Cursor vs JetBrains PyCharm
9 members list Cursor, up 8 in the last 12 weeks
5 members list JetBrains PyCharm, up 4 in the last 12 weeks
How has interest in each changed?
Collected from public datasets outside Stackness, not from stacks on this site. A series both tools have shares one chart and one scale, because its unit is the same for both. Data sources
Mentions, monthly
Cursor: Hacker News mentions: 23 mentions (2023) to 20 mentions (2026)
JetBrains PyCharm: Hacker News mentions: 9 mentions (2010) to 13 mentions (2026)
Imported from Hacker News mentions
Installs, monthly
Cursor: Homebrew analytics installs: 9,742 installs (2026) to 4,362 installs (2026)
JetBrains PyCharm: Homebrew analytics installs: 2,000 installs (2026) to 1,200 installs (2026)
Imported from Homebrew analytics
Questions asked, monthly
Cursor: Stack Exchange data explorer questions asked: 3 questions (2009) to 0 questions (2026)
JetBrains PyCharm: Stack Exchange data explorer questions asked: 1 question (2010) to 3 questions (2026)
Imported from Stack Exchange data explorer
Usage share, yearly
Cursor: Stack Overflow developer survey usage share: 17.99 % of respondents (2025)
JetBrains PyCharm: Stack Overflow developer survey usage share: 9.12 % of respondents (2017) to 15.14 % of respondents (2025)
Imported from Stack Overflow developer survey
Series only one of them has
Pageviews, monthly
JetBrains PyCharm: Wikipedia pageviews: 6,847 views (2015) to 4,633 views (2026). Imported from Wikipedia pageviews.
Who uses both?
1 member lists both Cursor and JetBrains PyCharm.
No member has recorded moving from one to the other yet.
What do people pair them with?
Tools that members list in the same stack as each of them.
Paired with both
Which moves use Cursor?
- Session summaries beat context decay like coffee beats my ability to function by Sam Rivera
- Ask for the plan first, edit never by Elif Yilmaz
- Package domain workflows as reusable agent skills by Stackness
How do they differ?
PyCharm is JetBrains' Python IDE, with deep static analysis, refactoring, a strong debugger, test runners and first-class Django and notebook support. JetBrains adds AI through its own assistant and agent. Cursor is a VS Code fork with AI built into every part of the editor and a lighter, extension-based approach to Python tooling. Python developers who rely on refactoring and inspections across a large codebase tend to stay with PyCharm. Those whose day is mostly driving an AI agent and reviewing its edits tend to move to Cursor. Some keep PyCharm for debugging and use Cursor for everything else.
Written by Sergei Gordeichuk,