First of all, if you’re looking for serious coding help inside VS Code, here’s the breakdown from hands-on experience.
Cursor
Cursor is the most powerful, especially for full project work. It’s a custom version of VS Code that understands your entire repo. You can highlight code, get instant refactors, explanations, tests, and commit messages. It’s not perfect, though, can be slow on big projects, and is mostly paid. But the free tier works for small tasks.
Bolt
Bolt is easier to install and cheaper. It’s just a regular extension and uses GPT4 Turbo. Great for simple scripts or single files, but not ideal for project-wide refactoring.
Lovable
Lovable is more for teams. It has real-time collaboration features and shared chats. It feels newer and a bit less polished for solo use, but good if you’re experimenting or coding with others.
The Verdict
So for solo pros, go with cursor. For budget single-file jobs, Bolt wins. For teams or collaborative work, try lovable.