Cursor vs Google Antigravity: Which AI IDE Should You Use in 2026?

What Is Cursor?

Cursor is an AI-powered code editor built as a fork of VS Code. It launched with the promise of making AI a natural part of the coding workflow rather than a separate tool you switch to. That promise has been delivered. As of early 2026, Cursor has crossed 1 million users with over 360,000 paying customers. Those numbers matter because they mean the product has been stress-tested across real-world codebases, team workflows, and production environments.

The core experience revolves around three capabilities. First, inline autocomplete that predicts what you are about to type and suggests multi-line completions as you code. Second, Composer, which lets you describe changes in natural language and have the AI generate them across multiple files. Third, Cursor 2.0 introduced parallel agents that can work on up to 8 tasks simultaneously, so you can dispatch refactoring, test writing, and bug fixing in parallel.

Because Cursor is a VS Code fork, it inherits the extension ecosystem, keybindings, settings, and UI patterns that millions of developers already know. If you have used VS Code, you can start using Cursor in about five minutes. That low switching cost is one of its strongest advantages.

What Is Google Antigravity?

Google Antigravity is Google's entry into the AI IDE market, announced in November 2025 alongside Gemini 3. Unlike Cursor, which augments the traditional coding experience with AI, Antigravity was designed from the ground up as an agent-first environment. The core idea is that instead of you writing code with AI assistance, you supervise agents that write code on your behalf.

The centerpiece feature is the Agent Manager View. This is a dedicated panel where you dispatch, monitor, and review multiple AI agents working simultaneously. You can spin up 5 or more agents, each tackling a different task: one fixing a bug, another writing tests, a third refactoring a module, a fourth updating documentation, and a fifth handling a migration. Each agent generates artifacts along the way: task lists, plans, screenshots, and even browser recordings that show you exactly what the agent did and why.

Antigravity is powered primarily by Google's Gemini 3 model family, including Gemini 3 Pro, Deep Think, and Flash variants. But it also supports third-party models like Claude Sonnet 4.5 and GPT-OSS-120B. This multi-model approach means you can pick the right model for each task rather than being locked into a single AI provider.

As of February 2026, Antigravity is in public preview. It is free to use with rate limits. There is no paid tier yet and no enterprise compliance certifications. It is, in the most literal sense, an experiment in public.

Head-to-Head Comparison

The Fundamental Difference

The most important distinction between Cursor and Antigravity is not a feature comparison. It is a philosophy difference. Cursor augments your coding. You are still the one writing code, making architectural decisions, and navigating your codebase. The AI accelerates what you already do. It completes your lines, suggests refactors, and generates boilerplate. But you remain in the driver's seat.

Antigravity takes a fundamentally different stance. It assumes that many coding tasks should be fully delegated to agents. You describe what needs to happen, the Agent Manager dispatches autonomous workers, and you review the results. You are not writing code. You are supervising agents that write code. The difference feels subtle on paper but is profound in practice. It changes the developer's role from implementer to reviewer.

Neither approach is inherently better. They serve different workflows and different types of tasks. Tight, iterative coding loops where you are building something new and need precise control? Cursor excels there. Large-scale refactors across dozens of files where the pattern is clear but the work is tedious? That is where Antigravity's agent model starts to make real sense.

Where Cursor Wins

Production Stability

Cursor has been in active use by over a million developers for long enough to have its most significant bugs squashed. The editor is stable, the AI features are predictable, and the failure modes are well understood. You know what you are getting. For professional work where reliability is non-negotiable, this matters enormously. Antigravity crashes, hangs, and produces unexpected results more often because it simply has not had the same runway for stabilization.

Speed of Autocomplete

Cursor's inline autocomplete is one of the best in any AI coding tool. It is fast, usually relevant, and does not interrupt your flow. The suggestions appear as you type, and accepting them feels natural. This is the feature that makes developers stick with Cursor after trying it. Antigravity does not prioritize inline autocomplete in the same way. Its design centers on dispatching agents for larger tasks, so the moment-to-moment typing experience is less polished.

Developer Flow

Because Cursor keeps you in the coding seat, it supports the state of flow that productive developers depend on. You think, you type, the AI assists, you keep moving. There is no context switch to a management panel. There is no waiting for agents to report back. The feedback loop is tight and immediate. For developers who measure their productivity in lines shipped per hour, Cursor's flow-preserving design is a real advantage.

Extension Ecosystem

Cursor's VS Code extension compatibility is near-perfect. ESLint, Prettier, GitLens, Tailwind IntelliSense, language-specific extensions: they all work as expected. Antigravity supports VS Code extensions too, but compatibility is inconsistent. Some extensions work flawlessly, others partially, and a few not at all. If your workflow depends on specific extensions, test them in Antigravity before committing to it.

Enterprise Adoption

Cursor has a Business plan at $40/mo with team management, admin controls, and security features that enterprises require. Companies with compliance requirements can adopt Cursor with reasonable confidence. Antigravity has none of this yet. No enterprise tier, no SOC 2 compliance, no admin dashboard. For any organization with a security team that reviews tools, Antigravity is not an option until it matures.

