Cursor vs GitHub Copilot vs Claude Code: CTO Comparison 2026
Cursor, GitHub Copilot and Claude Code compared: prices, data handling and admin controls according to the vendors' own pages, as of 6 October 2026, with sources.
Sebastian LangApril 30, 202615 min read
Anyone choosing a coding agent for a team as a CTO or head of engineering in Europe soon arrives at the question of Cursor vs GitHub Copilot vs Claude Code. The developers have preferences, while data protection and procurement want answers on data, cost and control. This post puts the three tools side by side with the same criteria for each, and states only what the vendors themselves publish.
As of 6 October 2026
Transparency note: We train teams in Claude Code and Cowork. That is why we only compare statements that the vendors publish themselves, with date and source. We do not name a winner: where a statement is not on a vendor page we checked, it is not here either.
TL;DR
- All three vendors separate individual plans from business plans. For teams, the price pages show on 6 October 2026: Cursor Teams from 40 USD per user per month, GitHub Copilot Business 19 USD per seat per month, Claude Team from 20 USD per seat per month on annual billing. The included usage is measured differently by each, so the seat prices are only partly comparable.
- On data protection, the vendors distinguish by plan: according to their pages, Cursor (with Privacy Mode), GitHub (Business and Enterprise) and Anthropic (commercial plans) do not train on customer code by default; for Anthropic, unless the customer explicitly opts in to model improvement. Retention, zero data retention and regions differ clearly and are set out below per vendor.
- Whether a tool can be used lawfully in your company is decided by your own assessment, the contract and the configuration, not by the product page. The questions to ask are in the checklist section.
Who this comparison is for and who it is not for
The comparison is for CTOs and engineering leads who are introducing a tool for a team and need to examine plan, data handling and administration. For individual developers or small open-source teams, the individual plans can be enough, provided there are no requirements for central administration.
The three tools at a glance
Cursor describes itself in its documentation as a coding agent that understands codebases, plans and builds features, fixes bugs and reviews changes. It comes with its own editor, a command line (CLI), cloud agents and automations. Bugbot handles code reviews. Cursor supports models from several vendors (according to Cursor OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and others) and ships its own models (Cursor Docs).
GitHub Copilot runs, according to GitHub, in the IDE, on GitHub.com, on the command line (Copilot CLI) and in the Copilot app. The feature set includes inline suggestions, chat, agents (including the cloud agent on GitHub.com) and code review. Copilot Enterprise is intended for companies with GitHub Enterprise Cloud; according to GitHub, Copilot is currently not available for GitHub Enterprise Server (GitHub Docs: Plans). GitHub lists the available models per plan. The list of 6 October 2026 names models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and Microsoft (GitHub Docs: Supported models).
Claude Code is, according to Anthropic, an agentic coding tool that reads codebases, edits files, runs commands and integrates with development tools. It runs in the terminal, in IDEs, in the desktop app and in the browser; sessions can also run in the cloud (Claude Code Docs). It uses Claude models from Anthropic; Amazon Bedrock or Google Cloud can be chosen as an alternative API provider (Claude Code Docs: Admin setup).
What Claude Code is and how to get started is explained in What is Claude Code?. OpenAI Codex is a fourth candidate; we compare it with Claude Code in Codex vs Claude Code.
Claude Code
Set up Claude Code properly in your engineering team
Plans and prices (as of 6 October 2026)
All prices come from the vendors' price pages and documentation, retrieved on 6 October 2026, in the currency shown there (USD). Cursor and Anthropic show the prices excluding taxes.
| Criterion | Cursor | GitHub Copilot | Claude Code (via Claude plans) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Individual plans | Pro 20 USD, Pro+ 60 USD, Ultra 200 USD per month | Pro 10 USD, Pro+ 39 USD, Max 100 USD per month | Pro 17 USD per month on annual payment (20 USD monthly), Max from 100 USD per month |
| Team plan | Teams Standard 40 USD, Premium 120 USD per user per month | Business 19 USD per granted seat per month | Team Standard 20 USD, Premium 100 USD per seat per month on annual billing (25 and 125 USD monthly) |
| Enterprise | custom (contact sales) | Enterprise 39 USD per granted seat per month | Enterprise 20 USD per seat per month (annual) plus usage at API rates |
| Included usage in the team plan | a set amount of model usage per plan; according to Cursor, Premium has five times the Agent limits of Standard | Business 1,900, Enterprise 3,900 AI credits per user per month in a shared pool | allowance per seat, Premium seat with five times a Standard seat |
| Additional usage | on-demand usage, billed in arrears | 0.01 USD per AI credit (active by default, admins can switch it off) | usage credits at API rates; Enterprise bills all usage at API rates |
| Special feature | On Teams and Enterprise, third-party models carry a Cursor Token Rate of 0.25 USD per million tokens on top of the API price | Code completions are not measured in credits and are unlimited in all paid plans | Chat, Claude Code and (in Team) Cowork share the allowance |
Sources: Cursor Pricing, Cursor Docs: Models and Pricing, GitHub Docs: Plans, GitHub Docs: Billing, Claude Pricing, Claude Code Docs: Costs.
