Four companies now sell a coding agent. Each priced its richest plan on its own schedule. By October, all four had landed on one number: $200 a month1234.
Cursor got there last. SpaceX bought Cursor's maker, Anysphere, for $60 billion in stock. The deal closed Aug. 14, 20265. Cursor's new owner folded it into a bundle called The X Subscription on Oct. 121.
The bundle's richest plan, Ultra, costs $200 a month. Claude Code's Max plan, OpenAI's Codex Pro plan and Meta's Muse Code already charged that number234.
The Entry Price Buys Different Access
Twenty dollars a month means something different at each company. Anthropic's Claude Pro plan costs $20 and includes Claude Code, sharing one usage pool with its chat product2. OpenAI's ChatGPT Plus plan also costs $20.
It opens Codex on the web, in a command line, inside an IDE and on an iPhone3. A cheaper Go plan sits below it, at $8 a month, for lighter coding tasks.
Cursor's cheapest full-access plan costs more. Its Premium tier runs $30 a month under The X Subscription6. The $8 Plus tier below it skips Cloud Agents, Automations and every outside model, including Claude and GPT. A Premium subscriber reaches those features, but pays separately for Claude or GPT access at API list price from a prepaid credit.
Entry plans span $20 to $50, but every company's top plan lands at $200
Monthly price, cheapest plan with full agent access against the richest individual plan, checked on each company's own page Oct. 24, 2026
The blue dot is each company's cheapest plan that unlocks its real coding agent; the magenta dot is its richest plan; the rod shows how far apart those two prices sit.
Entry price is the cheapest plan that unlocks each company's full agent, apart from its cheapest paid tier of any kind; Cursor and Muse Code both sell a cheaper plan with narrower access.
Sources: Claude [2]; ChatGPT Help Center [3]; Meta AI [4]; Cursor Help [6]. Chart by Ryan Elliott Dennis.
The numbers behind this chart
| Item | Entry plan | Richest plan |
|---|---|---|
| Claude Code | $20 | $200 |
| Codex | $20 | $200 |
| Cursor | $30 | $200 |
| Muse Code | $50 | $200 |
Meta's Muse Code costs the least to enter and the most to use seriously. Its Everyday plan runs $5 a month, for 10 to 50 prompts every five hours4. A High plan multiplies that base by five for $15 a month. The company's own stronger model, Muse Wonder Full, sits behind the $50 Power plan instead.
Mark Zuckerberg announced that split himself the day Muse Wonder shipped. "Muse Wonder is also available through Muse Code, the Meta Model API, and rolling into other products soon," he wrote on X7.
SpaceX Bought Its Way Into the Price War
Cursor earned its users on a flat subscription. SpaceX owns the pricing now. Anysphere, the startup behind Cursor, became a wholly owned subsidiary of SpaceX on Aug. 14, 202613.
Michael Truell co-founded Anysphere and still runs it as chief executive. He had already apologized once for a pricing change that caught users off guard. "We recognize that we didn't handle this pricing rollout well and we're sorry," he said in July 2025. "Our communication was not clear enough and came as a surprise to many of you"8.
SpaceX's bundle repeats the pattern on a bigger stage. It folds Cursor's coding agent into the same plans that sell Grok chat and X Premium1. Every paid tier promises more coding usage than the matching old Cursor plan gave at the same price6. Claude and GPT access stays unnamed on every tier's own page.
The Multiplier Promises More Than It Explains
Every company sells its top plan as a multiple of its cheapest one. Claude's Max 20x plan promises 20 times Pro's usage, inside a five-hour window12. A separate weekly cap sits on top of that window, shared across chat and Cowork too11. Cursor's Ultra plan promises 50 times its Plus tier16.
Codex's Pro 20X plan promises the same 20 times, measured against its own Plus tier instead39. Meta's Maximum plan promises 80 times its Everyday tier, the steepest claim of the four4.
Muse Code's $200 plan claims an 80-fold jump; two rivals claim 20-fold
The usage multiplier each company's $200 plan promises over its own cheapest full-access plan, as published on its own page, Oct. 24, 2026
Each column is the multiple a company's own page promises its richest plan gives over its cheapest one; a taller column promises more room, apart from any claim about a better model.
Each multiplier measures a different base, from a five-hour session cap to a token pool shared with Grok to a 10-to-50-prompt range.
Sources: Meta AI [4]; Cursor Help [6]; Tibo (Thibault Sottiaux) on X [9]; Claude Support [12]. Chart by Ryan Elliott Dennis.
