Cline

Code & Development

Cline Bot Inc.

FreeOpen Source

About

Open-source AI coding agent for VS Code and CLI with Plan/Act modes, MCP marketplace, and bring-your-own-key model support; free for individuals

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Our Verdict

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The open-source coding agent that charges you nothing but the electricity

Cline's pitch is radical transparency: an Apache-licensed agent, no subscription, and inference billed at raw provider prices with your own keys. The Plan/Act split is the best human-in-the-loop design in the category — you read the plan, then let it work. The trade-off is that you become your own model sommelier: costs, quality and speed all depend on what you plug in, and heavy agentic sessions can out-spend a $20 Cursor subscription if you're careless. For developers who want control and auditability over convenience, Cline is the reference implementation.

Best for

•Developers who want frontier models at raw API cost with no markup
•Teams needing an auditable, self-controllable open-source agent
•Power users extending their agent through the MCP ecosystem

Consider alternatives if

•You want a zero-config, all-in-one paid IDE (→ Cursor, Windsurf)
•You prefer a terminal-native workflow (→ Claude Code, Aider)

Try Cline

Supported Platforms

WindowsmacOSLinux

Available platforms include Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Key Features

Open-source AI coding agent (Apache 2.0) for VS Code and CLI

Plan/Act dual modes: review the plan before the agent touches code

MCP Marketplace to extend the agent with tools and integrations

Bring your own key: Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini, OpenRouter, Bedrock, Vertex, DeepSeek and more

Multi-root workspace support for large multi-repo projects

Enterprise edition adds JetBrains extension, SSO, RBAC and centralized billing

Pricing

free

The open-source edition is completely free for individuals — you only pay for model inference, either with your own API keys (BYOK) or via the usage-based Cline provider

paid

Enterprise plan (custom pricing): JetBrains extension, SSO, RBAC, SLA, team management and centralized billing; used by teams at Samsung, Salesforce, Oracle and Amazon

Use Cases

Autonomous multi-file coding tasks inside VS Code with human approval gates

Cost-conscious developers who want frontier models at raw API prices

Extending the agent with MCP servers for databases, browsers and internal tools

Enterprises wanting an auditable open-source agent instead of a black box

Pros

Truly free and open source — no subscription, no markup on BYOK inference

Plan/Act workflow keeps a human in the loop before code changes

Massive adoption: over 8 million developers and a thriving MCP ecosystem

Model-agnostic: swap providers freely as prices and quality shift

Cons

Pay-per-token costs can spike on long agentic sessions with big contexts

No first-party JetBrains support outside the Enterprise plan yet

Requires more setup and model knowledge than turnkey tools like Cursor

Agent quality depends heavily on which model you plug in

Latest Update

2026: Cline passes 8 million developers, ships a CLI alongside the VS Code extension, expands the MCP Marketplace, and offers an Enterprise edition with a JetBrains extension, SSO, RBAC and centralized billing