Codex CLI vs Cursor Agent: OpenAI Terminal vs AI IDE

Codex CLICursor Agent
arenaElo14081378
humanEval95.591.2
sweBench7062
mmlu88.688.7
gpqa60.859.4
aime8685
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 · Cursor Agent · All AI model comparisons