Cursor Live Apps: Build and Publish Web Apps From a Prompt

Most apps built with an AI coding agent die on localhost. The code works, the demo impresses one person, and then the tool sits on a laptop because shipping it means a database, authentication, hosting, and a domain: four jobs nobody asked for. Cursor's answer, shipped November 5, 2026, is Live Apps: tell a cloud agent what you want, and it builds the app, provisions the database, wires up sign-in, and hands you a link.

The idea is simple and the price is specific. Live Apps is not a separate product with its own bill. It rides on Cursor's paid plans, and only on the ones that include cloud agents. That puts the real entry point at $30 a month, not the $8 plan Cursor advertises first. Here is what it does, what it costs, and where the edges are.

What Is Cursor Live Apps?

Live Apps is a publishing path inside Cursor. You start a cloud agent, say explicitly that you want to build an app, and describe it in plain language. Cursor scaffolds the web app, spins up a Postgres database when the app needs one, puts sign-in behind Cursor SSO, provisions hosting, and returns a live link at a URL you choose. The docs give three sample prompts: a weekly signups dashboard with a filterable chart and table, an internal bug-report tracker, and a product-launch microsite with an email sign-up form.

Two details matter. First, this only works with a cloud agent. The feature is not supported on local agents, so the work runs on Cursor's infrastructure, not your machine. Second, you can start from scratch, which creates a new repository on Cursor Origin, or deploy an existing GitHub repository. GitLab support is listed as coming soon, so teams whose code lives there will have to wait.

Cursor's own examples are internal tools: event registration, account assignments, desk seating, sales pipeline dashboards, onboarding experiences, engineering service portals, and customer presentations built from slides, video, and interactive demos. That list is honest about the target. Live Apps is built for tools a team uses every day, not for a public product with its own billing and authentication. If you need your own auth system or your own infrastructure, this is the wrong host, and Cursor's own docs effectively say so. Private and team apps sit behind Cursor sign-in, which automated tools cannot get through without an API key.

How to Build and Publish a Live App

1. Open Cursor and start a cloud agent, not a local agent session. The feature does not work locally.
2. Tell it explicitly to build an app, and describe what the app should do. Cursor's own example: "Build an app that shows our weekly signups as a dashboard, with a chart and a table I can filter by plan."
3. If the app needs outside data, the agent asks for the secrets it needs. The agent never sees the values. In most cases a team admin creates team secrets in the Apps dashboard.
4. Preview the app in the tray Cursor shows you, then choose Publish. You pick the app's URL, which you can change later.
5. Cursor runs its security checks. If they pass, you get a live link. If they fail, the agent tells you what to fix, and nothing goes live until you publish again.
6. Share it with specific people, a group, your whole team, or — on individual plans — publicly.

Each app is deployed in a dedicated hosting account Cursor creates for your team, or for you on an individual plan, isolated from every other team's apps. Cursor's docs are blunt about the limits: hosting is provided "as is", and the company says it is not responsible for your apps, including your prompts and outputs. There is no published uptime figure, no published limit on app count, traffic, or storage. Treat the hosting as a convenience for internal tools rather than a platform for anything load-bearing.

What Does It Cost?

There is no separate Live Apps price. The feature is included on every paid plan that has cloud agents enabled, and the agent work draws from your plan's weekly usage pool at the selected model's rate. The plan is the price, and the plan ladder decides who gets in.

All prices above are from Cursor's pricing page, read live on November 7, 2026. The fine print matters more than the headline. Prices exclude taxes. The usage pool is shared across Cursor and Grok, and it refreshes weekly, so one heavy day never wipes out a whole month. Third-party models (Claude, GPT, Gemini) are not included in the monthly price on any plan. They are billed separately at API list price, or through your own key on Premium and above. You can set spending caps to keep that bill in check.

That is the real cost picture. Premium at $30 a month (about £22 or C$42 at November 7, 2026 market rates of 1 USD = £0.75 and C$1.41) is the cheapest way into Live Apps, and it buys the agent work, the hosting, and the database. It does not buy unlimited third-party model usage, and it does not buy a separate hosting bill, because Cursor has not published one. The company lists no separate price for the database or hosting provisioned through Live Apps, so the honest reading is that both are bundled into the plan for now, and the price that can move is the model usage behind the build.

