Cline

Free, open-source coding agent for VS Code, JetBrains and terminal; bring your own key.

Made by: Cline Bot Inc.
Free plan: Free plan
Paid from: Free + usage
Skill level: Technical
Works on: IDE extension · CLI

Checked 23 Sep 2026Visit Cline →

Best for

Developers who want a transparent, open-source agent that works with any model provider (Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, local models) and who pay only for the tokens they use.

Not great for

Beginners or anyone wanting a predictable monthly bill: you need to set up API keys, and agent tasks on frontier models can use a lot of tokens with no flat-rate cap.

Recent change On 17 Feb 2026 a stolen npm token was used to publish a malicious Cline CLI 2.3.0 that installed OpenClaw (about 4,000 downloads in 8 hours). Cline pulled it, shipped 2.4.0 and moved npm publishing to OIDC. The VS Code extension was not reported affected.

What it is

Cline is a free, open-source coding agent that runs in VS Code and in your terminal. Like other coding agents, it can read your project, plan a change, edit files and run commands, asking for approval as it goes.

The difference is how you pay. Cline itself costs nothing; you connect your own API key from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, a local model or many other providers, and pay that provider for what you use. That gives you full choice of model and full visibility of what the agent is doing, but no predictable monthly bill: an agent working on a big task with a top model can use a lot of tokens.

It suits developers who want control and transparency. With your own keys, requests go straight from your machine to the provider, so that provider’s data policy is the one that applies.

Pricing

Free plan: The extension and CLI are free and open source (Apache 2.0) with no subscription or seat fees; you pay the model provider directly (BYOK) or buy Cline credits at cost.

Plan	Price	What you get
Open Source	$0 + model usage	Bring your own API key, or buy inference credits at cost; no subscription.
Enterprise	Custom	SSO, RBAC, centralized billing, SLA, JetBrains extension, audit logs; contact sales.

Prices in US dollars, billed monthly unless the plan says otherwise. Makers change prices often; check their site before you buy.

Your data

With your own keys, requests go straight from your machine to the model provider. Cline says code sent through Cline credits is never used for training, and its anonymous telemetry is opt-in and never includes code or prompts. The provider you choose sets its own training policy.

Under the hood

Runs on: Claude Sonnet 4.6 (recommended), GPT-5.3 Codex, Gemini 3.1 Pro, any model via BYOK (Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, AWS Bedrock, Groq, DeepSeek and others). Compare the models themselves in the model directory.

Sources checked (5)