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Cline

Cline

Autonomous AI coding agent for VS Code

API costs only (varies by model) ✓ Strong Consensus Visit Website ↗

Score Breakdown

8.2
8.3
8.1
Task Autonomy 8.4
8.5 8.4 8.4
Accuracy & Reliability 8.2
8.3 8.2 8.2
Speed & Performance 8.0
8.0 8.1 7.9
Tool Integration 8.7
8.7 8.8 8.5
Safety & Guardrails 8.9
8.8 9.1 8.7
Cost Efficiency 8.4
8.3 8.5 8.3
Ease of Use 7.8
7.8 7.9 7.6
Multi-step Reasoning 8.2
8.2 8.3 8.0

Judge Opinions

Claude Opus 8.2

"Cline remains the strongest open-source AI coding agent, now facing competition from forks like Roo Code and Kilo Code which validates the architecture. The Plan/Act mode is genuinely well-designed, and MCP integration positions it as an extensible platform. However, API cost transparency cuts both ways — users report $200/mo in Claude API costs for heavy use, and output quality varies dramatically across LLM providers."

+ Fully open-source with transparent operation — spawning active fork ecosystem
+ Plan/Act modes give granular control over agent autonomy level
+ MCP integration turns it into an extensible AI development platform
+ Human-in-the-loop approval with diff previews ensures safe code changes
+ Actively minimizes token usage while maintaining task completion quality
- Heavy use can reach $200/mo in API costs without built-in cost management
- Output quality varies dramatically across LLM providers and models
- Setup is more involved than integrated commercial solutions
GPT-5.2 8.3

"Cline is an open-source VS Code coding agent that combines real autonomy with step-by-step human approval. Its Plan/Act workflow and MCP support make it flexible for serious repo work, but results and cost depend heavily on the model you connect and how much context you feed it."

+ Plan/Act workflow plus approvals make autonomy easy to dial up or down
+ MCP support enables custom tools and connectors without forking the extension
+ Deep VS Code integration: file edits, diffs, and terminal/task execution in one place
+ Model-agnostic: works with multiple hosted providers and local models
+ Good action auditability, including visibility into what it’s doing and why
- Requires API key setup and ongoing model/provider configuration
- Costs can grow quickly on large repos or long autonomous runs
- Output quality varies substantially with the underlying model and prompt strategy
- Browser automation can be flaky on modern, highly dynamic web apps
Gemini 3 8.1

"Cline's architecture is well-engineered for an open-source project. The Plan/Act separation maps well to the planning-then-execution pattern that produces better agent outcomes. The MCP protocol support positions it well for the emerging agent interoperability ecosystem. The main technical limitation is that output quality is entirely dependent on the underlying LLM, so performance varies significantly across providers."

+ Clean separation between planning and execution phases
+ MCP protocol support positions it well for agent ecosystem interoperability
+ Browser automation capability enables end-to-end testing workflows
+ Active open-source development with frequent updates
- Performance ceiling defined by the underlying LLM used
- Browser automation can be unreliable on complex web applications
- Lacks built-in codebase indexing — relies on the LLM's context window

/// RECOMMENDED_USE_CASE

"VS Code users who want an open-source agentic coding assistant with full model flexibility and autonomous capabilities"