AI coding startup Cursor has launched its first country-specific subscription in India, marking its biggest expansion into the country as it seeks to deepen its presence in one of the world’s fastest-growing software developer markets ahead of its expected acquisition by SpaceX.
The company on Monday unveiled Cursor Start, a subscription priced at 649 rupees ($7) per month, significantly below its standard $20-per-month Pro plan, in a move designed to attract more Indian developers while maintaining a commercially sustainable business model.
The launch underscores India’s growing importance to global AI companies as they compete for millions of developers building AI-powered applications.
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Cursor said India is already its third-largest market globally and has become its largest concentration of power users. The company’s user base in the country has more than tripled over the past year, prompting it to make India the first market where it has introduced localized pricing.
“We felt that we had an opportunity there to right-size the commercial model and drive scale,” Simon Green, Cursor’s head of Asia-Pacific and Japan, told TechCrunch.
“The technical competency of the country and the engineering talent that already exists make it a very natural fit.”
India has rapidly emerged as one of the world’s largest software development hubs. According to GitHub, more than 27 million developers now use its platform in India, second only to the United States, with more than 2 million new developers joining in 2026 alone.
That large and growing talent pool has made India a key battleground for AI companies looking to expand adoption among software engineers, startups and enterprises.
Cursor Start is aimed at developers who have outgrown the company’s free offering but do not require the full feature set of its premium subscription.
The plan includes access to Cursor’s Composer 2.5 model and Grok 4.5, along with higher usage limits than the free tier. Subscribers also receive cloud agents, the Cursor iOS application, plugins, support for the Model Context Protocol (MCP), hooks and skills.
However, the lower-cost subscription excludes several premium capabilities available through the $20 Pro plan.
Those include access to frontier AI models from providers such as OpenAI and Anthropic, as well as advanced features including Bugbot, Auto Mode, Automations and the Cursor SDK.
Green said the company designed the lower-priced offering to complement, rather than replace, its flagship subscription. Unlike promotional pricing intended to win market share at a loss, Green said Cursor Start was built to remain financially sustainable because it relies primarily on Cursor’s own AI models, which cost less to operate than third-party frontier models.
The subscription is billed in Indian rupees and supports payments through credit cards, debit cards and India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI), one of the country’s most widely used digital payment systems.
To prevent users outside India from taking advantage of the lower pricing, Cursor said it has implemented multiple verification measures, including checks designed to discourage access through virtual private networks (VPNs).
Part of A Broader AI Pricing Strategy
Cursor joins a growing list of AI companies adapting pricing strategies to match local purchasing power in emerging markets. OpenAI and Anthropic have both introduced India-specific subscription plans over the past year as competition intensifies in one of the world’s fastest-growing AI markets.
Green said India serves as a testing ground for localized pricing, adding that Cursor could introduce similar models elsewhere if the strategy proves successful.
“We will continue to do everything we can to fuel the demand and serve those clients that are using us,” Green said.
“Now, if this model proves that we could take it to other markets, perhaps we will. But I think it’d be crazy to say we would never do it elsewhere.”
OpenAI has already demonstrated a similar approach by launching its lower-cost ChatGPT Go subscription in India before expanding it into additional markets.
Expanding Local Operations
Alongside the new subscription, Cursor is investing in a larger operational footprint across India. The company recently hired its first salesperson in the country and expects another senior executive to join its Delhi office. It is also establishing a government affairs office while expanding technical customer support teams across Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad and Mumbai.
Although enterprise adoption remains in its early stages, Green said demand has so far been driven primarily by individual developers, startups and universities.
The company expects significant growth opportunities among banks and large enterprises as it expands its local sales organization.
Cursor’s India push comes just weeks before its planned acquisition by SpaceX, which agreed last month to purchase the AI coding startup in a $60 billion all-stock transaction following SpaceX’s blockbuster initial public offering. The acquisition, expected to close during the third quarter, builds on an existing partnership between the two companies that began in April to develop a next-generation AI platform for coding and knowledge work.
Green said Cursor will continue operating independently until the transaction is completed and emphasized that its India expansion strategy was already underway before the acquisition agreement.
Once the deal closes, however, Green said SpaceX’s established presence in India through its Starlink satellite internet business could help accelerate Cursor’s commercial expansion by reducing operational and market-entry barriers.