Where Antigravity Wins

The Agent Manager Is Genuinely Innovative

Antigravity's Agent Manager View is not a gimmick. Dispatching 5 agents on 5 different bugs simultaneously is a workflow that does not exist in any other IDE. You create tasks, assign them to agents, and watch them work in parallel. Each agent reports its progress, shows what files it changed, and explains its reasoning. When it works well, it compresses hours of tedious multi-file work into minutes. This is the feature that makes developers say "the future of coding is different from what I expected."

Artifact Transparency

Every agent in Antigravity generates artifacts: structured records of what it planned, what it did, and why. These include task lists, execution plans, screenshots of the application state, and browser recordings of the agent testing its own changes. This is a major accountability advantage. With Cursor, you see the final output. With Antigravity, you see the entire decision chain. For teams that need to audit AI-generated changes, artifacts are invaluable.

Multi-Model Support

Antigravity lets you choose which model powers each agent. Need deep reasoning for a complex architectural decision? Use Gemini 3 Deep Think. Need fast code generation for straightforward tasks? Switch to Gemini 3 Flash. Want to use Claude Sonnet 4.5 for a nuanced refactor? That option is available too. GPT-OSS-120B is also supported. This flexibility means you are not locked into one AI provider's strengths and weaknesses. You can match the model to the task.

It Is Free

As of February 2026, Antigravity costs nothing. Yes, there are rate limits during the public preview. But the core functionality, including multi-agent dispatch, artifact tracking, and multi-model support, is available at no cost. For individual developers who want to explore agent-first coding without a $20/mo commitment, this is a straightforward advantage. Expect this to change once Google launches pricing, but for now, the barrier to entry is zero.

The Multi-Model Advantage

This topic deserves its own section because model flexibility is becoming one of the most important differentiators in AI tooling. The AI model landscape moves fast. A model that is best-in-class in January may be second or third by March. Tools that lock you into a single model or a single provider limit your ability to benefit from new breakthroughs.

Antigravity's approach is explicitly multi-model. You have access to Google's Gemini 3 family (which covers the spectrum from fast and cheap to slow and deeply analytical), Anthropic's Claude Sonnet 4.5, and the open-source GPT-OSS-120B. This means you can experiment with different models for different tasks and learn which model handles which type of work best.

Cursor is more tightly coupled to its own models and OpenAI's offerings. The Pro plan gives you access to strong models, but the selection is narrower. You do not get to pick between fundamentally different AI architectures for different tasks in the same way. For most day-to-day coding, this is not a problem because Cursor's models are very capable. But for developers who want maximum flexibility and control over which AI brain is handling their code, Antigravity's multi-model architecture is more appealing.

The practical implication for teams is significant. If your organization has preferences or compliance requirements around specific AI providers, Antigravity gives you options. If you are fine using whatever models Cursor provides and just want the best coding experience, Cursor's focused approach works well.

For Web Development and SEO

Both IDEs handle web development workflows competently, but the strengths map differently depending on the type of task you are performing.

For day-to-day web development like building components, styling pages, writing API routes, and fixing bugs, Cursor's fast autocomplete and tight feedback loop make it the more productive choice. You get immediate suggestions as you type JSX, Tailwind classes, and TypeScript. The flow is smooth. This is the environment where most web developers spend their time, and Cursor is optimized for it.

For SEO-specific tasks, the story gets more interesting. SEO work at scale often involves repetitive, multi-file changes: adding meta tags across dozens of pages, generating schema markup for every blog post, updating internal links, auditing heading hierarchies, and restructuring content. These are exactly the kinds of tasks where Antigravity's agent model could shine. Dispatching an agent to add FAQPage schema to every blog post that lacks it, while another agent audits heading structures, while a third updates canonical URLs, is a compelling workflow.

We have written extensively about using AI coding tools for SEO. Our guide to using Claude Code for SEO covers the principles that apply regardless of which IDE you choose. And our technical SEO automation walkthrough shows practical examples of the kind of bulk operations where agent-first tools like Antigravity have the most potential.

The honest assessment: for content management and page-level SEO edits, Cursor is more efficient today. For large-scale SEO automation across an entire codebase, Antigravity's multi-agent approach has the higher ceiling but is not yet reliable enough to replace a proven workflow.

Stability vs Innovation: When to Pick Each

The choice between Cursor and Antigravity ultimately comes down to what you value more right now: reliability or exploration.

There is also a third option that many experienced developers are choosing: use both. Cursor for daily production work. Antigravity for experimental sessions, learning, and large-scale refactors where you want to test the agent-first paradigm. Both are VS Code forks, so switching between them is trivial. Your projects, Git repos, and file structures work in either IDE.

The key question is not which tool is better. It is which tool is better for the specific work you are doing right now. Cursor is safe and excellent. Antigravity is exciting and unpredictable. Both have a place in a thoughtful developer's toolkit.