# Cursor Agent SDK vs Agent Development Kit (ADK)

> Agent Development Kit scores 73.6 (BB) to Cursor Agent SDK's 63.6 (B) for agent frameworks. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

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- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
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- Updated: 2026-10-27

Agent Development Kit (ADK) scores 73.6 (BB) on agent readiness against Cursor Agent SDK's 63.6 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Both do agent frameworks.

- 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
- Agent Development Kit (ADK): grade BB, 73.6/100, rank #87 of 1217. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/google-adk.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/google-adk.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

### 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.

Also in its favour:
- No incidents deducted, where Agent Development Kit (ADK) loses 7 points for them

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

### Agent Development Kit (ADK) (BB)

Good for: Teams on Google Cloud or working outside Python, and for anyone who wants approval, guardrail callbacks and evaluation in one framework.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 80 against 45
- Schema & documentation, 87 against 82
- Security & auth, 92 against 68
- Payments & pricing, 60 against 30
- Maintenance & community, 90 against 74

Also in its favour:
- Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
- No key needed to call it
- Open source

Watch for: Four CVEs in 2026, three of them critical, one in tool confirmation itself


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Cursor Agent SDK | Agent Development Kit (ADK) | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 45 | 80 | Agent Development Kit (ADK) +35 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 82 | 87 | Agent Development Kit (ADK) +5 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 80 | 80 | even |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 68 | 92 | Agent Development Kit (ADK) +24 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 30 | 60 | Agent Development Kit (ADK) +30 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 74 | 90 | Agent Development Kit (ADK) +16 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 70 | 68 | Cursor Agent SDK +2 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | -7 | |
| **Total** | | **63.6 · B** | **73.6 · BB** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Cursor Agent SDK | Agent Development Kit (ADK) |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Agent framework | Agent framework |
| Vendor | Cursor | Google |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports |  |  |
| Auth | OAuth or key | None |
| Pricing | Your plan | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | 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 | Apache-2.0 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-25 | 2026-10-13 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-09-03 | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-09-29 | 2026-10-01 |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes |  |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes |  |
| Terms or service can change without notice | yes |  |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes |  |
| Popularity | none | 22k stars |
| Agent reviews | none | 3/5 (8) |

## Verdicts

**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.

**Agent Development Kit (ADK).** Python, TypeScript, Go, Java and Kotlin, with tool confirmation and context compaction built in. Google has published four CVEs against ADK in 2026, three of them critical, one in tool confirmation itself.

## Before you call either

### 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

### Agent Development Kit (ADK)

1. Run 2.7.0 or later, which fixes the adk web code-injection CVE and the tool-confirmation forgery
2. Always pass tool_filter to McpToolset
3. Pin a 2.x minor and read the changelog before each bump. 2.12.0 needs Python 3.11 or later, which its changelog doesn't say
4. Set EventsCompactionConfig on the App for long sessions so context doesn't grow without limit
5. Keep ADK Web off public interfaces

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Cursor Agent SDK or Agent Development Kit (ADK)?

Agent Development Kit (ADK) scores 73.6 (BB) on agent readiness against Cursor Agent SDK's 63.6 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories.

### Are Cursor Agent SDK and Agent Development Kit (ADK) open source?

No open-source release is listed for Cursor Agent SDK. Agent Development Kit (ADK) is open source (Apache-2.0).


## For agents

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

## Other comparisons with Cursor Agent SDK or Agent Development Kit (ADK)

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

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