Cursor Student Plan in India: Ended, and What Replaces It

By September 2025 the Cursor student plan was onboarding only students “with .edu email addresses in the USA”, as an account labelled Community Developer wrote on Cursor’s forum in September 2025, and by May 2025 Indian students were already reporting that India was missing from the verification country dropdown. Then the whole student discount closed: Cursor’s student discount help page says “Cursor discontinued new sign-ups for the legacy student discount on June 25, 2026.”

So by Cursor’s own forum, an Indian college email could not unlock the plan from September 2025 at the latest, and since June nobody can (every page below was checked on 31 October 2026). My read of those pages: an Indian student should stop hunting for a verification link and pick from the three routes Cursor still names, which depend on whether you are an undergraduate, a postgraduate or researcher, or someone who only needs Cursor for coursework.

Does Cursor Have a Student Plan in India?

No. Cursor stopped new sign-ups for its student discount on 25 June 2026, for everyone, and before that its forum said only US .edu addresses qualified. Students who redeemed it earlier keep their rate until the plan expires. Undergraduates can claim offers at Cursor events; postgraduates and researchers can request credits.

What the help page says, quoted from the page as served on 31 October 2026:

If you claimed the discount before 25 June, the third row is the one to diarise: the renewal is automatic unless you cancel.

Cursor Student Plan and India: A Dated Timeline

Cursor never published an India rule on a help page that I could find. The India history sits in forum threads, so each row below names who wrote it, because a forum reply is not the same as a policy page. Forum dates are in UTC.

Two details in that table matter if you read older guides:

• One user in the May 2025 thread wrote that India had been “removed” from the country list and that “some have already claimed” before that. Nobody from Cursor confirmed or denied it in the thread, so whether India was ever on the list is unverified.
• The January 2026 reply links to the September 2025 thread and asks non-US students to post their country and email domain “to help measure demand”. The student discount closed five months later without an expansion to India appearing on any Cursor page I checked.

What Cursor’s Pages Showed From India on 31 October 2026

I requested Cursor’s pricing, India and students pages logged out from an Indian connection (Cloudflare’s trace endpoint returned loc=IN) and read the HTML each one served. The pricing page and the India page disagree, so here are the free tier and the first paid tier as each page printed them:

Two more readings from the same check:

• The students page lists no plan, no price and no country. Its FAQ answer to “Does Cursor offer discounts to students?” is “Anyone can get started with Cursor for free. To upgrade your access, look out for promotions at our on-campus and online events starting this fall.”
• The pricing page served in dollars, with the note “Prices shown do not include applicable taxes or fees (e.g. VAT).” Its HTML contained no rupee sign and no Start plan.

What a signed-in account sees at checkout can differ from these logged-out pages. A Cursor staff member wrote on 19 October 2026 that Plus “is priced in rupees at checkout”; the logged-out pricing page showed only the dollar figure.

Cursor Start in India Is Now a Legacy Plan

The /start page still sells the ₹649 Start plan, but Cursor’s own help pages say it is for existing subscribers:

• The Cursor Start help page opens: “Cursor Start is a legacy Cursor plan for developers in India who subscribed before The X Subscription. It keeps working as it is. New customers choose a plan on The X Subscription; the comparable tier is Plus.”
• The legacy Cursor plans page lists Hobby, Start, Pro, Pro+, Ultra and Teams as legacy plans and says “New customers start on The X Subscription.”
• In the 19 October thread, a free-plan user in India clicked “Upgrade to Start” and landed on “Create Your X Subscription”. Cursor staff replied: “Your account isn’t being singled out, and there’s no separate India checkout you’re missing.”
• The Cursor Start help page also still says “Start can only be purchased while your account is on the free plan”, although its opening line calls Start legacy, and that subscribing to Start involves verifying an Indian phone number.

Cursor’s page that explains The X Subscription, What is The X Subscription?, describes it as “one subscription that brings Grok, Cursor, and X together”, with a shared weekly usage pool. It mentions no student price.

If you mainly want Claude models while coding, how Cursor’s new plans bill Claude compared with Claude Code sets the two bills side by side.

Cursor Student Plan Not Working? Three Causes From Cursor’s Pages

If a student verification or a cheaper India plan is failing for you, one of these is the likely reason, each from a page linked above:

1. The student discount is closed. New sign-ups ended on 25 June 2026, so there is no verification step left to pass, whatever your email domain.
2. Before 25 June, your domain did not qualify. The September 2025 forum post said onboarding was limited to US .edu addresses, and the January 2026 reply named .ac.in domains as unsupported.
3. “Upgrade to Start” opens a different checkout. That is the redirect staff described on 19 October 2026: Start is legacy, and new subscriptions go through The X Subscription.

A student offer bought from a reseller is not a fix. The pricing page says: “Subscriptions are only sold directly through X Subscription Corp. We do not authorize any resellers or third-party sellers.”

Which Cursor Route Fits Your Student Type

Each route below quotes Cursor’s own page. None of these pages names a country or promises a credit amount.

If you are a postgraduate, send the credits form first: it is the only route on the list that asks Cursor for credits directly. If you are an undergraduate, subscribe to the campus newsletter and use the free tier until an event offer reaches you.

Other Student AI Routes in India

Each of these has its own post on this site, so here is one line and a link:

• Claude and GitHub Copilot Student: what exists for an Indian student, including Copilot’s free plan for verified students, is in my guide to Claude for students in India.
• Google AI Plus for students: the eligibility, the claim steps and the last date are in my Gemini student offer breakdown.
• Replit: its student discount and what it requires are covered under “Is Replit Free for Students in India?” in Replit’s price in India.
• Lovable: its student and teacher discount is in the Lovable price in India post.
• An open-source coding agent: OpenCode is MIT-licensed and you pay the model provider you connect; OpenCode vs Claude Code compares the two.

Cursor Student Plan: Use the Route You Already Qualify For

The Cursor student plan is closed, and its forum said Indian .ac.in addresses did not qualify even before that. The ₹649 Start plan is legacy for new buyers per Cursor’s help page, though /start still advertises it.

The help page promises student “discounts and credits through on-campus and online events this fall”, with no date for India yet, so recheck it before you rely on this page. Postgraduates: open Cursor’s credits form today.