Introducing Cursor Router · Cursor
Roughly 60% of developers using Cursor pick a single model as their daily driver. This results in routine work being completed at frontier prices, and AI spend growing much faster than output quality. Cursor Router fixes that by classifying each request before a model runs.
At its core, Cursor Router is a classifier that routes users to the best model option based on their query. trained on 600k+ live requests and evaluated performance in an online A/B test across millions of live requests directed by Cursor Router, optimizing for user satisfaction (AFC) as a reward.
Key Features & How It Works
Smart Classification: Analyzes query context, task complexity, and domain to select the best model. For example, simple tasks go to price-efficient models, UI tweaks to design-focused models, and complex reasoning to frontier models.
Cache-Aware Routing: Trained and evaluated to account for cache-miss costs across multi-turn conversations.
Three Optimization Modes:
Intelligence: Matches frontier-model quality for complex tasks.
Balance: Delivers strong performance comparable to popular daily-driver models at lower cost.
Cost: Optimizes token spend while maintaining solid output quality.
Admin Controls: Enterprise admins can roll out Cursor Router per team/group, set default modes, and allow or block specific underlying models.
Results & Impact
Cost Savings: Early access testing showed 30%–50% cost reductions compared to routing all requests to Opus 4.8 API rates, with online A/B testing demonstrating up to 60% savings for frontier-quality output.
Cost Per Commit: Reduced commit generation costs to $4.63 (Balance mode) and $6.76 (Intelligence mode), compared to higher rates for fixed frontier models.
Availability: Available across Desktop, Web, iOS, CLI, and SDK for Teams and Enterprise plans.
