# Codex CLI vs Cursor Agent (2026): Benchmarks, Price & Verdict | Alher Tech

> Codex CLI vs Cursor Agent: head-to-head 2026 comparison across Arena Elo, MMLU, GPQA, HumanEval, context window and pricing. Verdict + use cases.

- Canonical page: https://alhertech.com/en/ai-comparison/codex-cli-vs-cursor-agent/
- Site: Alher Tech (custom software, AI agents and SEO engineering, https://alhertech.com/)
- Contact: https://alhertech.com/en/contact/

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|  | Codex CLI | Cursor Agent |
| --- | --- | --- |
| arenaElo | 1408 | 1378 |
| humanEval | 95.5 | 91.2 |
| sweBench | 70 | 62 |
| mmlu | 88.6 | 88.7 |
| gpqa | 60.8 | 59.4 |
| aime | 86 | 85 |
| Price in/out ($/M) | $9 / $36 | $0 / $0 |

## Our verdict

Codex CLI gives you full-control terminal agents on OpenAI billing; Cursor wraps multiple models in a polished IDE. For CI/CD scripted agents, Codex CLI. For interactive build sessions, Cursor.

[Codex CLI](https://alhertech.com/en/ai-comparison/codex-cli/) · [Cursor Agent](https://alhertech.com/en/ai-comparison/cursor-agent/) · [All AI model comparisons](https://alhertech.com/en/ai-comparison/)