One more pricing fact worth knowing before you commit: Cursor now sells through a single shared subscription covering Cursor, Grok, and X. The $8 Plus plan is Grok models only, which is why it cannot run cloud agents at all. If you are already paying for that subscription at the Plus tier, the step up to Live Apps is $22 a month, not $30.

The Security Checks Before Anything Goes Live

The most useful part of Live Apps is also the least glamorous. Nothing publishes until it passes a review. Cursor runs four checks before every publish, and they are always on, even when the security review is switched off. They block secrets written in app files, block credential files such as private keys and service-account keys, leave .env files out of what ships, and strip source maps so visitors cannot read the original source code.

On top of those four, an AI security review reads the app's files and blocks serious issues before the app goes live. Team admins can add their own instructions to that review, though custom rules can add checks, not remove Cursor's built-in ones. Admins can also see every app and secret on the team, approve a publish the review blocked (except for malicious code, hardcoded secrets, or exposed credentials), unpublish any app, turn Apps on or off for the whole team, and allow or disallow public apps and API keys. Every change to those settings is recorded in the team's audit log.

This is a real guardrail, not a guarantee. The checks catch the common mistakes, a leaked key or a committed .env, and the admin controls give a team a way to pull a bad app. They do not review whether the app's logic is correct, whether its data is accurate, or whether it should exist at all. An internal dashboard that shows the wrong numbers passes every check Cursor runs. The review is a safety net for secrets, not a code review.

Who Live Apps Is Actually For

The best fit is a team that already lives in Cursor on a Premium plan or higher and needs internal tools fast: a signups dashboard, a bug tracker, an onboarding portal, a desk-seating planner. The whole point is that the people who need the tool do not have to wait for a deployment pipeline. One prompt, one link, one team behind Cursor sign-in.

The weaker fit is anything public-facing that needs to stand on its own. On individual plans you can share an app publicly, and anyone with the link can open it without Cursor auth. But public sharing is disabled by default on Teams and Enterprise plans, and a team admin has to turn it on. Private and team apps sit behind Cursor sign-in, so every viewer needs a Cursor account. If your app is a customer product, a marketing page that needs its own analytics, or anything that must survive without Cursor, host it yourself.

There is also a middle case worth naming: automation. You can provision a Cursor API key so a script, a CI job, or Grok Bot can use an app the way a signed-in user would. The key travels in the x-cursor-app-token header on every request. There is no query parameter and no cookie, and requests made with a key are marked as automated. Personal keys open the apps their owner can open; team keys open only the team apps they have been given access to. It is a small detail, but it is the difference between an internal tool and an internal tool your automation can actually reach.

The OpenAI Question Hanging Over Cursor

Anyone buying into Cursor this month should know about the dispute sitting over its model lineup. OpenAI announced on August 28, 2026 that it intends to wind down the contract supplying its models to Cursor, with a proposed shutoff date of November 12, 2026, after SpaceX completed its acquisition of Cursor's parent company Anysphere. OpenAI said it would not provide future models to Cursor while the agreement winds down, including its upcoming Astra model. The date is proposed, not final, and both companies have said discussions are ongoing.

How much that matters depends on which models you use. Cursor chief executive Michael Truell said publicly that OpenAI models serve about 5% of Cursor's user traffic, and Anthropic committed extra compute for Claude models in Cursor the same night the announcement landed. Developers who route specifically to OpenAI models can still use their own API key in Cursor, according to OpenAI's own help pages. If your Live Apps builds run on Claude, Gemini, Grok, or Cursor's own Composer models, nothing changes on November 12. If they run on GPT models, plan the switch now: the cutoff, proposed or not, is five days away.

Live Apps itself does not depend on any single model provider. The feature is a Cursor platform capability, and the agent that builds your app runs on whichever model you select. But the episode is a useful reminder of the same lesson as the hosting fine print. Cursor is a convenient place to build and run internal tools, and it is not a place to put anything you cannot move.

