Execution and review surface
Trial Claude Code when your work starts with shell commands, test runners and Git. Trial Cursor Composer when your work starts with editor navigation and reviewing changes alongside source. Use the same repository and task specification; count accepted patches rather than generated lines.
Context and reproducible instructions
Give both tools a small task contract: allowed paths, commands to run, forbidden API changes and acceptance tests. Record model selection, tool permissions and instruction files with each run. A terminal agent and an IDE agent can use different retrieval strategies; do not interpret their UI differences as model quality scores.
Subscription is not an API token budget
Claude Pro costs $20 when billed monthly and includes Claude Code; Max starts at $100. Cursor Pro is $20 per month. Check included usage and extra-usage controls on the official pricing pages before buying. An API key bill is separate from the value advertised for a subscription; annual discounts do not mean a lower month-to-month cancellation price.
A practical migration test
Try one UI change, one cross-file refactor and one flaky-test investigation. Keep separate branches, inspect the diff and rerun the existing tests. Track elapsed time, manual corrections and total spend. Pick the tool that fits your review process; this guide does not claim a measured win for Claude Code 2.1 or any Composer version.