Cursor's Free Year of Pro for Students Is Gone. Here's What Actually Still Works

Cursor closed its student discount to new signups on June 25, 2026. GitHub Copilot's free student tier got capped hard on June 1. And the page that used to send students to a free year of Windsurf now redirects somewhere else entirely, because Windsurf doesn't exist as a separate product anymore. If you searched for a free AI coding assistant as a student this week, you ran into three broken promises at once, and most of the guides still online haven't caught up.

What happened to the Cursor student discount

Cursor's own [student discount help page](https://cursor.com/help/account-and-billing/student-discount) confirms the old program is closed to new signups as of June 25, 2026. The company's stated reason: the discount "had become a target for fraud and held Cursor back from reaching students globally." If you redeemed it before that date, your discounted rate holds until your plan expires, then it reverts to the standard $20/month Pro price.

What replaced it isn't a discount at all. Cursor now points students toward campus and online events "starting in the fall," where credits get handed out case by case, plus a separate request form for master's students, PhD candidates, and educators. There's no guaranteed year of free Pro anymore, verified or otherwise, and Cursor's official page doesn't advertise one. If you're reading a blog post that says otherwise, check its date.

GitHub Copilot's free tier got quietly downgraded too

This is the part most "is Cursor still free" articles skip entirely: GitHub Copilot for Students changed just as dramatically, and it happened first. As of June 1, 2026, GitHub replaced unlimited premium requests with a flat allowance of 200 monthly AI credits, and pulled GPT-5.4, Claude Opus, and Claude Sonnet from the student model picker. Students are left on "Auto mode" for anything premium.

The reaction on GitHub's own community forum was blunt: the announcement thread sits at roughly 6,553 downvotes against 88 upvotes. One student described a single prompt eating a quarter of their monthly allowance. Code completions are still unlimited under the free plan, but if your workflow leans on agent mode or premium models, that part of the free tier is a fraction of what it was in early 2026. If you're trying to stretch a capped Copilot allowance, [our guide to making Copilot's free monthly requests actually last](https://questloops.com/blog/how-to-make-github-copilot-s-free-50-requests-actually-last-a-month) covers the same rationing problem from the non-student free tier.

Windsurf isn't Windsurf anymore

Cognition, the company behind the AI software engineer Devin, acquired Windsurf around December 2025 for roughly $250 million. On June 2, 2026, Windsurf was rebranded and folded into Devin Desktop. Existing accounts and plans carried over automatically, but Cascade, the agent that powered Windsurf's workflow, was retired on July 1, 2026, replaced by something called Devin Local.

Windsurf's own student page (`windsurf.com/editor/students`) now redirects straight to the general Devin Desktop landing page. There's no dedicated student offer listed there anymore. Some student-deal aggregator sites still describe a SheerID-verified Windsurf student plan worth about $180 a year, but that description predates the rebrand, and neither Cognition's site nor Devin Desktop's pricing pages currently confirm that offer is still running under the new name. Treat any "free Windsurf for students" claim you find right now as unverified until Cognition says otherwise on its own site.

What's actually still solid

The GitHub Student Developer Pack itself is still real and still worth claiming, it's just not the "free Cursor for a year" pipeline that older viral posts describe. Beyond Copilot, the pack still bundles JetBrains' full IDE lineup, Codespaces at Pro-level limits, and cloud credits from providers like DigitalOcean and Azure, none of which have been cut. If you want a coding assistant specifically, Copilot's reduced-but-real free tier is currently the most dependable option that's actually available to any verified student without waiting for a campus event. It's worth pairing with a general-purpose assistant too. [Google's free year of AI Pro for college students](https://questloops.com/blog/free-google-ai-pro-for-college-students-how-to-claim-it-and-the-auto-renewal-trap) is still active and covers the research and writing side that a coding-focused tool doesn't.

The takeaway

Three different "free for students" programs in AI coding tools all got tighter within the same few months of 2026, and they didn't announce it the same way, so the news landed unevenly. If a guide promises a free year of Cursor or a still-live Windsurf student plan without a June 2026 date attached to it, assume it's out of date. Copilot's capped free tier and the rest of the GitHub Student Developer Pack are the parts of this that are still verifiably working today.

FAQ

**Can I still get Cursor Pro free as a student?** Not through a standing program. Cursor's current path for students is campus and online events starting in the fall, plus a request form for graduate students and educators, neither of which is a guaranteed free year.

**Does the GitHub Student Developer Pack include Cursor?** No. Cursor is not listed in the current GitHub Student Developer Pack. The pack's flagship AI coding tool is GitHub Copilot, now capped at 200 monthly AI credits for students.

**What happened to Windsurf?** Cognition acquired Windsurf and rebranded it as Devin Desktop on June 2, 2026. The original Cascade agent was retired July 1, 2026, and Windsurf's dedicated student page no longer exists as a separate destination.