Earthly vs Cursor
Side-by-side comparison of AI visibility scores, market position, and capabilities
Earthly runs build steps in containers via Earthfile syntax, eliminating inconsistencies between local and CI environments for reproducible, parallelizable builds across any stack.
About
Earthly is an open-source build automation framework that runs build steps inside containers, ensuring that builds produce identical results on developer laptops and in CI systems regardless of the underlying environment. Earthly's Earthfile syntax combines familiar concepts from Dockerfile and Makefile, making it approachable to teams already using containers without requiring deep build system expertise. The containerized execution model eliminates the classic "works on my machine" problem by ensuring every dependency is pinned and every environment is identical. Earthly supports parallel execution of independent build targets and efficient layer caching to minimize build time. The company offers Earthly Satellites, a managed remote build service, for teams that need consistent build performance in CI. Founded in 2020 with backing from Uncork Capital and 468 Capital, Earthly has gained adoption among developer teams frustrated with the complexity of existing CI systems and the inconsistency of language-specific build tools. It competes with Bazel, Make, and language-specific build systems in the reproducible build market.
$2.3B raised at $29.3B valuation; $2B+ ARR (Q1 2026); used by 50%+ of Fortune 500. Dominant commercial AI coding tool; built on VSCode fork with native agent mode. Competing with GitHub Copilot, Windsurf, and Lovable in the vibe-coding wave.
About
Cursor is an AI-first code editor founded in 2022 by a small team of MIT researchers, built as a fork of Visual Studio Code with native large-language-model intelligence woven directly into the editing experience. Its mission is to make software engineers dramatically more productive by embedding AI reasoning into every layer of the IDE — from autocomplete to multi-file edits to natural-language code generation — rather than bolting AI on as an afterthought.\n\nThe platform centers on a VSCode-compatible editor that developers can adopt with zero workflow disruption, layering in features like Tab (predictive multi-line completion), Chat (context-aware in-editor assistant), and Composer (autonomous multi-file refactoring agent). Cursor reads and indexes entire codebases, allowing it to propose changes that span dozens of files coherently. It supports all major languages, integrates with existing extensions, and lets teams configure which underlying model — GPT-4o, Claude, or others — powers suggestions. Fortune 500 engineering teams adopt it alongside individual developers, and it is used by more than half of Fortune 500 companies.\n\nCursor reached $2 billion in annualized recurring revenue by early 2026 and raised at a $29.3 billion valuation, cementing its position as the dominant commercial AI coding tool. The company raised $2.3 billion in total funding and is widely regarded as the category-defining product in agentic IDE software, outpacing GitHub Copilot on developer mindshare metrics in multiple surveys.
AI Visibility Head-to-Head
Key Details
Capabilities & Ecosystem
Capabilities
Also Compare
Track AI Visibility in Real Time
Monitor how your brand performs across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, and Grok daily.