AI coding startup Cursor is rolling out its first country-specific subscription plan in India, priced at ₹649 a month (roughly $7), weeks before its expected $60 billion all-stock acquisition by SpaceX is set to close. The move marks the company’s most aggressive push into one of the world’s largest software developer markets.
Localized pricing for India’s developer market
Announced Monday, Cursor Start is built specifically for Indian developers and is priced at a fraction of the $20-a-month Pro subscription available in other markets. The startup says India is already its third-largest market globally, and its user base in the country has more than tripled over the past year.
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Simon Green, Cursor’s head of Asia-Pacific and Japan, told TechCrunch that the company saw an opportunity to “right-size the commercial model and drive scale” in India. “The technical competency of the country and the engineering talent that already exists make it a very natural fit,” Green said.
India’s developer ecosystem is among the fastest-growing in the world. GitHub reported earlier this year that the country has more than 27 million developers on its platform, second only to the United States, with over two million joining in 2026 alone.
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What Cursor Start includes — and excludes
Cursor Start provides access to the startup’s Composer 2.5 model and Grok 4.5, with higher usage limits than the free tier. Subscribers also get cloud agents, the iOS app, plugins, Model Context Protocol support, hooks, and skills. The plan is billed in Indian rupees and supports payments via credit and debit cards as well as India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI).
However, the lower-priced plan does not include access to frontier AI models from OpenAI and Anthropic, nor advanced features such as Bugbot, Auto Mode, Automations, and the Cursor SDK. Green said the plan is aimed at developers who need more AI-assisted coding capacity than the free tier offers without upgrading to the full Pro subscription.
Cursor is using multiple checks to ensure the India-only subscription is available only to individual users in the country, including measures to prevent access through virtual private networks (VPNs).
Expanding presence ahead of SpaceX deal
The India push comes a little over a month after Elon Musk’s SpaceX agreed to acquire Cursor in a $60 billion all-stock deal, following SpaceX’s blockbuster initial public offering. The acquisition is expected to close in the third quarter of 2026. SpaceX has been partnered with Cursor since April to develop a next-generation “coding and knowledge work AI.”
Green said Cursor will continue to operate independently until the transaction closes and that the India expansion plans were already in motion before the deal. Once the acquisition closes, SpaceX’s existing presence in India through Starlink could help Cursor expand faster by lowering commercial and operational barriers, he added.
Cursor is also hiring locally, with its first salesperson in India recently onboarded and another leader expected to join in Delhi. The company is building out a government affairs office and has made three technical customer support hires as it expands its presence in Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, and Mumbai.
Sustainability and the broader trend
Green said the India-specific pricing was designed to be commercially sustainable rather than a loss leader. The lower-priced plan is viable because it is built around Cursor’s own AI models, which carry lower operating costs than relying primarily on third-party frontier models.
Cursor is not alone in tailoring pricing for India. OpenAI and Anthropic have also rolled out India-specific plans over the past year as global AI companies compete for users in one of the world’s fastest-growing AI markets. OpenAI launched its sub-$5 ChatGPT Go in India before expanding the lower-priced subscription to other markets.
Green told TechCrunch that if the India model proves successful, Cursor could expand localized pricing to other markets. “We will continue to do everything we can to fuel the demand and serve those clients that are using us,” he said. “Now, if this model proves that we could take it to other markets, perhaps we will. But I think it’d be crazy to say we would never do it elsewhere.”
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