Two notes on reading the table. First, the seat prices are only partly comparable, because Cursor measures usage by model and API price, GitHub in AI credits and Anthropic in usage limits per seat. What a team actually pays is only shown by a measured pilot. Second, prices and billing rules keep changing; we broke down the Anthropic model prices and the Copilot credits, with a worked example and cost levers, in What does AI cost per team in 2026?.
Data handling and data protection
The table states what each vendor's pages say on 6 October 2026 about the same questions.
| Criterion | Cursor | GitHub Copilot | Claude Code |
|---|---|---|---|
| Training on customer data | With Privacy Mode enabled, Cursor guarantees that code is not used for training by Cursor or the model providers. Teams offers a team-wide Privacy Mode; for Enterprise it is on by default | According to GitHub, Copilot Business and Enterprise data is not used for training. For individual plans, GitHub may use interaction data and users can opt out | According to Anthropic, under commercial terms (Team, Enterprise, API, third-party platforms) it does not train on code or prompts from Claude Code unless the customer joins a programme such as the Developer Partner Program. On Free, Pro and Max a setting decides |
| Retention | According to Cursor, most models run under zero-data-retention agreements with the providers. Cloud agents store encrypted repository copies while the agent runs and delete them afterwards | Business and Enterprise, default settings: prompts and suggestions in IDE chat and completions are not stored. For other access (such as github.com, mobile, CLI) 28 days; usage data two years | Commercial plans (Team, Enterprise, API): 30 days by default. Zero data retention is available to qualified Enterprise accounts, is not part of the standard plan and is enabled only by Anthropic. On Free, Pro and Max: 30 days or 5 years, depending on the setting |
| Region | Data residency for Enterprise teams: available for the US; EU and Iceland for inference only on request, further coverage in development according to Cursor. For US data residency a 10 percent uplift on model prices | GitHub Enterprise Cloud with data residency offers the "EU" region, which according to GitHub also includes Azure regions in Norway and Switzerland; it covers code and user data. Processing of Copilot requests stays in the region only if the policy "Restrict Copilot to data residency compliant models" is enabled (off by default); then only models available there can be chosen, and AI credit consumption rises by 10 percent | According to Anthropic, the Claude API offers the inference geos "global" (default) and "us"; the workspace storage location is currently only "us". On Amazon Bedrock and Google Cloud the endpoint and region determine inference, depending on model availability |
| Contractual basis | Data processing agreement (DPA) according to the Cursor documentation | Data Protection Agreement (DPA) according to GitHub | Commercial Terms including the Data Processing Addendum (DPA) incorporated into them, according to Anthropic |
Sources: Cursor Docs: Privacy and Data Governance, Cursor Docs: Enterprise, Cursor Pricing, GitHub Copilot Plans, GitHub Docs: Data Residency, Claude Code Docs: Data usage, Claude Code Docs: Zero Data Retention, Claude Code Docs: Legal, Anthropic Commercial Terms, Anthropic DPA, GitHub Docs: Copilot with data residency, GitHub Docs: Storage of data with data residency, Claude Docs: Data residency, Claude Code Docs: Google Cloud.
What the table says applies to the plan named in each case. Cloud features are a separate question: Cursor's cloud agents store code, with Claude Code Anthropic keeps the transcript for cloud sessions, and with zero data retention cloud sessions, Remote Control and feedback features are switched off. Anyone who may not have code stored should check these features separately.
A model note that affects all three. According to Anthropic, Claude Fable 5 and Claude Fable 5.1 store inputs and outputs for safety reviews, which is why they are not available under zero data retention by default. For these models Cursor requires, on Enterprise and with Privacy Mode on, approval of the data retention in the dashboard; GitHub names a time-limited exception from default data retention that allows use with zero data retention until the end of 2026 on request (Cursor Docs, GitHub Docs: Plans, Claude Code Docs).