Common Mistakes

Starting with a local agent. Live Apps only works with a cloud agent. A local agent session will not offer it, and the docs are explicit that the feature is not supported locally. Start the cloud agent first, then describe the app.

Assuming the $8 plan includes it. Plus has no cloud agents, no code hosting, and no third-party models. The cheapest plan with Live Apps is Premium at $30 a month. The $22-a-month step from Plus to Premium is the real upgrade cost if you already subscribe.

Treating $30 as the total cost. The monthly price covers the usage pool. Third-party models are billed at API list price on top, and the pool is shared with Grok, so heavy Grok use eats into the same allowance. Set a spending cap before you build anything large.

Publishing a team app publicly without checking the default. Public sharing is off by default on Teams and Enterprise. If your app needs to be public, an admin has to enable it, and disallowing it later moves existing public apps back to team visibility.

Expecting a deployment platform. There is no published uptime figure, no traffic limit, and no GitLab support yet. Live Apps is a fast way to put an internal tool in front of your team. It is not a replacement for hosting you control.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does Cursor Live Apps cost?

There is no separate charge. Live Apps is included on paid Cursor plans that have cloud agents enabled, starting with Premium at $30 a month (about £22 or C$42). The agent work draws from your plan's weekly usage pool, and third-party models are billed separately at API list price.

Can I use Live Apps on the free or $8 Plus plan?

No. Neither the Free plan nor Plus includes cloud agents, and Live Apps only works with a cloud agent. Premium at $30 a month is the cheapest plan that includes it.

Does Cursor host the database too?

Yes. If the app needs a database, Cursor provisions a Postgres database for it automatically, and each app runs in a dedicated hosting account isolated from other teams. Cursor has published no separate price for the database or hosting.

Can I share a Live App publicly?

On individual plans, yes — anyone with the link can open a public app without signing in. On Teams and Enterprise plans, public sharing is disabled by default and a team admin must turn it on.

Will OpenAI models still work in Cursor after November 12?

OpenAI has proposed November 12, 2026 as the shutoff date for its models inside Cursor, and says it will not supply future models while the agreement winds down. The date is proposed and discussions are ongoing. OpenAI models are about 5% of Cursor's traffic, and developers can still use their own OpenAI API key in Cursor.

What else shipped with Live Apps?

The same changelog release added voice chat with agents, powered by Grok Voice, and a generally available Agent SDK for defining agents as code and deploying them to Cursor or your own infrastructure. Live Apps is the publishing feature; the other two are separate releases worth their own look.

Cursor Live Apps does one thing well. It takes the four jobs that keep internal tools on localhost, scaffolding, database, auth, and hosting, and folds them into a prompt. The price is honest once you read past the $8 plan, the security checks catch the mistakes that actually leak, and the limits are the ones that matter: internal tools, not public products, and nothing you cannot move. If your team already pays for Premium and keeps asking for small tools, this is the fastest way to say yes. If you are on Plus, the $22 step up is the decision, not the feature itself.

Start with one small internal tool, a dashboard, a tracker, or a sign-up form, and see how far the weekly usage pool goes before you build anything your team depends on.

Sources

• Cursor changelog — "Build Live Apps in Cursor" (November 5, 2026)
• Cursor docs — Apps (cloud agent apps, security checks, sharing, API keys)
• Cursor pricing page (plans and rates, read live November 7, 2026)
• OpenAI — "Our decision on Cursor following its acquisition by SpaceX" (August 28, 2026)
• TechRepublic — "Cursor Build Live Apps: Features, Pricing, and Security Controls" (November 6, 2026)
• WhichAICoder — Cursor pricing (2026), checked November 6, 2026

Related reading on AI Core Updates: our 7 best AI coding agents in 2026 compares Cursor with the other major agents on price and limits; our Claude Code explainer covers the agent many teams run alongside it; Perplexity Teammates is the $200-a-month AI coworker alternative for non-developers; and our SWE-2 Flash review covers the coding model that is free inside Devin until November 30.