Does Cursor Work in China?

Is Cursor blocked in China?

No. Chinese networks don’t block Cursor. Asked whether www.cursor.com opens from mainland China, GreatFire, a censorship monitor with test servers there, says “Yes”, and its latest check, on October 23, 2026, reached the site. It gives the same answer for api2.cursor.sh, the server Cursor’s app reached in network diagnostics a user posted on Cursor’s forum; GreatFire last checked it on September 19, 2026. Both verdicts used to read partly disrupted. GreatFire revised them after it stopped treating refused connections as a sign of blocking, saying refusals have shown up since late August 2026 even where nothing else points to interference.

Reachable doesn’t mean fast. In July 2026, Cursor’s staff told a user in China that the route from mainland China to Cursor’s servers is often heavily throttled. On September 25, 2026, they said a connection problem had hit networks in China, mainly China Telecom, on the morning of September 23 Beijing time, and was fixed the same day. When chats keep showing “Reconnecting”, staff suggest switching Cursor’s HTTP compatibility setting to HTTP/1.1.

Cursor China ban on Claude, GPT and Gemini

Claude, GPT and Gemini models have been off limits in Cursor for users in China since July 2025. On July 16, 2025, users there began seeing the error “This model provider doesn’t serve your region”, and a Cursor staff member explained that Cursor’s model routing respects the availability regions set by the model providers. Cursor’s docs now say such models don’t appear in the app at all. None of the three providers’ API country lists includes mainland China, Hong Kong or Macau, and all three include Taiwan, Japan and Singapore.

The limit comes from the providers: Cursor’s terms of service, last updated on September 3, 2026, bar use in US-embargoed countries and by restricted parties, and say nothing about China.

Cursor reads your region from your IP address. In March 2026, a staff member told a user in Japan that traffic routed through a restricted country such as China would get OpenAI and Claude models blocked, even though the user was physically in Japan. A Hong Kong exit doesn’t help, and Cursor says calls made with your own API key can still fail if the provider blocks your region.

Cursor China model options

Cursor’s own models still work for users in China. A forum user in mainland China wrote in September 2026 that Claude Opus 5 and GPT-5.6 Sol were region-locked there, while Grok 4.6 was still available to them. Cursor’s own lineup is Grok 4.7, Grok 4.6, Grok 4.5 and Composer 2.5, and its help center says Grok 4.5 is available in every country where Cursor normally offers models. Cursor says it built Grok 4.5 together with SpaceXAI, and its blog says SpaceX completed its purchase of Cursor in August 2026.

Cursor also lists Chinese third-party models, hidden by default, among them Moonshot AI’s Kimi K3 and Zhipu’s GLM 5.2. We couldn’t confirm whether users in mainland China can switch them on.

Cursor Pro in China

New customers can’t buy Cursor Pro anymore, in China or anywhere else. Since October 12, 2026, Cursor has been sold as part of The X Subscription, one plan that bundles Grok, Cursor and X. Pro, at $20 a month, keeps working for people already on it, and Cursor’s docs name Premium, at $30 a month, as its closest match.

Paying from China has become harder. On October 13, 2026, Cursor’s staff wrote that Alipay isn’t available for The X Subscription yet, although some current Cursor plans are paid that way. New customers can use a Visa or Mastercard with international payments turned on, they said. Billing for the new plans runs through Grok’s website, and GreatFire answers “No” to whether grok.com opens from mainland China. A user wrote on Cursor’s forum on October 21, 2026 that people in China need a VPN to subscribe.

How to use Cursor in China

The editor needs nothing special, but Claude, GPT and Gemini appear only when Cursor sees an IP address in a country their makers support. A travel eSIM whose data exits abroad can give you one, and so can a VPN; set up either before the trip. Our eSIM versus VPN guide weighs the two.

A foreign IP address doesn’t change the providers’ rules. Anthropic’s Supported Regions Policy applies to users of companies in supported countries too: if you are physically in an unsupported place such as mainland China, your use is unsupported. OpenAI says access from outside its list of API countries can lead to a blocked or suspended account. Our page on Claude in China covers Anthropic’s rules in more detail.

On a laptop, you can share a phone’s travel eSIM data through its hotspot, which Airalo, an eSIM seller, allows where the phone and the network support it. Where that data comes out decides which models Cursor shows; our eSIM page lists each provider’s routing. A VPN also works on hotel and office Wi-Fi, so check this month’s VPN reports for China before choosing one. The UK government’s travel advice notes that China’s cybersecurity laws require a government licence for VPN services, and our page on whether VPNs are legal in China sums up what that means for visitors.

Chinese alternatives to Cursor

Chinese alternatives include ByteDance’s Trae, Alibaba’s Qoder, Tencent Cloud’s CodeBuddy and Zhipu AI’s ZCode, plus Zhipu’s older CodeGeeX assistant. The Next Web reported in July 2026, citing analysts, that Chinese developers were moving to domestic tools like these. For chatbots, see AI tools in China and ChatGPT in China.

Related guides

• GitHub in China
• Working remotely from China
• Claude in China
• eSIM or VPN for China?