Cursor vs GitHub Copilot
as AI assistants see them, week of 2026-09-14
Cursor and GitHub Copilot are both fixtures in AI answers, with Copilot named slightly more often (60 of 70 answers) than Cursor (57 of 70). Cursor edges ahead on overall score, 66 to 62, and gets a notably higher mark from Gemini (90 vs 68), while Claude rates them nearly identically. Head-to-head, the two tie in 14 questions, Copilot leads in 4, and Cursor leads in 2. Both are named in every answer for questions like reliable code, top assistants in 2026, best value, and best free tools, but neither shows up for local-privacy or terminal-based use cases.
Head to head
| metric | Cursor | GitHub Copilot |
|---|---|---|
| score | 66 | 62 |
| questions won | 18 | 18 |
By assistant
Cursor
| assistant | score | named in, this week | usual spot, this week |
|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | 71 | 90% of answers | #2.8 |
| Claude | 56 | 75% of answers | #3.2 |
| Gemini | 90 | 100% of answers | #1.7 |
| Perplexity | 61 | 70% of answers | #2.0 |
GitHub Copilot
| assistant | score | named in, this week | usual spot, this week |
|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | 65 | 90% of answers | #3.6 |
| Claude | 54 | 85% of answers | #4.9 |
| Gemini | 68 | 100% of answers | #4.1 |
| Perplexity | 68 | 75% of answers | #1.7 |
Where they differ
Only Cursor gets named for
nothing exclusive
Only GitHub Copilot gets named for
nothing exclusive
More comparisons
- Claude Code vs Cursor
- Cursor vs Windsurf
- Aider vs Cursor
- Cursor vs OpenAI Codex
- Claude Code vs GitHub Copilot
- GitHub Copilot vs Windsurf
Not sold on either?
Scores count how often each assistant names a product, weighted by position. How the score works · Full AI coding assistants leaderboard