Administration and control
| Criterion | Cursor | GitHub Copilot | Claude Code |
|---|---|---|---|
| Central policies | Enterprise: access controls for repositories, models and MCP servers, auto-run, browser and network controls | Policies at enterprise and organisation level control features, agents and models | Managed settings (file, MDM or server-side via the admin console) take precedence over local settings |
| Agent permissions | Configurable through the controls above | Policies per feature, agent and model | Rules for allow, ask, deny (order: deny, ask, allow), plus an operating-system-level sandbox for shell commands (off by default, on macOS, Linux and WSL2; on native Windows commands run without a sandbox) |
| Sign-in and management | Teams: SAML/OIDC SSO; Enterprise: SCIM | Seat assignment through organisation or enterprise | SSO from Team; SCIM on the Enterprise plan |
| Spend control | Teams: team-wide spend limits; per-member limits on the Enterprise plan | Budgets for individuals, cost centres, organisation or enterprise | Enterprise plan: spend limits for organisation, group or member; Console: limits per workspace |
| Audit | Audit logs (Enterprise) for administrative events, without prompts and code; hooks for development activity | Audit log for plan, policy and licence changes and for agent activity on the GitHub website; prompts that users send to Copilot locally only through your own solutions such as hooks | Enterprise plan: audit logs according to the Claude pricing page. Separately: OpenTelemetry export of metrics and events as development telemetry; prompt content is redacted by default |
| Usage analytics | Teams: usage analytics, admin dashboard | Dashboard with Copilot usage metrics | Analytics dashboard for Team and Enterprise; contribution metrics in public beta, not with zero data retention |
Sources: Cursor Docs: Compliance and Monitoring, Cursor Docs: Team Pricing, Claude Pricing, Cursor Pricing, Cursor Docs: Models and Pricing, GitHub Docs: Policies, GitHub Docs: Audit logs, GitHub Docs: Usage metrics, GitHub Docs: Billing, Claude Code Docs: Managed Settings, Claude Code Docs: Permissions, Claude Code Docs: Sandboxing, Claude Code Docs: Admin setup, Claude Code Docs: Monitoring, Claude Code Docs: Analytics, Claude Code Docs: Costs.
How far an agent can be restricted often matters more for audits than model quality. The questions to put to each vendor are in 5 security questions for your coding-agent vendor.
GDPR and the AI Act: what vendor statements do not replace
None of the product pages can certify that your use is lawful. The assessment depends on your company: which data reaches the agent, which plan and region are booked, which data processing agreement is in place and which features (such as cloud sessions) you switch on. The tables above show what the vendors document; the assessment remains yours.
For the AI Act the following applies whatever the tool: Article 4 requires deployers to take measures on the AI literacy of their staff. According to the European Commission's questions and answers (last updated 27 July 2026), there are no mandatory trainings, no certificate is needed, and organisations can keep an internal record of the measures they have taken (European Commission). How to put this into practice is covered in AI literacy under Article 4 of the AI Act. A free template for rules on working with AI agents is available as an AI policy template.
What to base the decision on
A winner cannot be derived from price pages. These criteria help justify the choice; where one vendor is better placed on a criterion depends on your situation.
| Question | Where the vendor statements apply |
|---|---|
| Where does your code live and how does the team work? | Copilot is closely tied to GitHub (Enterprise requires GitHub Enterprise Cloud). Cursor lists integrations with GitHub, GitLab, Azure DevOps, Bitbucket and JetBrains. Claude Code runs in the terminal, in IDEs, on the desktop and in the browser |
| Which models should be allowed? | Copilot and Cursor offer models from several vendors, Claude Code uses Claude models. Depending on the vendor, admins control the selection through policies |
| What are your regional needs? | EU operation is not a simple tick at any vendor: Cursor names EU and Iceland for inference on request, GitHub the "EU" region via GHE.com (with the Copilot policy enabled), Claude Code the route via Bedrock or Google Cloud |
| How strict must retention be? | Check plan, zero data retention, cloud features and models with data retention (for example Fable) one by one |
| How granular must control be? | Compare the admin table with your requirements: policies, agent permissions, audit, spend limits |
| How predictable must costs be? | Seat price plus usage: credits, on-demand billing or API prices add up differently |
If the situation is unclear, a time-limited pilot with two or three tools and the same tasks helps. What to measure and how is covered in Measuring AI productivity honestly; there is a free PDF on this in the KPI framework.
Pre-buy checklist
These are our questions, which you can have each vendor answer in writing:
- Data handling: In which region does processing (inference, storage) run, and does that apply to the plan you book and to all features you use?
- Contract: Which data processing document applies, and which sub-processors are named?
- Retention: What is stored and for how long, and how do you enable zero data retention or an equivalent setting?
- Agent permissions: Which files, commands, network destinations and MCP servers may the agent use, and how do you enforce that centrally?