The numbers behind this chart
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Muse Code Maximum | 80x |
| Cursor Ultra | 50x |
| Claude Max 20x | 20x |
| Codex Pro 20X | 20x |
Thibault Sottiaux runs Codex and ChatGPT Work at OpenAI. He defended his own company's number in August. "The Pro 20X is quite precisely 20X the usage of the Plus subscription, so it does exactly what it says on the tin," he wrote9.
Jean Leon covers AI tools for Android Headlines. He read a similar Anthropic announcement the opposite way. "Anthropic's quotas are already so opaque that trying to budget your remaining weekly prompts feels like playing a guessing game," he wrote10.
Read together, the two men measure different things. Sottiaux stands behind the number his own company printed. Leon doubts that any printed number, once a company sets its own base, tells a buyer what a week of real work will cost.
What to do
Pick by task first, price second. A developer who lives in a terminal fits Claude Code's model. Someone who wants one editor for every job fits Cursor, now that Claude and GPT cost extra inside it.
Start on the cheapest plan that unlocks the feature you actually need. Judge each plan by that feature alone, rather than its marketing name. Run it for a real week before upgrading. A quota that empties in two days tells you more than any multiplier on a pricing page.
By the numbers
- $200: Claude's Max 20x, Codex's Pro 20X, Cursor's Ultra and Muse Code's Maximum all charge this now2314.
- $60 billion: what SpaceX paid in stock for Cursor's maker, Anysphere, in a deal that closed Aug. 14, 20265.
- Meta's Muse Code Maximum plan claims the steepest multiple of the four: 80 times its $5 Everyday plan4.
- Cursor's Ultra plan claims 50 times its $8 Plus plan's usage6.
- Claude's Max 20x plan and Codex's Pro 20X plan each claim 20 times their own $20 entry plans129.
- $13: Anthropic's own estimate of an average developer's daily Claude Code spend inside a company deployment11.
- Oct. 12, 2026: SpaceX folded Cursor into The X Subscription that day, pairing it with Grok and X Premium1.
- 10 to 50: the prompts Muse Code's $5 Everyday plan allows every five hours, the base its higher tiers multiply4.
What to watch
Watch whether Cursor's Claude and GPT access stays priced apart from The X Subscription once the bundle finishes rolling out worldwide. A reversal would say SpaceX found separate billing more trouble than it was worth.
Muse Code's tier names are worth watching too, since Power and Maximum already mean a different price inside the separate Meta Muse consumer app. A rename would say Meta heard the confusion. Either company could also publish a raw hour or token figure behind its multiplier, instead of the multiplier alone.
Sources
- xAI, "Introducing The X Subscription," x.ai, Oct. 12, 2026, https://x.ai/news/x-subscription
- Anthropic, "Pricing," Claude, retrieved Oct. 24, 2026, https://claude.com/pricing
- OpenAI, "Pricing," ChatGPT Help Center, retrieved Oct. 24, 2026, https://learn.chatgpt.com/docs/pricing
- Meta, "Muse Code," Meta AI, retrieved Oct. 24, 2026, https://dev.meta.ai/products/muse-code
- Techzine Global, "SpaceX completes acquisition of Cursor," Techzine, Aug. 14, 2026, https://www.techzine.eu/news/devops/143619/spacex-completes-acquisition-of-cursor/
- Cursor, "Pricing and plans," Cursor Help, retrieved Oct. 24, 2026, https://cursor.com/help/account-and-billing/pricing
- Mark Zuckerberg (@finkd), "Muse Wonder is also available through Muse Code, the Meta Model API, and rolling into other products soon.," X, Oct. 12, 2026, https://x.com/finkd/status/2109689309825794187
- Maxwell Zeff, "Cursor apologizes for unclear pricing changes that upset users," TechCrunch, July 7, 2025, https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/07/cursor-apologizes-for-unclear-pricing-changes-that-upset-users/
- Tibo (Thibault Sottiaux) (@thsottiaux), "For clarity, while both are called 20X, in Codex they apply specifically to weekly usage limits.," X, Aug. 31, 2026, https://x.com/thsottiaux/status/2094254532020818191
- Jean Leon, "Anthropic's Claude Code Usage Cap Update Actually Hides a Quiet Downgrade," Android Headlines, Aug. 30, 2026, https://www.androidheadlines.com/2026/08/anthropic-claude-code-weekly-limits-update.html
- Anthropic, "Manage costs effectively," Claude Code Docs, retrieved Oct. 24, 2026, https://code.claude.com/docs/en/costs
- Anthropic, "What is the Max plan?," Claude Support, retrieved Oct. 24, 2026, https://support.claude.com/en/articles/11049741-what-is-the-max-plan
- Wikipedia contributors, "Anysphere," Wikipedia, retrieved Oct. 24, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anysphere