Cursor India pricing arrives with ₹649 plan before SpaceX deal closes

Cursor India pricing is getting its first dedicated subscription plan, a ₹649-a-month offering that puts the AI coding startup more directly in front of one of the world’s biggest developer markets. For investors tracking AI software and SpaceX’s pending acquisition of Cursor, the move shows how the company is trying to turn global developer usage into paid subscriptions before the deal closes.

Cursor introduced the India-only plan, called Cursor Start, on Monday, according to TechCrunch. The monthly price is about $7, far below Cursor’s standard Pro plan, which is listed at $20 a month on the company’s pricing page.

Simon Green, Cursor’s head of Asia-Pacific and Japan, told TechCrunch that India is already Cursor’s third-largest market and has the company’s highest concentration of power users. Cursor’s user base in India has more than tripled over the past year, the company said.

What is Cursor Start in India?

Cursor Start is a lower-priced subscription for individual developers in India who want more AI-assisted coding usage than the free tier provides. AI-assisted coding tools help write, edit, explain, and test software code using artificial intelligence models inside a developer’s workflow.

The plan includes access to Cursor’s Composer 2.5 model and Grok 4.5, according to TechCrunch. It also includes higher limits than the free version, plus cloud agents, the iOS app, plugins, Model Context Protocol support, hooks, and skills.

Cursor Start does not include the full set of features in Cursor Pro. Green told TechCrunch the India plan excludes access to frontier AI models from companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic, along with tools including Bugbot, Auto Mode, Automations, and the Cursor SDK. Frontier models are the most advanced systems offered by major AI labs, and they usually cost more to run.

The subscription is billed in Indian rupees and supports credit cards, debit cards, and India’s Unified Payments Interface, or UPI, according to TechCrunch. UPI is a widely used instant payments system in India.

Green said Cursor will use several checks to keep the plan limited to individual users in India, including steps meant to discourage people from using virtual private networks to reach the plan from outside the country.

Why India is getting the first localized plan

Green told TechCrunch that India’s developer base and engineering talent made it a logical market for Cursor’s first country-specific pricing. GitHub said earlier this year that India had more than 27 million developers on its platform, ranking behind only the United States, with more than 2 million joining in 2026.

Cursor is following a wider pattern among AI companies trying lower prices in India. TechCrunch reported that OpenAI and Anthropic have launched India-specific subscriptions over the past year. OpenAI also introduced its lower-priced ChatGPT Go plan in India before later bringing it to additional Asian markets, according to TechCrunch.

Green said Cursor may consider similar pricing in other countries if the India plan works, but the company has not announced another market. He also told TechCrunch the plan is intended to be commercially sustainable, not a loss leader, because it relies on Cursor’s own models rather than mainly on higher-cost third-party frontier models.

How does the SpaceX deal fit in?

Cursor’s India expansion comes after SpaceX agreed to buy the AI coding company in a $60 billion all-stock transaction, according to TechCrunch. The deal followed SpaceX’s initial public offering and is expected to close in the third quarter.

SpaceX has worked with Cursor since April on a next-generation coding and knowledge-work AI, TechCrunch reported. Green said Cursor will keep operating independently until the acquisition closes and that its India plans were already underway before the transaction.

Cursor is also adding people on the ground in India. Green told TechCrunch the company recently hired its first salesperson in the country, expects another leader to join in Delhi, and is adding government affairs and technical support roles as it expands in Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, and Mumbai.

Green said Cursor’s India enterprise business is still early, with current adoption led mostly by individual developers, startups, and universities. He told TechCrunch the company sees opportunity in banking and large enterprises as its local sales team grows.

This story draws on original reporting from TechCrunch.