TL;DR: Claude 4 Opus and Sonnet now lead the coding AI race, with Opus claiming "world's best coding model" status at 72.5% SWE-bench. Gemini 2.5 Pro offers exceptional value with its massive context window, while DeepSeek R1 provides competitive performance completely free. OpenAI's o3/o4-mini and GPT-4.1 round out the top choices for different use cases.

Introduction

June 2025 marks a pivotal moment in AI-assisted coding. With Claude 4's recent release claiming the coding crown, Gemini 2.5 Pro's massive context capabilities, and breakthrough free models like DeepSeek R1, developers have more powerful options than ever.

This comprehensive guide examines the top AI models available in Cursor IDE as of June 2025, analyzing their performance, pricing, and practical applications based on the latest benchmarks and real-world usage data.

Current AI Model Landscape (June 2025)

The AI coding landscape has evolved dramatically in early 2025:

🚀 Major Developments

Claude 4 launched in May 2025, setting new coding benchmarks
Gemini 2.5 Pro leads in context window size (1M tokens, expanding to 2M)
DeepSeek R1 shocked the industry as a free model matching premium performance
OpenAI's o-series (o3, o4-mini) focus on reasoning-first approaches
GPT-4.1 family emphasizes cost-effective coding with massive context windows

Top AI Models Deep Dive

🏆 Claude 4 Series (Anthropic) - The New Champions

Released in May 2025, Claude 4 represents Anthropic's most ambitious coding-focused release yet.

Claude 4 Opus - The Ultimate Coding Model

🎯 Why it leads: Claude 4 Opus is "the world's best coding model" with 72.5% on SWE-bench and 43.2% on Terminal-bench.

Key Strengths

🏅 Best-in-Class Performance: 72.5% on SWE-bench, significantly outperforming competitors
⚡ Extended Workflows: Can work continuously for several hours on complex tasks
🤖 Agent Capabilities: Designed for frontier agent products with sustained performance on long-running tasks
🧠 Memory & Context: Advanced memory capabilities when given local file access
🔧 Tool Integration: Extended thinking with tool use, parallel tool execution

Industry Validation

💬 Industry Quote: Cursor calls it "state-of-the-art for coding and a leap forward in complex codebase understanding"

Perfect For

✅ Complex multi-file refactoring
✅ Architectural changes requiring deep understanding
✅ Long-term autonomous coding projects
✅ Advanced debugging and code quality improvement

Pricing

$15 input / $75 output (per million tokens)

Claude 4 Sonnet - The Practical Powerhouse

🎯 Why it matters: A significant upgrade to Claude Sonnet 3.7, delivering superior coding and reasoning while responding more precisely.

Key Strengths

📊 Strong Performance: 72.7% on SWE-bench (80.2% with parallel test-time compute)
💰 Cost-Effective: Same price as predecessor but significantly better performance
🔗 GitHub Integration: GitHub plans to introduce Sonnet 4 as the model powering the new coding agent in GitHub Copilot
⚡ Hybrid Modes: Near-instant responses or extended thinking for complex problems
🎯 Enhanced Accuracy: 65% less likely to engage in shortcut behavior than Sonnet 3.7

Perfect For

✅ Daily coding tasks and code reviews
✅ Multi-file projects requiring consistency
✅ Teams wanting cutting-edge performance at reasonable cost

Pricing

$3 input / $15 output (per million tokens)

🚀 Gemini 2.5 Pro (Google) - The Context King

🎯 Why it's transformative: Features a massive 1-million-token context window (expanding to 2 million) and true multimodal capabilities.

Key Strengths

📏 Massive Context: 1-million-token context window means you can feed it entire codebases—around 30,000 lines—in a single conversation
📈 Strong Benchmarks: 63.8% accuracy on SWE bench, higher than Claude 3.7 Sonnet's 62.3%
🎨 Multimodal Excellence: Native support for text, images, audio, and video
🎯 One-Shot Performance: Often solves complex problems in one attempt without iterations
💰 Cost Efficiency: Cheapest at $1.25 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens

User Feedback

💬 Developer Quote: Developers consistently praise Gemini 2.5 Pro as the "new UI king," noting it "nailed the UI design almost perfectly"

Perfect For

✅ Large codebase analysis and refactoring
✅ Multimodal projects (UI mockups to code)
✅ Budget-conscious teams needing premium performance
✅ Projects requiring extensive context understanding

Pricing

$1.25 input / $10 output (per million tokens)

💰 DeepSeek R1 - The Free Powerhouse

🎯 The disruption: DeepSeek R1 is approximately 30 times more cost-efficient than OpenAI-o1 and 5 times faster, offering groundbreaking performance at a fraction of the cost.

