AI Coding🔴Developer

Cline

Name: Cline
Brand: Cline
Availability: InStock

Open-source autonomous coding agent for VS Code — plans, edits, runs commands and uses MCP tools with explicit human-in-the-loop approval.

Starting at$0

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In Plain English

Cline is a free VS Code extension that turns Claude or GPT into a coding agent that can read your repo, edit files, run terminal commands, and use MCP tools — pausing for your approval on every step.

Overview

Cline is the most-installed AI coding agent on the VS Code marketplace and the open-source poster child for an agentic IDE inside an extension. Cline reads your code, plans multi-step changes, edits files, runs shell commands and browser actions, and pauses for explicit human approval at every risky step — making it the safest way to let an agent loose in a real repo. Unlike Copilot-style autocomplete, Cline runs as a chat panel with a Plan phase and an Act phase: you watch it think, you watch it execute, and you can roll back at any time. Because Cline brings your own model keys (Anthropic Claude, OpenAI, Bedrock, OpenRouter, local via Ollama or LM Studio, plus enterprise providers), there is no platform markup — costs map directly to the underlying API. Cline supports MCP servers as a first-class capability with an in-extension marketplace.

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Editorial Review

Cline is worth testing when your workflow matches its strongest use cases, but pricing, credits, governance, and human review should be checked before rollout.

Key Features

Plan/Act split: Plan mode lets the agent design the approach with no destructive actions; Act mode then executes step-by-step with approval gates, making Cline far safer than always-on agents.+

Built-in MCP Marketplace: install MCP servers from inside the extension. Cline was an early adopter of Model Context Protocol and ships one of the best MCP discovery experiences.+

Real terminal access: Cline runs commands in your VS Code terminal (npm install, pytest, kubectl) and reads output back into the agent loop — not a simulated shell.+

Browser automation: Cline can drive a Chromium instance to verify the UI it just built, taking screenshots and reading the DOM for self-correction.+

Checkpointing: every change creates a workspace snapshot you can roll back to with one click, separate from git.+

BYO keys means no Cline-side data plane on the free plan — your prompts go directly from your machine to the model provider, which is critical for enterprises evaluating security.+

Pricing Plans

Open Source

✓Full Plan/Act loop
✓MCP marketplace
✓BYO keys

Enterprise

Custom

✓SSO
✓Audit logs
✓Security controls

See Full Pricing →Free vs Paid →Is it worth it? →

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Best Use Cases

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Letting an agent implement features with explicit human approval

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Debugging complex multi-file issues

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Engineers using local LLMs who want a real agent, not just autocomplete

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Trying agentic coding inside VS Code without switching IDEs

Limitations & What It Can't Do

We believe in transparent reviews. Here's what Cline doesn't handle well:

⚠No built-in model access or subscription tier that bundles API costs—developers must manage their own API keys and monitor spending across providers, which adds operational overhead compared to all-in-one tools like Cursor or Copilot
⚠Output quality is directly tied to the chosen model—using budget or local models for complex multi-file refactors can produce incorrect or incomplete code, requiring manual intervention that offsets productivity gains
⚠Token-intensive sessions with frontier models can become expensive quickly ($10–$20+ per heavy session), and there is no built-in cost estimation or spending cap to help developers budget their usage
⚠The JetBrains and CLI integrations are newer and less mature than the VS Code extension, so some features may have rougher edges or lag behind in updates
⚠Requires an active internet connection for cloud-hosted models; local model support via Ollama works offline but with significantly reduced code generation quality

Pros & Cons

✓ Pros

✓Free, open source, and the most-installed AI agent on the VS Code marketplace
✓Plan/Act + per-step approvals make it safe to let an agent touch a production repo
✓BYO keys mean no platform markup — you pay model providers directly at cost
✓Built-in MCP marketplace makes tool integration almost zero-config
✓Works with frontier hosted models or fully local LLMs via Ollama for air-gapped use
✓Checkpoints provide an undo button independent of git for safe experimentation

✗ Cons

✗Token usage can be high on long agent loops — easy to burn through Claude credits if you don't watch context
✗Plan/Act paradigm has a learning curve compared to Copilot-style autocomplete
✗Some advanced features (browser automation, MCP) need extra setup beyond install
✗VS Code-only (no JetBrains support yet)

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Cline really free?+

The Cline extension itself is free and open-source under the Apache 2.0 license, but the underlying AI models are not. You bring your own API key from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, OpenRouter, AWS Bedrock, or run a local model with Ollama, and you pay that provider directly for token usage. There is no Cline subscription required for the core product.

Which AI models does Cline support?+

Cline is model-agnostic and supports Anthropic Claude (including Sonnet and Opus), OpenAI GPT models, Google Gemini, AWS Bedrock, Azure OpenAI, OpenRouter (which proxies hundreds of models), and any OpenAI-compatible endpoint. Local models are supported through Ollama and LM Studio, allowing fully offline operation.

What is the difference between Plan mode and Act mode?+

Plan mode lets the agent read your codebase, ask clarifying questions, and write a structured plan without editing any files. Act mode executes the plan — creating files, applying diffs, and running terminal commands, each gated by your approval. The split is designed to catch misunderstandings before code is changed.

How does Cline compare to Cursor or GitHub Copilot?+

Cursor and Copilot are tightly integrated editor experiences with inline completion and flat-rate subscriptions. Cline is an autonomous agent that runs as a side panel inside your existing IDE, focuses on multi-step task execution, and uses pay-per-token pricing through your own API key. Many developers run Cline alongside Copilot — using Copilot for inline completion and Cline for larger agentic tasks.

What is MCP and why does it matter?+

Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard for connecting AI agents to external tools and data sources. Cline supports MCP natively, so you can install community-built servers (for Postgres, GitHub, Figma, browser automation, etc.) or write your own to give the agent capabilities specific to your stack — without modifying Cline itself.

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What's New in 2026

Through early 2026, Cline has crossed 5 million installs across the VS Code Marketplace and Open VSX Registry and surpassed 61,000 GitHub stars, cementing its position as the leading open-source agentic coding tool. The project has expanded beyond its VS Code roots with a fully supported JetBrains plugin family (IntelliJ IDEA, PyCharm, WebStorm, GoLand, Rider) and a standalone Cline CLI for terminal-first workflows, giving teams the same agent across all major developer surfaces. The Enterprise offering has matured with a Kanban-style task management interface, SSO, audit logging, and centralized billing for organizations standardizing on Cline. MCP support continues to be a major investment area, with an expanded marketplace of community servers and tighter integration of MCP tools into the Plan/Act flow.

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Aider

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Aider is the open-source command-line AI coding assistant that pioneered 'edit your repo from the terminal' before the GUI agents arrived. You run `aider` inside a project directory, point it at any LLM — Claude 3.7 Sonnet, GPT-4o / o3-mini, DeepSeek R1 or Chat V3, Gemini, or a local model via Ollama or LiteLLM — and chat about what you want changed. Aider builds a treesitter-powered repo map so it only sends the relevant files to the model, applies the diff, and commits the change with a sensib

GitHub Copilot Agents

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