Cursor published a technical account of how Cursor Router, launched July 22, 2026 with the Auto Intelligence and Auto Balance modes, selects models per turn. The company reports Auto Intelligence now exceeds Fable-level user satisfaction at 68% lower cost (a further 18% reduction since launch), while Auto Balance beats Opus 4.8 at 41% lower cost (a further 8% reduction) with 3% higher satisfaction. Routing has two stages: Compass, a complexity predictor trained on implicit satisfaction signals from hundreds of thousands of live traffic turns, scores each turn 0-1 and sends low-complexity turns to a price-efficient model (Grok); higher-complexity turns go to a taxonomy router over domains, tasks and modifiers that picks a frontier model only when it clears a one-sided 75% uplift threshold and fits the mode's cost budget. Compass's top-rated turns drew positive signals 96% of the time versus 71% for its lowest-rated. Opus 5 has since been added to the routing mix.

• cursor.com2026-08-06