I’ve been thinking about my editor setup and I wanted to work through the costs out loud. This post is mainly for me, but maybe it helps you too.

Here’s where I landed: I’m canceling(ed) JetBrains and Cursor, and just using Zed.

I know that might sound crazy. JetBrains All Products has been my go-to for a while now, and Cursor was interesting for a bit, but turns out all I needed was speed and cheap.

The Cost Breakdown

Editor	Monthly Cost	Yearly Cost
Zed Pro	$10.00	$120.00
Cursor Pro	$20.00	$240.00 ($192 if billed annually)
JetBrains All Products	~$14.92	$179.00

Zed Pro at $10/month is the cheapest option by a decent margin. That’s $120 a year versus $179 for JetBrains or up to $192 for Cursor. Not a huge difference money, but it adds up.

Zed Is Enough

My primary way of working these days is Zed plus CLI-based tools. I use Claude Code in the terminal (Mostly Ghostty) alongside the IDE, and that combination handles everything. The editor itself is fast, the AI integration is solid.

I already canceled Cursor. It’s a good product, but not at double what Zed costs. Maybe I’ll go back and try it again at some point, but right now there’s no reason to do that.

Sometimes the right move is just picking what works and not overthinking it.