Codex vs Cursor
OpenAI's terminal agent against the agentic IDE. Codex and Cursor solve the same problem, AI that writes real code in real repositories, from opposite directions: one lives in your shell, the other replaces your editor.
Pick Codex if you live in the terminal, want an agent you can script and run headless, and already pay for ChatGPT, since Codex runs on that subscription. It is the leaner, more automatable tool.
Pick Cursor if you want to see and steer every change in an editor: its agent runs, inline diffs, and tab completion make it the better interactive experience, and its Composer models are tuned for exactly that workflow (Composer 2.5 scores 63.2% on CursorBench, right behind the frontier flagships).
They compose well: plenty of developers run Cursor as their editor and Codex (or Claude Code) for batch and CI work. If you only adopt one, choose by where you spend your day: shell or editor.
Tokens routed through OpenRouter, captured daily. Vendor agents that use first-party APIs are undercounted here. Full board on the agent leaderboard.
Should I use Codex or Cursor?
Choose by where you work. Codex is a terminal agent: scriptable, headless, great for automation, and it runs on a ChatGPT subscription you may already have. Cursor is an AI-first editor: the better pick for interactive, see-every-diff coding. Many developers use both for different parts of the day.
Is Cursor's Composer model any good?
Yes. Composer 2.5 scores 63.2% on CursorBench 3.1, just behind frontier flagships like GPT-5.5 (64.3%) and ahead of most everything else, while being tuned specifically for fast in-editor agent runs. Cursor also lets you switch to Claude, GPT, or Gemini models when you want.
Can Codex and Cursor work on the same project?
Yes, they edit the same files on disk and do not conflict beyond normal git hygiene. A common split: Cursor for interactive feature work, Codex for batch refactors, test generation, and CI tasks. Commit between handoffs and the combination is smooth.