- Traceability: Which events are logged, and where do the logs live?
- Cost: How is usage beyond the seat billed, and which limits can you set?
If you want to go through the answers for your team together, you can do so in a 30-minute call with us. Our Claude Code course comprises 22 lessons in 7 modules; the training costs 599 € per licence, one-time, and includes the Cowork and Claude Code courses (Pricing, Courses). What a rollout in a team looks like is covered in Rolling out Claude Code in your team.
FAQ
Which is better, Cursor or Claude Code?
That cannot be answered in general. Cursor is an editor with an agent, Claude Code an agent for terminal, IDE, desktop and browser; they belong to different vendors and plans. What matters is your team's way of working, choice of models, data requirements, administration and cost. The tables above show what the vendors write on this; the answer for your team comes from a pilot with the same tasks.
Cursor or GitHub Copilot: what does a team seat cost?
According to the price pages of 6 October 2026, Cursor Teams Standard costs 40 USD per user per month and GitHub Copilot Business 19 USD per granted seat per month. The included usage is measured differently: Cursor by model usage, Copilot in 1,900 AI credits per user per month in a shared pool. Additional usage costs 0.01 USD per credit with Copilot, while with Cursor on-demand usage is billed in arrears.
Do the vendors train on my code?
According to their pages not in the business plans: Cursor guarantees this with Privacy Mode on, GitHub for Copilot Business and Enterprise, Anthropic for commercial plans unless the customer takes part in a programme for model improvement. Individual plans follow other rules, which you can read in the tables above and on the linked pages.
Which coding agent is GDPR-compliant?
No vendor page answers that for you. All three vendors describe data protection features, contracts and regions; whether your use complies with the GDPR depends on your data, the plan, the configuration and the contract. Work through the checklist and have your data protection officer assess it.
Can I use Cursor, Copilot and Claude Code in parallel?
Technically yes, the plans do not exclude each other. Organisationally you then need rules, approvals and cost control for each tool. A time-limited pilot with several tools is possible; after the pilot you can assess whether consolidation makes sense.
Is there EU data residency for all three?
Not across the board. According to Cursor, data residency for Enterprise teams is available in the US, with EU and Iceland for inference only on request. GitHub offers the "EU" region through GitHub Enterprise Cloud with data residency (according to GitHub including Norway and Switzerland); Copilot requests stay in the region only if a separate policy is enabled, which raises AI credit consumption by 10 percent. For Claude Code, the Claude API documentation names the options "global" and "us"; for other regions, Amazon Bedrock or Google Cloud serve.
Sources
All statements retrieved on 6 October 2026.
- Cursor, pricing: cursor.com/pricing
- Cursor Docs, Models and Pricing: cursor.com/docs/account/pricing
- Cursor Docs, Privacy and Data Governance: cursor.com/docs/enterprise/privacy-and-data-governance
- Cursor Docs, Enterprise: cursor.com/docs/enterprise
- Cursor Docs, Compliance and Monitoring: cursor.com/docs/enterprise/compliance-and-monitoring
- Cursor Docs, Team Pricing: cursor.com/docs/account/teams/pricing
- GitHub Docs, Plans for GitHub Copilot: docs.github.com
- GitHub Docs, Billing for organizations and enterprises: docs.github.com
- GitHub Docs, Supported AI models: docs.github.com
- GitHub Docs, Copilot policies: docs.github.com
- GitHub Docs, Audit logs for Copilot: docs.github.com
- GitHub Docs, Copilot usage metrics: docs.github.com
- GitHub Docs, Data residency: docs.github.com
- GitHub Docs, Copilot with data residency: docs.github.com
- GitHub Docs, Storage of data with data residency: docs.github.com
- GitHub, Copilot plans and FAQ: github.com/features/copilot/plans
- Anthropic, Claude Pricing: claude.com/pricing
- Anthropic, Commercial Terms: anthropic.com/legal/commercial-terms
- Anthropic, Data Processing Addendum: anthropic.com/legal/data-processing-addendum
- Claude Code Docs: Overview, Costs, Data usage, Zero Data Retention, Legal and compliance, Admin setup, Managed Settings, Permissions, Sandboxing, Monitoring, Analytics, Google Cloud
- Claude Docs, Data residency: platform.claude.com
- European Commission, AI Literacy Questions and Answers (last updated 27 July 2026): digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu
Claude Code
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About the author
Co-Founder · Business & Content Lead
Co-Founder of Sentient Dynamics. 15+ years of business strategy (incl. SAP), MBA. Writes about EU AI Act compliance, ROI measurement and how Mittelstand CTOs actually adopt agentic AI.
