# Cursor Agent SDK vs smolagents

> Cursor Agent SDK scores 63.7 (B) to smolagents's 58.7 (C) for agent frameworks. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

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- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)
- Updated: 2026-11-07

Cursor Agent SDK scores 63.7 (B) on agent readiness against smolagents's 58.7 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. smolagents leads on reliability and payments & pricing. Both do agent frameworks.

- Cursor Agent SDK: grade B, 63.7/100, rank #503 of 1510. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/cursor-agent-sdk.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/cursor-agent-sdk.json
- smolagents: grade C, 58.7/100, rank #739 of 1510. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/smolagents.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/smolagents.json
- Best agent frameworks and SDKs: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/frameworks/index.md
- All 171 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.

Ahead on:
- Agent ergonomics, 80 against 68
- Maintenance & community, 74 against 34
- Transparency & trust, 71 against 65

Also in its favour:
- No incidents deducted, where smolagents loses 6 points for them

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

### smolagents (C)

Good for: Small Python projects and research that want code-writing agents with minimal abstraction.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 64 against 45
- Payments & pricing, 60 against 30

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

Watch for: No release since 1.26.0 on 29 May 2026, and few commits to main since August


## Why the edge

### Maintenance & community: Cursor Agent SDK +40

- Cursor Agent SDK (74): 0.3.0 on npm on 25 October 2026, per the 27 October check (npm not re-read on 2 November), and the docs changelog still ends at 0.3.0 of 23 October (30). Five @grok/agent-sdk versions from 22 to 25 October and 29 @cursor/bdk versions since 22 September, per the 27 October check (20). Closed product. A public changelog with two entries and a forum with no Agent SDK tag, so we couldn't see replies to SDK reports (8). The npm package is current and official, TypeScript only (12). Dependencies are current releases, but there's no public CI and the same build goes out under three names with a postinstall script (4). 30+20+8+12+4 = 74.
- smolagents (34): v1.26.0 on 29 May 2026, 161 days before this check (10). No release in the 90 days to 6 November (0). 416 open issues and 1,045 open issues and pull requests on 6 November, with 144 issues opened in the 90 days to 3 November. Of the 50 newest, 26 had a comment and 1 was closed. Two 2026 CVE records say the vendor didn't respond to the reporter, and seven commits reached main from 8 August to 6 November (6). Python only, and the package is the current one (10). CI with actions pinned to commit SHAs and Dependabot for actions (8). 10+0+6+10+8 = 34.

### Payments & pricing: smolagents +30

- Cursor Agent SDK (30): Framework reading of the published rubric. No payment protocol (0). Per-million-token prices for Cursor models, including the default Grok 4.5 with Fast, and plan prices are public, but no price for managed hosting and no statement of which plans cover the Agent SDK were found (15). The package is free and the Free plan needs no card, but its usage is only described as limited agent requests (15). A person signs in through a browser or creates an API key in the dashboard before a model turn runs (0). 0+15+15+0 = 30.
- smolagents (60): Self-hosted rule. Free Apache-2.0 package with nothing to buy from the project (20 + 20 + 20). No payment protocol (0). 0+20+20+20 = 60.

### Reliability: smolagents +19

- Cursor Agent SDK (45): Local-package reading, since the owner runs the framework, with Cursor's hosting as an option. Official npm package with Node 22.13 or newer stated in engines and in the docs, which also say never Bun (20). Closed source, so no public CI or test suite (0). No public issue tracker. github.com/cursor/cursor holds a README and SECURITY.md, and forum.cursor.com has no Agent SDK tag, so there's nothing to count open crashes against. The troubleshooting page lists known failures with fixes (5). A dated changelog of two entries, 0.2.29 and 0.3.0, both 23 October 2026, and 0.3.0 calls out the removed `persistent` option, but the 27 earlier @cursor/bdk versions and 123 @cursor/july versions have no notes, and one build ships under three package names (5). Version 0.3.0, but the changelog post of 20 October says generally available and the docs changelog labels 0.3.0 the GA release, which we read as declared stable (15). 20+0+5+5+15 = 45.
- smolagents (64): Local-package reading. Official PyPI package with Python 3.10 or newer (20). A public tests workflow runs pytest on Python 3.10 and 3.12 for pushes and pull requests; whether main passes wasn't read (15). 416 open issues and 1,045 open issues and pull requests on 6 November, with 144 issues opened in the 90 days to 3 November. Of the 50 newest, 26 had a comment and 1 was closed. Two 2026 CVE records say the vendor didn't respond to the reporter, and seven commits reached main from 8 August to 6 November (6). Release notes on GitHub tags but no changelog file, and the remote WasmExecutor was removed in a minor release (8). 1.0 since 31 December 2024 (15). 20+15+6+8+15 = 64.

