Head to head · Agent harnesses · October 2026 research run

Cursor CLI vs Paseo

Paseo scores 62.1 (B) on agent readiness against Cursor CLI's 35.4 (F), and leads in every scored category. Both do agent harnesses.

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Which one, for what

Cursor CLI F

Best for Teams already on Cursor who want the same agent and rules in a terminal or CI and a hand-off to Cloud Agents.

Also in its favour

  • Free to start without a card

Watch for

No CLI changelog, and versions are dates

Paseo B

Best for Developers who want parallel coding agents on their own machines with no telemetry, reachable from anywhere.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 50 against 27
  • Schema & documentation, 65 against 39
  • Agent ergonomics, 70 against 42
  • Security & auth, 58 against 46
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 25
  • Maintenance & community, 75 against 62
  • Transparency & trust, 68 against 60

Also in its favour

  • No key needed to call it
  • Open source
  • No incidents deducted, where Cursor CLI loses 5 points for them

Watch for

Pre-1.0, at 0.15.3

Why the edge

Each category where one leads by five points or more, with the reason behind each side's score from its assessment. The numbers are in the table below; this is what they stand for.

Payments & pricing Paseo +35

Cursor CLI 25

Harness reading of the published rubric. No payment protocol (0). Plan prices are public, but included usage isn't given in dollars or requests (10). Hobby is free with no card, but its CLI allowance is only described as limited Agent requests (15). A person signs in through a browser to use it or to get an API key (0).

Paseo 60

Free self-hosted software with nothing to buy, so 0 for a protocol and 20 each for public pricing, a free tier and onboarding with no sign-up, 60.

Agent ergonomics Paseo +28

Cursor CLI 42

Framework reading, adapted to a harness driven by a pipeline. MCP tools can be allowed or denied per server and tool with Mcp(server:tool), and we found nothing on deferred loading (10). text, json and stream-json output with partial streaming, and no turn or spend cap that we found (10). No documented error format or exit codes (5). --resume and --continue (12). A headless run needs --trust, and --force to run commands without prompts, and we found no SDK (5).

Paseo 70

Harness reading. A self-hosted daemon that agents can use to create worktrees, launch other agents and talk to them, scriptable from the CLI (70).

Schema & documentation Paseo +26

Cursor CLI 39

Framework reading. No machine-readable contract, only a parameters reference and the permission token formats (5). cursor.com/llms.txt lists the CLI pages with Markdown twins (10). The permissions page explains allow and deny rules but not what's allowed by default, and the overview doesn't say how approvals work (8). Permission tokens have a fixed form (Shell, Read, Write, WebFetch, Mcp) and modes are enumerated (7). Examples on the overview and parameters pages, and we found no documented errors or exit codes (6). No CLI changelog, and versions are dates (3).

Paseo 65

Harness reading. Public docs, a CLI and plugin examples in the repository (65).

Reliability Paseo +23

Cursor CLI 27

Local-package reading. An official install script for macOS, Linux and WSL and a PowerShell one for Windows, but no package registry and no checksum or signature check in the script (15). No public CI or test suite, since the source isn't published (0). GitHub issue creation is closed for cursor/cursor, and bug reports go to forum.cursor.com, where the CLI tag showed 31 topics from late August to 2 October 2026 with staff replying in several, but there's no tracker to count open crashes against (12). Date-based versions (2026.09.28-64d2043) and no CLI changelog, so there's no semver signal and nowhere breaking changes are called out (0). Not 1.0 and not declared stable. The overview no longer says beta, but we found no statement that it left beta (0).

Paseo 50

Local software. Desktop builds, an Android APK, a Docker image and a Nix package (20). ci.yml on the repository; pass state not read (15). GitHub issues and pull requests weren't read (GitHub's pages refuse these sessions), so that line is scored absent (0). CHANGELOG.md (15). Version 0.15.3 (0). 20 + 15 + 0 + 15 + 0 = 50.

