Cursor Bugbot Adds Effort Levels: Default, High, and Custom (Usage-Based Billing Required)

Cursor shipped configurable effort levels for Bugbot, the company's automated PR review agent, in its May 11, 2026 changelog. Teams admins and Individual plan users can pick Default, High, or Custom, trading review latency and spend for additional bugs caught. Effort control requires the workspace to be on usage-based billing -- and on the same day, Cursor announced that usage-based billing is where every Teams and Individual Bugbot customer was headed anyway.

Corrections and Updates

Key Takeaways

• Three modes. Default (fast, optimized for efficiency), High (more reasoning, more bugs, slower and pricier), Custom (natural-language rules decide Default or High per review).
• Effort control is gated on usage-based billing. Cursor's changelog: "customers must be on usage-based billing for Bugbot to customize effort levels." The docs restate it today as effort levels being "available only for usage-based Bugbot plans" (updated August 29, 2026).
• The gate was not optional. The same-day blog post moved every Teams and Individual Bugbot customer to usage-based billing at their first renewal after June 8, 2026, removing the $40 per seat per month fee (updated August 29, 2026).
• What a review costs now. Cursor puts the average Bugbot run at $1.00 to $1.50, depending on PR size and complexity (updated August 29, 2026).
• Yield numbers, on the record. At launch Cursor reported 0.7 bugs per run at Default with over 79% resolved at merge, and 0.95 per run at High -- a 35% lift by Cursor's own framing, with the resolution rate holding at 80%.
• Audience and scope. Teams admins and Individual plan users set the level. Cursor's repository-level Bugbot settings cover enabling, reviewer allow and deny lists, and run-once behaviour, but not effort, so this remains a workspace-level control (re-checked August 29, 2026).

What Changed on May 11, 2026

Bugbot's review behavior used to be a single fixed configuration. The May 11 update split it into three explicit modes.

All three quotes are verbatim from the Cursor changelog entry dated May 11, 2026, re-verified August 29, 2026.

The Billing Change Behind the Gate

The changelog gives the requirement in one line and links out for the rest. The rest is the more consequential half of the announcement. Cursor's blog post the same day:

Bugbot is switching from a $40 per seat per month subscription to usage-based billing for Teams and Individual plans. For existing customers, this change will start at your next billing renewal after June 8th, 2026.

Four specifics worth having:

1. The seat fee is gone. Cursor described the move as "removing seat fees for Bugbot and transitioning to purely usage-based billing."
2. What a run costs. "The average Bugbot run costs $1.00-$1.50, depending on PR size and complexity."
3. The cutover date is per-customer, not global. It lands at your first renewal after June 8, 2026. Cursor's help page gives the worked examples: a cycle starting May 1, 2026 does not change on June 1, it changes on July 1; an annual subscription bought in May 2026 changes at its May 2027 renewal.
4. Teams and Individual bill differently. For Teams, Bugbot reviews are charged from on-demand usage. For Individual plans, Bugbot bills from included usage first, then from on-demand usage if you have enabled it. If on-demand usage is disabled, Bugbot pauses until the next billing cycle resets your limits.

Customers who wanted the effort controls before their renewal could switch early from the Cursor dashboard, with pro-rated credits applied for pre-paid seat fees.

Update (August 29, 2026): the transition is complete in the documentation. Cursor's Bugbot reference now opens its pricing section with "Bugbot uses usage-based billing" and routes anyone still on the old plan to a separate legacy pricing page.

Why the Billing Gate Matters

The practical reading changed once the migration was in view. Effort levels are not a paid add-on you can decline by staying on a flat seat plan, because the flat seat plan was withdrawn. They are a feature of the billing model everyone landed on.

What the gate does still determine is when you get the controls: at your renewal, or earlier if you switch by hand. And it changes what an expensive review costs you directly rather than through a seat count. On usage-based billing a High-effort review draws more spend from the same pool as everything else, so the Custom mode is the one that matters most in practice -- a team can write a rule like "use High effort on changes to auth/ or migration files, Default everywhere else" and pay the premium only on the small fraction of reviews that warrant it.

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How to Choose Between Default, High, and Custom

Use this decision rule:

• Pick Default if Bugbot is a second opinion alongside human review and you want the cheapest review that still catches something. At launch Cursor put Default at 0.7 bugs per run with over 79% resolved at merge, and review latency stays lowest here.
• Pick High if you have a payments, infrastructure, or security-sensitive surface where the extra ~0.25 bugs per run (0.95 versus 0.7) earns back the cost in one prevented incident. Expect longer turnaround and more spend on every PR.
• Pick Custom if your codebase has a mix of risk profiles -- some directories that justify High, others where Default is plenty. This is the mode that makes the usage-based model work in your favour rather than against it, because you buy the deeper review only where it pays.

