Comparing Cursor with Dyad

Cursor

Cursor has taken GitHub Copilot's playbook and innovated quickly - providing even more powerful AI assistance in the IDE, such as Cursor Tab, which is like a super autocomplete that predicts your next edit and move.

Cursor provides rich IDE integration with its AI features like inline edits, chat and edit files. Cursor also has an agent mode that can call tools.

Dyad

Dyad focuses on being your AI coding mentor, helping you level up your coding skills through meaningful interactions rather than just generating code. It combines pair programming with practical advice.

Dyad emphasizes learning and skill development through features like personalized tips, expert code reviews, and video tutorials. It's designed to help you understand the "why" behind coding decisions, not just the "what."

Cursor

Cursor is an AI-first IDE. If you use Cursor, then you will need to switch your IDE.

Although Cursor generally has good import compatibility with VS Code because it's forked from it, if you're using another IDE, it'll take time to adjust.

Dyad

Dyad is an AI coding mentor and does not replace your IDE. Instead, it's a standalone app that has a dedicated chat interface.

This means if you're using an existing IDE, e.g. VS Code, Vim, IntelliJ, you can keep on using it. It does mean that you'll have another tool to switch to, but if you're already switching to ChatGPT or Claude in your browser, then Dyad will give you the best of both worlds - a delightful chat UI with the context of your codebase.

Cursor

Because Cursor is built in the IDE, it's convenient for editing files and making quick changes using AI.

However, its AI chat is tucked into a sidebar, which can make reading and following longer conversations feel cramped, especially for in-depth coding discussions.

Dyad

Dyad's chat-first interface—similar to ChatGPT—is built for rich conversations with AI making it a natural fit for in-depth coding discussions.

Reading chat messages and interacting with the LLM is more enjoyable because the UI is designed first and foremost for conversations.

Cursor

Cursor allows you to customize the AI with project rules.

Outside of customizing prompts, Cursor offers limited customizability, particularly with the agentic behavior. Cursor has a powerful built-in coding agent, but if you don't like some of its behaviors, you can't customize it directly or create your own coding agent.

Dyad

Dyad allows you to customize the AI with pads which are similar to Cursor's project rules, but are more flexible because you can use AI to generate pads and save them.

In addition, you can also build custom agents. Thanks to Dyad being open-source, you can look at how Dyad's default agent works and build your own custom tailored to your team's use case and preferences (e.g. read from internal APIs to provide relevant context).

Cursor

Cursor has a free tier that gives you a limited amount of usage. Cursor's most common paid tier is $20 a month and gives you 500 messages for the month.

To save costs, Cursor may use less context than you expect (e.g. using snippets of files rather than the entire file).

Cursor's pricing covers the tool itself, but if you want to learn how to use Cursor most effetively, you may end up purchasing a separate subscription from third-party learning providers.

Dyad

You can try Dyad for free by bringing your own API key. Thanks to Google's generous free-tier limits for Gemini API, you can use Dyad as a daily driver for free.

For a flat $30 monthly subscription, you get access to leading LLMs (e.g. Claude Sonnet 3.7, OpenAI o3-mini) with a fixed number of credits and premium learning content on AI coding.

Because we use a transparent credit system (e.g. we charge you based on what it costs us), we are not incentivized to shorten the prompt context. If you reference a file, we use the whole file as context.