Cursor vs Onlook

A side-by-side look at pricing, capabilities, pros, cons, and our editorial scores.

	Cursor Coding	Onlook Coding
Tagline	AI-first VS Code fork — chat, edit, and agentic coding in one IDE.	Cursor for Designers — visually edit your React codebase with AI.
Category	Coding	Coding
Pricing	Freemium· Hobby: Free · Individual: $20 / mo. · Teams: $40 / user / mo. · Enterprise: Custom	Freemium· Free self-hosted (open source on GitHub); Cloud version pricing custom — contact sales / book a demo.
Model	Claude / GPT (configurable)	—
Editorial score	9.5 / 10	—
Use cases	codingrefactorsagentic editsIDE	Visual editing of a Next.js marketing siteDesigner-driven component refactors in a shared React repoApplying brand tokens across a Tailwind codebasePrototyping new UI sections from natural-language promptsStorybook-driven component library maintenanceHandoff-free design-to-production for small product teamsPublishing landing pages to a custom domain without a dev deploy
Pros	Best-in-class multi-file edits Choice of underlying models Composer agent is genuinely useful Tab completion is faster than Copilot	Edits the real React/Next.js codebase — no Figma-to-code translation step or drifting design files. Open source with 25k+ GitHub stars and a self-hosted option, so teams can bring their own model keys and keep code private. Visual canvas with drag/resize/restyle that maps cleanly to JSX + Tailwind, making the diff readable to engineers. AI chat can generate components, apply brand tokens, and refactor layouts from natural-language prompts. First-class support for the modern React stack: Next.js, Vite, Storybook, and component reuse across the tree. Publish/export flow with custom domains means designers can ship without waiting on a dev deploy.
Cons	Heavier than vanilla VS Code Pricing creeping up Some extensions lag VS Code	Cloud pricing is not published — teams have to book a demo to get numbers, which slows evaluation. Locked to the React ecosystem; Vue, Svelte, Angular, or plain HTML projects are not supported. Underlying model provider is not disclosed on the marketing site, so cost and quality of AI features are opaque until you try it. Still a young product — self-hosted setup and multi-user collaboration are less battle-tested than incumbent design tools. Non-technical designers on legacy codebases with hand-rolled CSS or older React patterns may find AI edits produce noisy diffs.
Website	cursor.com	onlook.com

Pick Cursor if

✅ Best-in-class multi-file edits
✅ Choice of underlying models
✅ Composer agent is genuinely useful
✅ Tab completion is faster than Copilot

Pick Onlook if

✅ Edits the real React/Next.js codebase — no Figma-to-code translation step or drifting design files.
✅ Open source with 25k+ GitHub stars and a self-hosted option, so teams can bring their own model keys and keep code private.
✅ Visual canvas with drag/resize/restyle that maps cleanly to JSX + Tailwind, making the diff readable to engineers.
✅ AI chat can generate components, apply brand tokens, and refactor layouts from natural-language prompts.

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