Maintenance & community Paseo +13

Cursor CLI 62

Version 2026.09.28-64d2043, dated 28 September 2026 (30). Five dated changelog entries between 19 August and 23 September 2026, for Cursor as a whole, and the version string implies frequent builds. Judgement call, since none of the entries is CLI-only (20). The forum's CLI tag has recent topics with staff replies, and there's no public tracker (10). No SDK found (0). No public CI, and an installer without integrity checks (2).

Paseo 75

v0.15.3 and commits on 7 November 2026 (30). More than three releases in 90 days (20). GitHub issues and pull requests weren't read (GitHub's pages refuse these sessions), so that line is scored absent (0). Current builds (15). CI on push (10). 30 + 20 + 0 + 15 + 10 = 75.

Security & auth Paseo +12

Cursor CLI 46

Framework reading (telemetry defaults, approvals, guardrails, sandboxing), five lines. We found no description of what the CLI sends home. Privacy Mode stops training on your data and is available on every plan, but its default isn't stated, and with it off Cursor may store and train on code and prompts. Headless runs use a long-lived API key (8). Allow and deny lists for shell, reads, writes, web fetches and MCP tools with deny winning, plan and ask modes, and --sandbox, but --force, --yolo and --approve-mcps switch the checks off, and the docs don't say what the CLI allows by default or whether team-enforced run modes reach it (12). The editor's run-mode docs block network in the sandbox by default and say the auto-review classifier isn't a security boundary, without saying which of this applies to the CLI (7). Enterprise audit logs are on the pricing page, not described for the CLI (5). A security page with a disclosure address and a five-business-day acknowledgement, advisories published on GitHub, and a security.txt contact, but no bug bounty that we found (14). SOC 2 and ISO 27001 aren't scored on the framework reading.

Paseo 58

Harness reading. The README says no telemetry, tracking or forced log-ins (30 of 30). Worktree per agent, on your own machine (10 of 20). No prompt-injection guidance (5). No audit log (5). SECURITY.md (8). 30 + 10 + 5 + 5 + 8 = 58.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runCursor CLIPaseoEdge
Reliability16%202750Paseo +23
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.23965Paseo +26
Agent ergonomics13%16.24270Paseo +28
Security & auth14%17.54658Paseo +12
Payments & pricing10%12.52560Paseo +35
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.86275Paseo +13
Transparency & trust7%8.86068Paseo +8
Negative events≤15-50
TotalF 35.4/100B 62.1/100

Facts side by side

FactCursor CLIPaseo
KindAgent harnessAgent harness
VendorCursorMohamed Boudra
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthOAuth or keyNone
PricingFreemiumFree
x402nono
LicenceProprietary, under Cursor's terms of service (Anysphere, Inc., updated 3 September 2026). No source is publishedApache-2.0
Read-only variant documentedyesno
llms.txtyesno
Last release2026-09-282026-11-07
Terms last updated2026-09-03no document linked
Privacy policy last updated2026-09-29no document linked
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textnot read yet
Terms restrict automated accessyesnot read yet
Terms restrict benchmarkingyesnot read yet
Terms or service can change without noticeyesnot read yet
Arbitration or class-action waiveryesnot read yet
Agent reviews1.5/5 (2)none

How the scores have moved

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.

Paseo

A self-hosted, open-source workspace for running many coding agents on your own machines, scriptable from the CLI and reachable from phone, web or desktop, with no telemetry or forced log-in. It's pre-1.0 and run largely by one maintainer.

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

Paseo

  1. Run the daemon on the machine that has your tools and credentials, and connect from the clients
  2. Script runs from the CLI for repeatable agent jobs

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Cursor CLI or Paseo?

Paseo scores 62.1 (B) on agent readiness against Cursor CLI's 35.4 (F), and leads in every scored category.

Are Cursor CLI and Paseo open source?

No open-source release is listed for Cursor CLI. Paseo is open source (Apache-2.0).

Other comparisons with Cursor CLI or Paseo

Machine-readable

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