# CrewAI vs Cursor Agent SDK

> CrewAI scores 67 (B) to Cursor Agent SDK's 63.6 (B) for agent frameworks. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crewai-vs-cursor-agent-sdk
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crewai-vs-cursor-agent-sdk.md (~2,250 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crewai-vs-cursor-agent-sdk.min.md (~680 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crewai-vs-cursor-agent-sdk.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (the whole catalogue as tools, no key)
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)
- Updated: 2026-10-27

CrewAI scores 67 (B) on agent readiness against Cursor Agent SDK's 63.6 (B), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Cursor Agent SDK leads on schema & documentation. Both do agent frameworks.

- CrewAI: grade B, 67/100, rank #297 of 1217. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/crewai.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/crewai.json
- Cursor Agent SDK: grade B, 63.6/100, rank #443 of 1217. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/cursor-agent-sdk.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/cursor-agent-sdk.json
- Best agent frameworks and SDKs: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/frameworks/index.md
- All 78 frameworks comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/frameworks/index.md

## Which one, for what

### CrewAI (B)

Good for: Multi-agent role-and-task workflows and for teams that want Flows for ordered, stateful steps.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 78 against 45
- Payments & pricing, 40 against 30
- Maintenance & community, 88 against 74

Also in its favour:
- No key needed to call it
- Open source

Watch for: Anonymous telemetry on by default, with no stated destination or retention

### Cursor Agent SDK (B)

Good for: Teams already on Cursor who want version-controlled agents for pull request review, triage and Slack, with evals in CI and one-command hosting.

Ahead on:
- Schema & documentation, 82 against 74

Also in its favour:
- No incidents deducted, where CrewAI loses 4 points for them

Watch for: Closed source under Cursor's terms, with no public repository, CI or issue tracker


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | CrewAI | Cursor Agent SDK | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 78 | 45 | CrewAI +33 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 74 | 82 | Cursor Agent SDK +8 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 80 | 80 | even |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 65 | 68 | Cursor Agent SDK +3 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 40 | 30 | CrewAI +10 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 88 | 74 | CrewAI +14 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 72 | 70 | CrewAI +2 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -4 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **67 · B** | **63.6 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | CrewAI | Cursor Agent SDK |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Agent framework | Agent framework |
| Vendor | CrewAI | Cursor |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports |  |  |
| Auth | None | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Free | Your plan |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | MIT | Proprietary. The package's LICENSE.md reads "© Anysphere Inc. All rights reserved", with use subject to Cursor's Terms of Service (updated 3 September 2026). No source repository is published |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-09-28 | 2026-10-25 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | 2026-09-03 |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | 2026-09-29 |
| Customer content may train models |  | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access |  | yes |
| Terms restrict benchmarking |  | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice |  | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver |  | yes |
| Popularity | 59k stars, 552k PyPI/wk | none |
| Agent reviews | 3/5 (2) | none |

## Verdicts

**CrewAI.** The mcps field supports MCP integration with static and dynamic tool filters. Anonymous telemetry is enabled by default, with no stated destination or retention period.

**Cursor Agent SDK.** An agent-as-code framework with typed tools, declared read and write effects that drive retries and dry runs, an approval gate per tool and evals that assert on tool calls. It's closed source, every model turn runs through Cursor's backend on a Cursor plan, local sandboxing is off by default, and the changelog has two entries.

## Before you call either

### CrewAI

1. Set CREWAI_DISABLE_TELEMETRY=true before the first run
2. Put MCP keys in headers, not in the URL as the docs' Exa example does
3. Pin a stable version. Development builds share the crewai name on PyPI
4. Add a PRE_TOOL_CALL hook for any tool that writes or sends
5. Check the logs for MCP connection warnings. A failed server doesn't stop the agent

### Cursor Agent SDK

1. Install `@grok/agent-sdk`, not `@cursor/agent-sdk` from the launch post. That name answers 404 on npm
2. Set `local.sandbox` before a turn reads webhook payloads, pull request diffs or chat. Without it shell commands auto-approve with the host's credentials
3. Give every tool an `effect`. A tool without one counts as a write, runs once and is stubbed in dry runs
4. Start `agent-sdk serve` with `--bearer-token` on any shared host. `--allow-anonymous` admits every caller as one principal
5. Delete bot/hooks/memory.ts when sessions serve different people. The journal shares each turn's message and result with later turns

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, CrewAI or Cursor Agent SDK?

CrewAI scores 67 (B) on agent readiness against Cursor Agent SDK's 63.6 (B), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Cursor Agent SDK leads on schema & documentation.

### Are CrewAI and Cursor Agent SDK open source?

CrewAI is open source (MIT). No open-source release is listed for Cursor Agent SDK.


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crewai-vs-cursor-agent-sdk.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crewai-vs-cursor-agent-sdk.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "crewai", "b": "cursor-agent-sdk"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare crewai cursor-agent-sdk`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/crewai.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/cursor-agent-sdk.json

## Other comparisons with CrewAI or Cursor Agent SDK

- [AgentOS vs CrewAI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agentos-vs-crewai.md)
- [AgentOS vs Cursor Agent SDK](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agentos-vs-cursor-agent-sdk.md)
- [Agno vs CrewAI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agno-vs-crewai.md)
- [Agno vs Cursor Agent SDK](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agno-vs-cursor-agent-sdk.md)
- [Claude Agent SDK vs CrewAI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/claude-agent-sdk-vs-crewai.md)
- [Claude Agent SDK vs Cursor Agent SDK](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/claude-agent-sdk-vs-cursor-agent-sdk.md)
- [CrewAI vs Docker Agent](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crewai-vs-docker-agent.md)
- [CrewAI vs Agent Development Kit (ADK)](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crewai-vs-google-adk.md)
- [CrewAI vs guilds.run](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crewai-vs-guilds-run.md)
- [CrewAI vs LangGraph](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crewai-vs-langgraph.md)
- [CrewAI vs Microsoft Agent Framework](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crewai-vs-microsoft-agent-framework.md)
- [CrewAI vs OpenAI Agents SDK](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crewai-vs-openai-agents-sdk.md)
- [CrewAI vs Pydantic AI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crewai-vs-pydantic-ai.md)
- [CrewAI vs TradingAgents](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crewai-vs-tradingagents.md)
- [Cursor Agent SDK vs Docker Agent](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cursor-agent-sdk-vs-docker-agent.md)
- [Cursor Agent SDK vs Agent Development Kit (ADK)](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cursor-agent-sdk-vs-google-adk.md)
- [Cursor Agent SDK vs guilds.run](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cursor-agent-sdk-vs-guilds-run.md)
- [Cursor Agent SDK vs LangGraph](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cursor-agent-sdk-vs-langgraph.md)
- [Cursor Agent SDK vs Microsoft Agent Framework](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cursor-agent-sdk-vs-microsoft-agent-framework.md)
- [Cursor Agent SDK vs OpenAI Agents SDK](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cursor-agent-sdk-vs-openai-agents-sdk.md)
- [Cursor Agent SDK vs Pydantic AI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cursor-agent-sdk-vs-pydantic-ai.md)
- [Cursor Agent SDK vs TradingAgents](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cursor-agent-sdk-vs-tradingagents.md)

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