Summary
On July 22, 2026, Cursor made its Auto mode powered by Cursor Router, an intelligent router that classifies each request by query, context, task complexity, and domain and sends it to the most suitable model. Trained on 600K+ requests, Cursor says it matches frontier quality at roughly 60% lower cost, with Intelligence, Balance, and Cost modes.
What changed
Cursor replaced Auto mode's model selection with Cursor Router, a request-level classifier trained on 600K+ requests that routes each query to a frontier or price-efficient model and exposes Intelligence, Balance, and Cost optimization modes.
Why it matters
Request-level routing turns model choice into an automatic cost/quality tradeoff managed by the tool rather than the developer, letting teams capture frontier quality on hard tasks while spending far less on routine ones, and deepens Cursor's control over inference economics as model prices and capabilities fragment.
Evidence excerpt
Auto mode is now powered by Cursor Router ... The router was trained on 600K+ requests, matching frontier quality at 60% lower cost.