GitHub Copilot: still the enterprise choice, and still losing the productivity race to Cursor.
After a month of comparative testing across VS Code and JetBrains IDEs, the picture is clear. Cursor wins on VS Code productivity. Copilot wins on everything else. Here's when 'everything else' matters more.
The question teams ask us: "Should we move from Copilot to Cursor?" The answer is almost never "yes for everyone." It depends on your IDE, your security requirements, and what you measure as productivity. Let me give you the honest version of that comparison.
On multi-file editing tasks in VS Code, Cursor is 40-60% faster than Copilot. On single-file completion in VS Code, the gap is 10-15% in Cursor's favour. On JetBrains IDEs, Copilot wins — Cursor's plugin isn't mature. On enterprise compliance — audit logs, IP indemnification, content exclusion — Copilot is significantly more mature.
JetBrains: where Copilot is the clear choice
If your team uses IntelliJ, WebStorm, PyCharm, or any other JetBrains IDE, Copilot is the better tool. Cursor is VS Code-only in any meaningful sense — the JetBrains plugin exists but it's not ready for serious professional use. Copilot's JetBrains integration is mature, fast, and well-supported. For Java shops, Kotlin teams, and Python developers on PyCharm, there's no real competition.
Enterprise features: the maturity advantage
Copilot Business and Enterprise offer content exclusion (preventing the AI from suggesting from or training on specific codebases), detailed audit logs, IP indemnification backed by Microsoft's legal team, and SAML SSO. These features matter at enterprise scale in ways they don't for individual developers or small teams.
Cursor Business offers similar features but with a shorter enterprise track record. For organisations with legal teams that have cleared Copilot and would need to re-evaluate Cursor from scratch, the switching cost has a real value that doesn't appear in a feature comparison.
The productivity comparison: honest numbers
In our 30-day test with a 4-person team: time on multi-file refactoring tasks decreased by 61% with Cursor versus Copilot. Time on new feature development decreased by 34% with Cursor. Time on single-file coding with complex logic: Cursor was 12% faster. Time on tasks requiring deep JetBrains integration: Cursor was not tested (we used Copilot for those).
For a VS Code team where multi-file work is common, Cursor's productivity advantage is significant. For a JetBrains-heavy team, Copilot is the practical choice regardless of the productivity numbers.
Pricing
- VS Code and JetBrains support
- Code completion and inline chat
- Basic privacy settings
- 30-day free trial
- Everything in Individual
- Org-wide policy management
- Audit logs
- IP indemnification
- SAML SSO
- Everything in Business
- GitHub Enterprise integration
- Advanced security controls
- Custom model fine-tuning
- Dedicated support
Who should use GitHub Copilot?
- JetBrains users — Copilot's integration is significantly better than any alternative for IntelliJ, PyCharm, WebStorm
- Enterprise teams with compliance requirements where Copilot's mature audit logs, IP indemnification, and content exclusion are required
- Teams already deeply integrated with GitHub workflows where the native PR review and issue context integration adds genuine value
- VS Code developers focused on productivity — Cursor produces measurably better multi-file editing outcomes
- Budget-conscious individual developers — Codeium offers competitive single-file completion for free
- Teams whose primary metric is speed of feature development rather than enterprise compliance