NovaNova vs Cursor
AI code editor
Cursor is an AI editor for engineers who live in code. Nova is for shipping a finished, deployed website from chat — no editor, no setup, no deploy step to figure out.
Prompt → live, deployed site
From one sentence to a public URL
No IDE or terminal needed
Build entirely from chat
Full-stack — auth, database, payments
Not just the front-end
Multilingual UI + RTL
7 languages incl. Arabic & Urdu
Built for global & emerging markets
Pricing and locales beyond the US
One-click custom domains
Your name, not a subdomain
Self-healing builds
Catches and fixes its own errors
Database set up for you
Provisions the database + writes your schema
Sign-in for your app's users
Your visitors get accounts, not just you
Each user sees only their own data
Per-row isolation, not just per-table
Take your database with you
Leave without a migration project
Deploy to your OWN Vercel
Your account, your control — not ours
Connectors out of the box
Supabase, Stripe, GitHub, Vercel…
Builds AI agents & chatbots for you
LLM chatbots + task-doing, tool-using agents
Edits your own local code
Open a folder on your machine, Nova edits it in place
Native desktop app
Installable app, not just a browser tab
Free to start
No card to try it
full · partial · not the product's focus
Why builders pick Nova
No setup, ever
No install, no terminal, no local environment. Open a tab, describe it, get a live site.
It deploys for you
Cursor stops at code. Nova plans, builds, reviews and ships to a public URL with a domain.
Now edits local code too
Nova Desktop matches Cursor's local-editing on Mac + Windows — and still deploys, builds agents, and works in 7 languages.
What Cursor is great at
Cursor is excellent if you're a developer. It's a fast, AI-native fork of VS Code with great autocomplete, codebase-aware chat, and agent edits. For working inside an existing codebase, it's one of the best tools out there.
Where Nova is different
Nova isn't just an editor — it's the whole pipeline. You describe what you want and Nova plans it, writes it, reviews it, and deploys it to a live URL with a custom domain. No local setup, no figuring out hosting. And Nova now closes Cursor's home turf too: the Nova Desktop app (Mac + Windows) opens a local folder and edits your code in place — plus Nova builds AI agents for you, which Cursor leaves you to code by hand. Cursor hands you code; Nova hands you a running product — and can now edit your local repo when you want that too.
See it for yourself
Describe a site in a sentence and watch Nova plan, build, review and deploy it — live, in your language. No card required.