Where to Set the Effort Level

As of August 29, 2026, effort levels are configured from Settings in Bugbot Automations. The May changelog pointed at the Bugbot dashboard; the control has since moved into the Automations surface, which is also where team-wide Bugbot rules, analytics, and the incremental-review toggle live.

When This Is and Isn't a Big Deal

This is a meaningful shift if your team relies on Bugbot as a primary line of defense. Cursor's own framing of the gap between Default and High is a 35% lift in bugs found, with the resolution rate holding constant at 80%, and Custom lets you concentrate that lift on the code that warrants it. If Bugbot has been a low-volume check in your workflow, the change is mostly a billing one, and it happened on Cursor's schedule rather than yours.

The numbers Cursor published are aggregates across its customer base, not a benchmark of your repository. Your own ratio will depend on language, repo size, and how aggressively your team merges Bugbot suggestions.

Update (August 29, 2026): treat the 0.7 and 0.95 figures as a May 2026 snapshot rather than current performance. Cursor's June 10, 2026 changelog reports that Bugbot "finds 10% more bugs per review on average" at 0.62, up from 0.56, after Composer 2.5 took over the review, along with reviews running about 3x faster and costing roughly 22% less per run. Cursor has not published a refreshed High-effort figure alongside it. We covered that update in Cursor Bugbot gets faster and cheaper.

Workflows Worth Setting Up

• Migration / schema-change PRs: Custom rule that routes anything touching migrations/ or schema/ to High effort. These are the PRs where a missed bug costs the most.
• Dependency bumps: Default effort. Bugbot's incremental yield on a Renovate-style PR is low, and you do not want to pay High prices per dependency.
• External contributor PRs: High effort. The marginal cost is small and the marginal value is high when you cannot lean on author context.
• Hotfix branches: Default effort. Speed beats thoroughness when the build is on fire.

FAQ Surface for AI Engines

These match metadata.faq and are the answer-shaped extractions most likely to be cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Mode.

• Q: What are the three Bugbot effort levels? Default (efficiency and speed), High (more reasoning, more bugs found, more expensive), and Custom (natural-language rules per review).
• Q: Does Bugbot effort customization require usage-based billing? Yes. As of August 2026 Cursor documents effort levels as available only for usage-based Bugbot plans, and seat-based Bugbot pricing is legacy.
• Q: How much does Bugbot cost now? Cursor removed the $40 per seat monthly fee in May 2026 and puts the average run at $1.00 to $1.50.
• Q: How many bugs does Bugbot find at each effort level? 0.7 per run at Default and 0.95 at High as reported in May 2026; Cursor's June 2026 baseline is 0.62 per review, up from 0.56.

Sources

• Cursor changelog, "Bugbot Effort Levels" (May 11, 2026), re-verified 2026-08-29: https://cursor.com/changelog/05-11-26
• Cursor blog, "Updates to Bugbot for Teams and Individuals" (May 11, 2026), read 2026-08-29: https://cursor.com/blog/may-2026-bugbot-changes
• Cursor help, "Bugbot usage-based billing", read 2026-08-29: https://cursor.com/help/account-and-billing/bugbot-usage-based-billing
• Cursor docs, "Bugbot" (Effort Levels and Pricing sections), read 2026-08-29: https://cursor.com/docs/bugbot
• Cursor docs, "Legacy Bugbot pricing", read 2026-08-29: https://cursor.com/docs/bugbot/legacy-pricing
• Cursor changelog, "Bugbot is now over 3x faster, 22% cheaper, and finds 10% more bugs" (June 10, 2026), read 2026-08-29: https://cursor.com/changelog/bugbot-updates-june-2026

Provenance note, re-verified 2026-08-05: this page previously cited the changelog index (cursor.com/changelog), which lists only the most recent entries, so the May 11 entry had scrolled off it and the citation no longer resolved to the claims made here. The version-anchored URL above was checked that run and again on 2026-08-29, and confirms the load-bearing claims word for word: the three configurations, "Customers must be on usage-based billing for Bugbot to customize effort levels", "With default effort, Bugbot finds 0.7 bugs per run, on average. Over 79% of these bugs are resolved by users at merge time", and "With high effort, Bugbot finds 0.95 bugs per run, on average."