Is Claude Code 5x Cheaper Than Cursor? I Ran 12 Experiments to Find Out

In Part 1 of this series , I noticed something strange while using Claude Code's Max 20x plan: it was the same $200/month as Cursor Ultra, doing the same work, but my Claude Code utilization was stuck at 16% while I had been burning through Cursor's token budget. In Part 2 , I figured out how to push past 50% utilization with parallel Claude Code agents. Given that I could use so many more Sonnet/Opus tokens on Claude Code, my first instinct was: "is Claude Code actually 5x cheaper than Cursor?" And then I realized you can't compare them apples to apples. I couldn't ask: at the same price, how much token capacity does each tool actually give you? Their pricing models are enforced incredibly differently (see Part 1 ), and Cursor has 2 pools of tokens (API, and "Auto + Composer"). So instead, I came up with a metric — "agent-hours" — to serve as a proxy: given each plan's token capacity, how many hours of agents can I run per month? I had some hunches, but I couldn't be sure they would h