. Cursor's AI assistant helps with:
- Code writing efficiency
- Understanding complex code structures
- Faster debugging
- Learning best practices through suggestions
- Mastering new programming languages and frameworks
- Creating experimental coding sandboxes
- Resolving errors with AI-suggested solutions
This initiative allows students to gain early experience with development tools that will become standard in future workplaces.
How Cursor Bills Usage Now
Cursor retired the old "fast" vs. "slow" premium-request model in June 2025. Instead of counting a monthly quota of fast requests, each paid plan now includes a monthly usage pool for model usage:
- Every paid plan comes with an included amount of model usage roughly equal to the plan price.
- The "Auto" model selection is unlimited and does not draw down your pool.
- When you manually pick a frontier model, that usage draws from your monthly pool.
- Once the included amount is consumed, you can keep going with on-demand usage, billed in arrears.
Cursor routes requests to the latest frontier models rather than a fixed 2025-era list, so exact model availability changes over time — see cursor.com/pricing for what is included today.
What Happens After a Redeemed Year
If you redeemed the free student year before it closed on June 25, 2026, that access stays valid until your plan expires, after which it renews at the regular $20/month Pro price. You can cancel anytime and keep access through the end of the current billing period. If you did not redeem in time, you can still work on the free Hobby tier and pick up a paid plan (or event credits) whenever you need more usage.
How Students Can Get More Cursor Today
With the automatic free-year path closed, here is how to get discounted or credited access now:
- Start on the free Hobby tier — no verification or credit card required.
- Undergraduates: attend Cursor's on-campus or online events (starting this fall) to pick up promotional credits and discounts, and sign up for the campus newsletter so you hear about them early.
- Master's/PhD students, researchers, and educators: request credits through Cursor's credit-request form, linked from the student page.
- Everyone else can upgrade to a paid plan (Pro, Pro+, Ultra, or Teams) whenever they need more usage.
Infrastructure for Your Programming Projects
As students utilize these AI programming tools, reliable infrastructure becomes increasingly important. Processing complex code and running resource-intensive applications require robust and stable hosting.
LightNode VPS services provide this foundation. Our virtual private servers offer an ideal base for student developers using advanced tools like Cursor Pro. With high-performance configurations and sufficient bandwidth, LightNode ensures your development environment remains efficient and stable.
Visit LightNode.com to learn more about VPS solutions that can help your programming projects reach new heights with powerful infrastructure alongside your Cursor workflow.