Overview

Cline is an open-source AI coding agent. It started as an editor extension and now runs in several places: inside VS Code (and JetBrains on the enterprise plan), in your terminal as a CLI, as a native desktop app with no editor required, in the cloud, and as an SDK you can embed in your own products. Cline says more than 11 million developers use it, and its GitHub repository shows around 71k stars.

The open part matters

Two choices define Cline. First, the code is open source and Cline lists a secure client-side architecture: with your own keys, requests go to the provider you pick. Second, it isn't tied to one AI company. You can bring your own API keys for Anthropic, OpenAI, Google Gemini, DeepSeek, OpenRouter, AWS Bedrock, GCP Vertex, Groq, Cerebras, Vercel AI Gateway and others, or buy inference through Cline's own provider at cost. The new desktop app is aimed at open-weights models. There's also an MCP Marketplace for adding tools to the agent.

Cline's homepage frames the main jobs as understanding a codebase, refactoring it and automating repetitive changes, and it also offers a spec-driven Plan mode.

What it costs

From cline.bot/pricing, checked October 2026:

Open Source: free for individual developers. There's no subscription or seat fee; you only pay for AI inference, either to your own provider or through Cline at cost.
Enterprise: custom pricing. Adds the JetBrains extension, SSO, OIDC, SCIM, centralised billing, role-based access, the option to limit which inference providers staff can use, a team dashboard, audit logs, VPC deployment and an SLA.

Your real cost depends on the model. A long agentic session on a frontier model can use a lot of tokens, so set budgets with your provider.

Who should try it

Developers who want an agent in their existing tools without committing to a single model vendor, and companies that need to control where code and prompts go.

Pros: free and open source; works with almost any model provider; runs in editor, terminal, desktop or embedded.
Cons: no flat monthly price, so inference bills vary; you need to pick and configure a model yourself; JetBrains support and team controls are Enterprise-only.