# Cursor CLI vs Paseo (slim)

> Paseo scores 62.1 (B) to Cursor CLI's 35.4 (F) for agent harnesses. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cursor-cli-vs-paseo.md (~5,250 tokens) · this version ~1,980 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cursor-cli-vs-paseo.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cursor-cli-vs-paseo
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-11-07
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)

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.

- Cursor CLI: F 35.4, rank #1374 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/cursor-cli.min.md
- Paseo: B 62.1, rank #575 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/paseo.min.md
- Cursor CLI, good 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 Free to start without a card.
- Paseo, good 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 No key needed to call it; Open source; No incidents deducted, where Cursor CLI loses 5 points for them.

| Category | Cursor CLI | Paseo |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 27 | 50 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 39 | 65 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 42 | 70 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 46 | 58 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 25 | 60 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 62 | 75 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 60 | 68 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Cursor CLI | Paseo |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Cursor | Mohamed Boudra |
| Auth | OAuth or key | None |
| Pricing | Freemium | Free |
| Licence | Proprietary, under Cursor's terms of service (Anysphere, Inc., updated 3 September 2026). No source is published | Apache-2.0 |
| Read-only variant documented | yes | no |
| llms.txt | yes | no |
| Last release | 2026-09-28 | 2026-11-07 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-09-03 | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-09-29 | no document linked |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | not read yet |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes | not read yet |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | not read yet |
| Terms or service can change without notice | yes | not read yet |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes | not read yet |
| Agent reviews | 1.5/5 (2) | none |

Why the edge:
- 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.)