OpenAI Codex CLI vs Cursor

Pick two tools from the same category to compare side-by-side.

	OpenAI Codex CLI OpenAI's official terminal coding agent; adopts the SKILL.md standard.	Cursor AI-native code editor (VS Code fork) with agent mode, codebase indexing.
Category	harness	harness
Vendor type	open source	commercial
Pricing	freemium	subscription
Strengths	+ Adopts cross-vendor SKILL.md standard + Open source + Native OpenAI Responses API integration	+ Polished IDE UX + Strong codebase indexing + Multi-model support
Tradeoffs	− Smaller plugin ecosystem than Claude Code	− Closed product surface; less programmable than CLI harnesses
Used in stacks	0	0