Key Strengths

🆓 Completely Free: Available through multiple providers at no cost
⚡ Competitive Performance: 671B parameter Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) model with 37B activated parameters per token
🧠 Strong Reasoning: Excels at understanding and handling long-form content and demonstrates superior performance in complex tasks such as mathematics and code generation
📖 Open Source: MIT license allows commercial use
🔄 Multiple Access Points: OpenRouter, direct API, local deployment

Perfect For

✅ Budget-conscious developers and students
✅ Experimentation and learning
✅ Privacy-sensitive projects (local deployment)
✅ Mathematical and algorithmic problems

Access Methods

Method	Description
OpenRouter	Free via OpenRouter (Nebius provider)
Direct API	Direct DeepSeek API
Local	Local deployment via Ollama
IDE Integration	VS Code + Cline extension integration

Pricing

FREE 🎉

⚡ OpenAI o3 & o4-mini - The Reasoning Specialists

🎯 What's new: O4-mini tops AIME 2024 (93.4) and 2025 (92.7), while O3 scores 82.9 on MMMU and 83.3 on GPQA Diamond PhD-Level Science.

Key Strengths

🧠 Advanced Reasoning: Focused on reasoning and coding with chain-of-thought capabilities
🔧 Tool Integration: Fine-tuned to decide when and how to use tools, including web search, code generation and execution
⚙️ Multiple Effort Modes: Low, medium, high reasoning effort settings
📊 Strong Math Performance: O4-mini leads in non-STEM and data science tasks

Perfect For

✅ Complex mathematical and scientific problems
✅ Multi-step reasoning tasks
✅ Applications requiring tool integration
✅ Cost-effective reasoning (o4-mini)

Pricing

o3-mini: $1.10 input / $4.40 output (per million tokens)
o4-mini: Even more cost-effective

🔧 GPT-4.1 Family - The Versatile Workhorses

🎯 The appeal: Available in three variants—GPT-4.1, GPT-4.1 mini, and GPT-4.1 nano with 1-million-token context windows.

Key Strengths

📏 Massive Context: 1-million-token context window, meaning they can take in roughly 750,000 words in one go
💰 Cost-Effective: GPT-4.1 costs $2 per million input tokens and $8 per million output tokens
💻 Coding Focus: Optimized for real-world use based on direct feedback to improve in areas that developers care most about: frontend coding, making fewer extraneous edits, following formats reliably
⚡ Performance Range: Three models for different speed/cost tradeoffs

Perfect For

✅ Large document processing
✅ Cost-sensitive applications
✅ Frontend development
✅ General-purpose coding tasks

Performance Comparison (June 2025)

📊 Coding Benchmarks

Model	SWE-bench Score	Context Window	Key Strength
Claude 4 Opus	72.5%	200k tokens	Ultimate coding accuracy
Claude 4 Sonnet	72.7%	200k tokens	Balanced performance
Gemini 2.5 Pro	63.8%	1M tokens	Massive context + multimodal
GPT-4.1	52-54.6%	1M tokens	Cost-effective versatility
DeepSeek R1	~60%	128k tokens	Free access

💬 Real-World Performance Insights

Claude 4 User Feedback

"State-of-the-art for coding and a leap forward in complex codebase understanding" (Cursor)

"Dramatic advancements for complex changes across multiple files" (Replit)

Gemini 2.5 Pro User Feedback

"Gemini 2.5 Pro shines in technical accuracy" but "Claude 4 Sonnet offered a balance of creativity, practicality and accessibility"

"Substantially better at underlying code and making things more functional"

Cost Analysis (June 2025)

💰 Price Comparison (per million tokens)

Model	Input Cost	Output Cost	Best Use Case
DeepSeek R1	Free	Free	Budget/learning
GPT-4.1	$2	$8	Cost-effective general use
Claude 4 Sonnet	$3	$15	Premium daily coding
Gemini 2.5 Pro	$1.25	$10	Large context projects
Claude 4 Opus	$15	$75	Complex enterprise tasks

🎯 Cursor-Specific Pricing

Since June 2025 Cursor defaults to Claude Sonnet 4 for Max Mode tasks requiring chain-of-thought reasoning:

Plan	Cost	Details
Pro Plan	$20/month	+ 500 fast requests
Usage-Based	$0.04 per request	Claude 4 → $0.30
Max Mode	Standard + 20%	Markup on provider API prices

Practical Recommendations by Use Case

👨‍💻 For Different Developer Types

🌱 Beginner Developers

Start with DeepSeek R1 for free experimentation
Upgrade to Claude 4 Sonnet for serious projects
Use Gemini 2.5 Pro for learning with large codebases

💼 Professional Developers

Claude 4 Opus for complex enterprise projects
Claude 4 Sonnet for daily development tasks
Gemini 2.5 Pro for large-scale refactoring

💰 Budget-Conscious Teams

DeepSeek R1 as primary choice
GPT-4.1 for premium features when needed
Gemini 2.5 Pro for best price/performance ratio

🛠️ By Coding Task

Task Type	Primary Choice	Alternative	Why
Web Development	Gemini 2.5 Pro	Claude 4 Sonnet	Excellent UI generation
Data Science/ML	Claude 4 Opus	o4-mini	Superior reasoning
Large Codebase Work	Gemini 2.5 Pro	GPT-4.1	1M token context
Complex Debugging	Claude 4 Opus	Claude 4 Sonnet	Extended thinking mode

Setting Up Models in Cursor

🔧 Claude 4 Integration

Special Offer: Claude 4 Sonnet & Opus are now available in Cursor with a 50% discount for the next couple of days!

Setup Steps

Open Cursor Settings → Models
Select Claude 4 Sonnet or Opus
Models are available in both Normal and Max modes
Free users get access to Sonnet 4, Pro users get both

🔄 Adding Alternative Models

DeepSeek R1 via OpenRouter

{
  "name": "DeepSeek-R1-Nebius",
  "provider": "openrouter",
  "model": "deepseek/deepseek-r1",
  "apiKey": "your-openrouter-key"
}

Gemini 2.5 Pro Setup

Get Google AI Studio API key
Add as custom model in Cursor
Configure for Max Mode for large context usage

Future Outlook (Late 2025)

🔮 Emerging Trends

Key Developments on the Horizon

Multi-Agent Coding: Future trends in AI coding emphasize autonomy and collaboration, with multiple AI agents working together

Hybrid Reasoning: Combination of fast inference and deep thinking modes

Specialized Models: Task-specific models for different coding domains

Local Deployment: Increased focus on privacy with local model deployment

📅 Expected Releases

Model	Timeline	Expected Features
Claude 5	Q4 2025	Further coding improvements
GPT-5	2025	Significant reasoning and coding advances
Gemini 3.0	2025	Expanded context windows and capabilities
Llama 4	2025	Meta's open-source challenger gaining momentum

Best Practices for Model Selection

⚡ Performance Optimization

Match Model to Task: Use Claude 4 Opus for complex work, Sonnet for daily tasks
Context Management: Leverage Gemini 2.5 Pro's large context for big projects
Cost Control: Start with free options, upgrade as needed
Hybrid Approach: Use different models for different phases of development

💡 Cost Management Tips

Pro Tips for Saving Money

Set Spending Limits: Cursor's pay-as-you-go billing triggers at $20 thresholds

Model Switching: Switch default chat to o3-mini for docstrings and leave Sonnet 4 for gnarly multi-file refactors. Saves ~85% of quota

Slow Requests: Use Cursor's slow queue for non-urgent tasks

Context Optimization: Include only necessary files to reduce token usage

Conclusion

June 2025 represents a golden age for AI-assisted coding. Claude 4 Opus leads in pure coding performance, Gemini 2.5 Pro excels in large-scale projects, and DeepSeek R1 democratizes access to premium AI capabilities.

🎯 Quick Decision Framework

Choose Your Model Based on Your Needs

Need	Recommended Model
Absolute best coding performance?	→ Claude 4 Opus
Large codebases or multimodal work?	→ Gemini 2.5 Pro
Excellent performance for free?	→ DeepSeek R1
Cost-effective premium features?	→ Claude 4 Sonnet
Reasoning and tool use?	→ o3/o4-mini
Massive context on a budget?	→ GPT-4.1

🔑 Key Insight for 2025

There's no single "best" model anymore. The most productive developers use different models strategically, leveraging each one's strengths for specific tasks while managing costs effectively.

As these models continue evolving rapidly, staying informed about new releases and benchmark improvements will be crucial for maintaining competitive advantage in AI-assisted development.

Last updated: June 2025
Sources: Cursor usage statistics, SWE-bench evaluations, developer community feedback