Cursor Build Live Apps: how to use it, what it costs

To use Cursor Build Live Apps, start a cloud agent, tell it you want to build an app, then preview and publish what it makes. It requires a paid plan with cloud agents, which starts at $30 a month for individuals, and Cursor lists no separate hosting price.

The post that announced it

On Thursday, @cursor_ai posted, "You can now build live apps in Cursor and share them with a link." The reasoning in the same post is that agents made code easier to write, yet "most apps never make it off localhost." So you describe a tool, and Cursor builds it, sets up a database, runs security checks and deploys it.

The changelog entry, dated November 5, adds sign-in to that list. This puts Cursor on ground Replit and Lovable already hold, since both set up a database and publish for you. It also differs from two recent Cursor releases: Cursor Computer Use drives desktop apps on your machine, and the Cursor Agent SDK deploys agents. Live Apps deploys ordinary web apps that people open in a browser.

How to try it

These steps come from Cursor's Apps docs, which say the feature isn't supported locally.

1. Start a cloud agent and say outright that you want an app. Starting from scratch creates a new repo on Cursor Origin, or you can point it at an existing GitHub repo. The changelog says GitLab is coming soon.
2. Describe the app. Cursor's sample prompts include "Deploy this repo as an app." and "Build a microsite for our product launch with a sign-up form that collects emails."
3. Add secrets if Cursor asks for them, for example to connect an outside system. The docs say the agent never sees the values.
4. Preview the app in the tray, choose its URL and publish. Cursor then returns a live link or a list of things to fix.
5. Choose who can open it: people you invite, your whole team, or anyone with the link.

Here's a prompt of my own for a first test, small enough to check by hand: "Build an internal app where office staff log quote requests, assign each one to a salesperson, and mark it won or lost."

Scripts can use a private app too. Send a Cursor API key in the x-cursor-app-token header on every request. The docs say the key only works as a header.

What it costs

Cursor's pricing page lists these plans, and Apps comes with any paid plan that has cloud agents:

Neither the pricing page, the changelog nor the docs give a price or quota for hosting, the database or traffic. I wouldn't assume that means free, and for now you can't estimate the bill for a busy app.

What the security checks cover

Nothing goes live until you publish, and four checks always run first. They block secrets written into app files and credential files, and they never publish .env files or source maps. An AI security review then reads the app's files and blocks serious issues. Team admins can overrule that review, except for malicious code, hardcoded secrets or exposed credentials.

Teams also get some sensible defaults. Public sharing is off for Teams and Enterprise until an admin turns it on, private apps sit behind Cursor sign-in, and admins can see and unpublish any app on the team. Individual plans can share publicly from the start.

My read

I'd use this for the small internal tools that never get built, like a job tracker or an intake form. Those tend to stay in a spreadsheet because nobody wants to set up sign-in and hosting for them, and here both come with the first prompt.

I wouldn't put a customer-facing system on it yet. The docs say hosting is separate from Cursor's services and provided "as is," and that apps can be suspended for business, financial or legal reasons. They don't name the hosting provider or region, and they don't mention custom domains. Add the missing price, and that's too many unknowns for anything your revenue depends on.

I also wouldn't lean on the checks for permissions. Nothing in the docs promises they'd catch a salesperson being able to read everyone else's quotes, so click through the app as each kind of user before you share the link.

Ownership matters too. SpaceX bought Cursor in August, the deal that led OpenAI to pull its models from Cursor, and a hosted app ties you to that vendor more tightly than an editor does.

For a business, this makes a small custom app cheaper to try, which leaves the harder call of which one to build. If you'd like help working out which manual processes deserve an app, New Face Design's free process audit is a good place to start.