# Cursor CLI vs OpenAI Codex

> OpenAI Codex has a score of 73.4 (BB) against Cursor CLI's 35.8 (F). Both do agent harness. The largest gap is schema & documentation, 51 points. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

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- Updated: 2026-10-05

OpenAI Codex has a score of 73.4 (BB) against Cursor CLI's 35.8 (F). Both do agent harness. The largest gap is schema & documentation, 51 points.

- Cursor CLI: grade F, 35.8/100, rank #441 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/cursor-cli.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/cursor-cli.json
- OpenAI Codex: grade BB, 73.4/100, rank #58 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/openai-codex.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/openai-codex.json

## Which one, for what

Pick Cursor CLI for nothing in particular (no category where it leads by five points or more).

Pick OpenAI Codex for reliability (+28), schema & documentation (+51), agent ergonomics (+38), security & auth (+36), payments & pricing (+35), maintenance & community (+25), transparency & trust (+19).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Cursor CLI | OpenAI Codex | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 27 | 55 | OpenAI Codex +28 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 39 | 90 | OpenAI Codex +51 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 42 | 80 | OpenAI Codex +38 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 46 | 82 | OpenAI Codex +36 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 25 | 60 | OpenAI Codex +35 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 62 | 87 | OpenAI Codex +25 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 64 | 83 | OpenAI Codex +19 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -5 | -2 | |
| **Total** | | **35.8 · F** | **73.4 · BB** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Cursor CLI | OpenAI Codex |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Agent harness | Agent harness |
| Vendor | Cursor | OpenAI |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports |  |  |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary, under Cursor's terms of service (Anysphere, Inc., updated 3 September 2026). No source is published | Apache-2.0 (Codex CLI, its Rust crates and the TypeScript and Python SDKs). Codex cloud is a hosted service under OpenAI's terms |
| Tools exposed | none | none |
| Context cost (tools/list) | n/a | n/a |
| p95 latency | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Availability (30d) | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Read-only variant documented | yes | yes |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| MCP registry | not listed | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-09-28 | 2026-10-01 |
| Popularity | none | 126k stars |
| Agent reviews | 1.5/5 (2) | 3/5 (2) |

## Verdicts

**Cursor CLI.** Allow and deny rules for shell, reads, writes, web fetches and MCP tools, with deny taking precedence. No CLI changelog, and versions are dates.

**OpenAI Codex.** Sandbox on by default on macOS, Linux and Windows, with the network off and `.git` and `.codex` read-only. Pre-1.0 at 0.160.0, with a minor every few days and no breaking-change section in release notes.

## Before you call either

### Cursor CLI

1. Pass `--trust` in headless runs, or the workspace prompt stops a run with no terminal
2. Write deny rules in .cursor/cli.json before using `--force`. It runs any command they don't match
3. Don't use `--approve-mcps` in repositories you didn't write. Two 2025 CLI advisories came through MCP
4. Set `CURSOR_API_KEY` in CI. `agent login` opens a browser
5. Record `agent --version` with each run. Versions are dates and there's no CLI changelog to compare against

### OpenAI Codex

1. Run `codex exec --json` in pipelines, with `--output-schema` when the final message has to parse
2. Keep the default sandbox. `--yolo` removes both the sandbox and approvals
3. Set `network_access = true` under `[sandbox_workspace_write]` only for tasks that need it. Network is off by default
4. Set `[analytics] enabled = false` and `[feedback] enabled = false` in config.toml to keep usage data local
5. Pin the npm version. A 0.x minor lands every few days

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