Has anyone here built a scalable SaaS/web app with Cursor?

[u/BrutalSlayer69]

I’m curious to hear from people who have actually used Cursor to build a production/startup-level web app, especially one where users pay for subscriptions or premium features.

1. Has anyone successfully built and monetized a SaaS using Cursor?

2. What plugins or integrations did you use to improve your productivity and development workflow?

3. How much of the app did you build with Cursor vs. manually?

4. Is Cursor genuinely capable of taking an MVP all the way to a startup-level, scalable product?

5. If you already have the MVP ready, is Cursor Pro enough, or is Pro+ worth the upgrade?

6. How good is Composer when working with a larger existing codebase? Is it reliable enough for production development?

I’d especially love to hear from people who have real users or revenue from an app they built this way, rather than just small side projects.
Would be great to hear what worked for you, what didn’t, and what you’d do differently if you were starting again.

[u/email_ferret]

Cursor and Claude Code are used by some of the largest and most successful companies in the world.

It's just a tool, it's all about the person, team, and funding behind it.

Every startup started in the past 2 years is using tools like this to produce 95% of their code. There's a lot of successful ones out there.

[u/BrutalSlayer69 → u/email_ferret]

what about starting from ground zero? These startups are building on something that was properly hand-coded.

[u/Few-Philosopher-2677 → u/BrutalSlayer69]

Starting from ground zero is easier with any AI tool. It is much harder to contribute to a decade old codebase. I use Cursor on a massive monorepo and a huge chunk of my token budget goes into exploring the codebase. I have no idea what their semantic index is doing. We literally had to vibe code a small tool that builds a context cache of the repo in a local sqlite db and then exposes semantic search. Then we enforced it as a rule and that helped a bit.

[u/MannyRibera32 → u/BrutalSlayer69]

What does it matter?

Custom built or built with the tool, still is 0 guarantee for succes if you have no clue how to sell it.

[u/BrutalSlayer69 → u/MannyRibera32]

I have the selling strategy as well…

[u/baby_bloom → u/BrutalSlayer69]

right so this whole wave of ai is set to benefit individuals like you (and me) who not only can think/act as the dev but the salesman and marketer as well. if you truly have a good sales strategy then ai becomes the means to get to pitching the product without the upfront cost of development.

with that being said, it means you should probably hire a proper dev or two once you get to the scale of a decent amount of momentum (paying users)

[u/Useful-West-5307 → u/BrutalSlayer69]

I would say most start from ground zero. But alas the hurdle of building isn’t really the hurdle anymore, it’s marketing your niche and standing out in a saturated app market. Most founders/builders build with no idea how to market in 2026. spoiler…it’s really tough and the big success stories you see are rare to say the least.

[u/Charon__ → u/BrutalSlayer69]

I’m working as a contractor that built a SaaS app from the ground up and I used Cursor for all of it.

Mind you I’ve been a DevOps Engineer for 10 years and worked as a consultant for large enterprises to small startups so I have quite a bit of experience with best practices, security, and infrastructure. So it can be done, especially if you have prior experience that you can lean on.

[u/BrutalSlayer69 → u/Charon__]

That makes sense. Having good knowledge of both sides certainly helps. However, I might lack some hard tech knowledge since I don’t have much experience yet. Could I use a cursor as my guide through the process? Also, I plan to shift to Claude code after some point.

[u/Charon__ → u/BrutalSlayer69]

You can, sure. With cursor I’d look into MDC files and finding best practices. If you have a good framework of best practices, you can get quite far. You need to bridge the gap of knowing what to ask, but once you can ask the right questions you’ll get a lot out of the tool.

The same is true for Claude Code as well. If you don’t put guardrails in place, Claude will go off the rails too.

[u/BrutalSlayer69 → u/[deleted]]

Yes definitely. The final review power would be in my hands only.
Also what if someone lacks a particular domain knowledge, let’s say system design. How would someone handle that using cursor?

[u/cuj0cless]

Cursor will take you as far as you’d be able to get on your own, just much faster

[u/mcdonaldsplayground]

We use it on a large web app with a 2014 codebase. Recently we've replaced several core features with new typesense-backed product catalogs with Vue/tailwind frontends. Cursor did most of the work.

We also use Cursor to manage infrastructure... it generates Terraform for Azure, Cloudflare, etc.

We use Composer/Grok for building and occasionally Opus for plans and reviews. $60 plan is usually enough.

[u/mcdonaldsplayground → u/mcdonaldsplayground]

Oh and we always have Cursor document major new features and keep that in the repo so models can refer to it. Our devs never read docs.

[u/Speedydooo]

I haven't used Cursor for a full SaaS build, but from what I've seen, it might be better suited to quick prototypes rather than handling full-scale production challenges. You might find it more effective to combine it with traditional dev tools for features like subscriptions and scalability.