Compare · last checked October 2026
Portia vs Cursor cloud agents
Cursor's cloud agents each run in their own VM and come back with a PR, screenshots and video. They start from the editor, the web, Slack, Linear or a phone. Portia is the planned, gated, one-PR counterpart on your own machine.
Cursor's cloud agents (formerly background agents) run in isolated Ubuntu VMs with your repository, dependencies and secrets, and finish with a pull request that carries screenshots, video and logs of what they did. They can be started from the Cursor app, cursor.com, the iOS app, Slack, GitHub, Linear or an API, and automations run them on schedules and events. Enterprises have been able to self-host the VMs since March 2026.
Again task-shaped and hosted. Cursor's own blog describes up to eight agents in parallel on one prompt; whatever the number, each is an independent VM and PR.
Portia is one epic, planned from the tracker and approved by you, run as Claude Code workers on your machine, gated on each child's rebased head, and landed on one integration branch for one PR.
| Portia | Cursor cloud agents | |
|---|---|---|
| Who proves the work is right, and when | The tests, written first and signed off by a person before any wave; then the gate on each child's rebased head; then you, at the one PR. | Its own tests in the VM, with screenshots and video on the PR; then you. |
| Where rework shows up | At the gate, per child, before it lands: a failed exit gate retries with the failure in its brief. Siblings never touch the same file, so there is nothing to reconcile at the end. | In PR review, after the fact; parallel agents are independent PRs. |
| Unit of work | An epic, or a story big enough to split into children. | A task per agent; up to eight in parallel on a prompt, per Cursor's blog. |
| What you get back | One reviewed pull request for the whole feature, with a ledger of every child and the evidence for each scenario in its description. | A PR per agent, with screenshots, video and logs attached. |
| Where the agents run | Your machine, or a build box you open over SSH. One git worktree per child. | Isolated Ubuntu VMs in Cursor's cloud; self-hosted for enterprise since March 2026. |
| Which agents | Claude Code, on your own subscription. Workers follow the target repo's CLAUDE.md, skills and settings. | Cursor's agent. |
| Planning | A wave table drawn from the tickets and shown to you first. Written back into the tickets, with each dependency as a blocker link. | Its own. |
| Tests before features | The spine writes every acceptance scenario as a failing spec. You sign off before any wave starts. | Runs tests in the VM; has a desktop and browser to check UIs. |
| Isolation between tasks | A worktree, branch, port and database per child. No two children in a wave touch the same file. | A VM per agent. |
| Gates before landing | Task gate; exit gate, run again on the rebased head; CI; an optional review of each child; the epic gate. | Your CI. |
| Who merges | You. Children squash-merge into an integration branch, pinned to the commit their gate passed. Portia never merges to main. | You. |
| Tracker | Jira or GitHub Issues. | GitHub, Linear, Slack, API; automations on events. |
| Model choice | Per child, from its tier: a cheaper model for routine children, a stronger one for the hard ones. | Cursor's model menu. |
| Spend and capacity | Caps per worker, per wave and per epic. Waves are sized from free memory and the other runs on the machine. | Cursor plans and usage. |
| Unattended, and resuming | Parks with one question instead of guessing. Detached workers outlive the session, with a stall detector; portia resume picks a run back up. | Fully: close the laptop. |
| Licence and price | Free. Source on GitHub. | A Cursor subscription. |
What Cursor cloud agents does that Portia doesn't
- Proof of work on the PR: screenshots and video.
- Automations on schedules and events.
- Start from the app, the web, Slack, Linear or a phone.
Choose Cursor cloud agents when
You live in Cursor and want tasks to run in its cloud while you do something else.
Choose Portia when
You want an epic planned and landed as one PR on your own machine with Claude Code, with gates you define.
Questions
- Does Portia check UIs?
- When a child's plan block names a design, Portia renders the route in headless Chromium in the exit gate and compares it with the Figma frame or canvas, pixel-wise and element-wise. The design check is optional and set per child.
Sources
Cursor cloud agents's column comes from the pages below, read in October 2026. Portia's comes from its README and reference. If a cell is wrong, open an issue.