### Agent ergonomics: Cursor Agent SDK +12

- Cursor Agent SDK (80): Framework reading, scored on what it takes to run a tool-calling agent with MCP. One file per tool and one file per MCP connection, `tools` and `disallowedTools` filters with `effects: "read"`, and an allowlist for the harness's built-in tools (22). Concurrency caps with queued turns, `--fields`, page tokens and limits on list commands, and a per-session cost view. We found no turn cap or spend cap for a run (12). Built-in routes return `{ ok: false, error }` codes, direct tool calls have documented 400, 404, 409 and 500 codes, and the CLI has seven exit codes (18). Reads and idempotent calls retry up to three times, writes run once, MCP readOnlyHint and idempotentHint decide retries for connection tools, and dry-run sessions stub writes (20). `agent-sdk init` scaffolds a working project and every agent field is optional, but the framework is TypeScript only (8). 22+12+18+20+8 = 80.
- smolagents (68): Framework reading. MCPClient loads an MCP server's tools in a few lines (20). max_steps, planning intervals and final_answer_checks bound a run (16). Errors from tools and code go back to the model as observations (14). No built-in retry, idempotency or resume beyond replaying memory (8). Few required parameters and many providers, Python only, and the default model needs a Hugging Face token (10). 20+16+14+8+10 = 68.

### Transparency & trust: Cursor Agent SDK +6

- Cursor Agent SDK (71): Closed source. LICENSE.md reads All rights reserved, with use under Cursor's Terms of Service of 3 September 2026 (15). The data-use page says Privacy Mode keeps Customer Data out of training with zero-retention agreements at model providers, and that with it off Cursor may store and train on code and prompts. The deployment page says managed hosting stores the repository and agent data the same way under Privacy Mode and refuses Privacy Mode (Legacy). No retention periods are stated, and subprocessors are on a trust portal (14). No deprecation policy. The early-alpha migration guide, the `persistent` removal and the semantic-search removal are documented with error messages but only the changelog entry carries a date (6). OpenTelemetry and the update check are documented with switches. What the Cursor backend logs from turns is covered only by the data-use page (14). 15+14+6+14 = 49.
- smolagents (65): Apache-2.0 (30). The library stores nothing itself; the default model sends prompts to Hugging Face's inference providers, which the docs show (20). Breaking removals such as WasmExecutor shipped in minor releases, without a written deprecation policy (5). No telemetry, though no page states it (12). 30+20+5+12 = 67.

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Cursor Agent SDK | smolagents | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 45 | 64 | smolagents +19 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 82 | 81 | Cursor Agent SDK +1 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 80 | 68 | Cursor Agent SDK +12 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 68 | 66 | Cursor Agent SDK +2 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 30 | 60 | smolagents +30 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 74 | 34 | Cursor Agent SDK +40 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 71 | 65 | Cursor Agent SDK +6 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | -6 | |
| **Total** | | **63.7 · B** | **58.7 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Cursor Agent SDK | smolagents |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Agent framework | Agent framework |
| Vendor | Cursor | Hugging Face |
| 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 | 2026-05-29 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-09-03 | 2022-09-15 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-09-29 | 2023-03-28 |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice | yes | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes | not found in the text |
| Popularity | none | 30k stars, 171k PyPI/wk |

## How the scores have moved

### Cursor Agent SDK

- +0.1 on 28 October 2026: checklist

### smolagents

No score change since it was listed.

## 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.

**smolagents.** A compact Python library for code-writing and tool-calling agents, with MCP tools, any model provider and remote sandboxes through E2B, Docker, Modal or Blaxel. The newest release is 1.26.0 of 29 May 2026, a critical remote-executor RCE took about eight weeks to fix, and the local executor isn't a security boundary.

## 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

### smolagents

1. Run CodeAgent with `executor_type` set to e2b, docker, modal or blaxel whenever the model or its inputs aren't trusted
2. Use smolagents 1.24.0 or later to get the remote-executor deserialisation fix
3. Set max_steps and final_answer_checks so a run stops on its own
4. Pass structured_output explicitly to MCPClient to avoid the default-change warning
5. Pin the version, since minor releases have removed APIs

## Questions

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

Cursor Agent SDK scores 63.7 (B) on agent readiness against smolagents's 58.7 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. smolagents leads on reliability and payments & pricing.

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

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


## For agents

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

## Other comparisons with Cursor Agent SDK or smolagents

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

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