Cursor vs OpenAI Codex

as AI assistants see them, week of 2026-10-12

brag about it: X · LinkedIn

Cursor comes out well ahead of OpenAI Codex here. Cursor scores 66 overall and shows up in 57 of 70 answers, while OpenAI Codex sits at 21 overall and appears in just 22 of 70. Head-to-head, Cursor was named more often in 17 questions versus 1 for OpenAI Codex, with 2 ties. Cursor was named in every answer for questions like "top AI coding assistants in 2026" and "best free AI coding assistants," but never came up for terminal-based use. OpenAI Codex did lead on "best AI coding assistant that works in the terminal," named in all 3 answers there, though it was never mentioned for privacy-focused or beginner-focused questions.

Head to head

metric	Cursor	OpenAI Codex
score	65	22
questions won	21	18

By assistant

Cursor

assistant	score	named in, this week	usual spot, this week
ChatGPT	70	80% of answers	#2.2
Claude	57	80% of answers	#3.6
Gemini	78	82% of answers	#2.7
Perplexity	62	74% of answers	#2.2

OpenAI Codex

assistant	score	named in, this week	usual spot, this week
ChatGPT	39	55% of answers	#3.5
Claude	29	40% of answers	#4.4
Gemini	0	0% of answers
Perplexity	12	21% of answers	#3.0

Where they differ

Only Cursor gets named for

What's the best AI coding assistant for Python?
What's the best AI coding assistant for building mobile apps?
What's the best AI coding assistant for VS Code?
What's the best AI coding assistant for beginners learning to code?
What are the best free AI coding assistants?
What's the best AI tool to review pull requests automatically?

Only OpenAI Codex gets named for

What's the best AI coding assistant that works in the terminal?
What are the best alternatives to Cursor?
What's the best open-source AI coding assistant?

More comparisons

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