Overview
Cline is an open-source AI coding agent that runs inside VS Code. It can edit files across your project, run terminal commands, plan before acting, and extend its capabilities through MCP servers. It supports every major AI model and is trusted by over 8 million developers.
Our take
Cline is an open-source coding agent for VS Code that runs on your own API keys, with explicit plan and act modes. Open source plus bring-your-own-key is a genuinely different proposition: you can read what it does, you pay per token rather than per seat, and your code goes to the provider you chose.
Worth it if
Developers who want an agentic assistant with visible behaviour and no subscription.
Look elsewhere if
Teams wanting managed support and billing rather than API keys and community support.
✨ Features
Plan/Act Modes
Plan mode analyzes tasks first, Act mode executes changes across your codebase.
Terminal Integration
Runs bash commands, installs packages, and manages your development environment.
Any Model Support
Use Claude, GPT, Gemini, local models, or any OpenAI-compatible API.
MCP Extensions
Extend with Model Context Protocol plugins for databases, APIs, and more.
⚖️ Pros & Cons
Pros
Cons
💰 Pricing
Free
Free
- Fully open-source (Apache 2.0)
- All features included
- Use any AI model provider
- MCP server support
- Bring your own API keys
Categories
❓ Frequently Asked Questions
What do plan and act modes actually change?
Plan mode works out an approach before touching files; act mode executes it. The separation matters because agentic coding tools are most dangerous when they start editing before they understand the task. Reviewing the plan first is the cheapest way to avoid a large, confidently wrong change.
Is per-token cheaper than a coding assistant subscription?
For moderate use, usually. Agentic coding consumes more tokens than chat because it reads files repeatedly, so heavy use can exceed a subscription. Watch spend for the first fortnight — agentic token consumption is consistently higher than people expect before they measure it.