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Cursor removed cost information from the usage page and CSV export

forum.cursor.com

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Re: Cursor removed cost information from the usage page and CSV export

#22
I can only recommend to regularly measure how many tokens a harness+model combination uses for a certain task

There are huge token efficiency/bloat differences between agents while working on the same tasks, using the same model, in the same environment

Yesterday I ran 10 agentic tasks using GPT 5.6 Sol in an ubuntu 26.04 vm a couple of times with different harnesses and got vastly different token usage.

  +-------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+--------+
  | Harness     | API total | Input     | Cached    | Uncached  | Output |
  +-------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+--------+
  | smol        |   172,807 |   142,334 |     8,704 |   133,630 | 30,473 |
  | Pi          |   427,211 |   392,767 |   137,216 |   255,551 | 34,444 |
  | OpenCode    | 1,564,429 | 1,523,957 | 1,204,736 |   319,221 | 40,472 |
  | Codex       | 3,005,744 | 2,953,154 | 2,649,344 |   303,810 | 52,590 |
  | Hermes      | 3,856,611 | 3,808,231 | 3,167,232 |   640,999 | 48,380 |
  | Claude Code | 5,073,137 | 5,029,969 | 4,587,008 |   442,961 | 43,168 |
  +-------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+--------+
https://x.com/__tosh/status/2083593799872237680

I'm not surprised that Claude Code is not optimized for an OpenAI model but I was still quite shocked re how much of a difference the harness makes.

Disclaimer: I'm working on 'smol' which is a minimalist harness but it's really nothing special, just a minimal system prompt, no skills files, only tool is shell

Do not underestimate how much popular harnesses are spamming the context window. The context window is very important.

Re: Cursor removed cost information from the usage page and CSV export

#23
post #5

I was an early and passionate adopter and paying customer of Cursor (since 2023!), but it’s probably been 6 months since I opened it. These days I “write” code with claude code and codex, and read/review it on GitHub. If I need to read it locally, I use a plain text editor. Can someone help me understand what value cursor offers in 2026?

Look at Cursor CLI: https://cursor.com/cli

Re: Cursor removed cost information from the usage page and CSV export

#24
post #5

I was an early and passionate adopter and paying customer of Cursor (since 2023!), but it’s probably been 6 months since I opened it. These days I “write” code with claude code and codex, and read/review it on GitHub. If I need to read it locally, I use a plain text editor. Can someone help me understand what value cursor offers in 2026?

Design mode: https://cursor.com/blog/design-mode

Re: Cursor removed cost information from the usage page and CSV export

#25
post #22

I can only recommend to regularly measure how many tokens a harness+model combination uses for a certain task There are huge token efficiency/bloat differences between agents while working on the same tasks, using the same model, in the same environment Yesterday I ran 10 agentic tasks using GPT 5.6 Sol in an ubuntu 26.04 vm a couple of times with different harnesses and got vastly different token usage. +-----------…

Same task? How did the results compare?

Re: Cursor removed cost information from the usage page and CSV export

#26
post #5

I was an early and passionate adopter and paying customer of Cursor (since 2023!), but it’s probably been 6 months since I opened it. These days I “write” code with claude code and codex, and read/review it on GitHub. If I need to read it locally, I use a plain text editor. Can someone help me understand what value cursor offers in 2026?

It removes money from your pocket into theirs faster than Claude will take money out of your pocket and into theirs. I was a Windsurf then Cursor user and even provided product feedback to the Cursor team on various aspects of their product but the costs for using it killed the value.

Re: Cursor removed cost information from the usage page and CSV export

#29
post #14
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't VS Code extensions solve your use case?

I tried the codex extension many months ago but I didn't like it. I use mostly the Codex App, or sometimes the Codex TUI inside the IDE terminal.

The Claude plugin for VSC is amazing and basically "solves programming" for me. It's the primary way that I write code now; I even stopped using Claude Code.

Re: Cursor removed cost information from the usage page and CSV export

#30
post #25
post #22

I can only recommend to regularly measure how many tokens a harness+model combination uses for a certain task There are huge token efficiency/bloat differences between agents while working on the same tasks, using the same model, in the same environment Yesterday I ran 10 agentic tasks using GPT 5.6 Sol in an ubuntu 26.04 vm a couple of times with different harnesses and got vastly different token usage. +-----------…

Same task? How did the results compare?

the tasks were all simple agentic tasks

like creating a checksum of a file, merging csvs and so on, fixing a makefile pipeline

with known 'good' outcomes

all harnesses could reach the outcomes, only cost, time, number of tool uses and so on were different

(Claude Code failed once in 1 task but I think that was just an unfortunate outlier, the tasks aren't that difficult)

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