Cline
Open source autonomous coding agent for VS Code
About Cline
Cline is an open source coding agent that lives inside VS Code, with a CLI and an SDK alongside it. It reads your codebase, plans a change, edits files and runs commands, and it does all of that against whichever model you point it at rather than one the vendor picked for you.
The commercial shape is the unusual part and it is worth understanding before comparing prices. There is no subscription and no per-seat fee for the open source extension. You bring your own API key, or buy inference credits, and pay for the tokens you actually burn. That is genuinely cheaper for light users and can be more expensive for heavy ones, which is the honest trade: a flat monthly fee is a bet that you will use a lot, and usage billing is a bet that you will not. The architecture is client-side, so your code goes to the model provider you chose rather than through a vendor's servers, which is often the deciding factor in a security review. Cline also ships an MCP marketplace, so the agent can pick up browsing, search and API tools without custom glue.
You install the extension, connect a provider (Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini, Bedrock or a local endpoint) and give it a task. Cline proposes a plan, then works through it: reading files, making edits, running terminal commands and reacting to the output. Every step is visible and approvable rather than happening behind a curtain, which is what makes it usable on a codebase you care about. MCP servers extend what it can reach, and the marketplace exists so adding a capability does not mean writing an integration. The same agent is available from the command line and through an SDK when you want it in a pipeline rather than an editor. Multi-root workspaces are supported, so a monorepo does not need to be opened one folder at a time.
- •No Subscription, No Seat Fee - The extension is free; you pay only for the inference you use, with your own key or purchased credits
- •Client-Side Architecture - Requests go from your machine to the provider you chose, not through an intermediary's servers
- •Bring Your Own Model - Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini, Bedrock and locally hosted endpoints
- •MCP Marketplace - Add browsing, search and external API tools to the agent without writing integrations
- •IDE, CLI and SDK - The same agent in your editor, your terminal, or embedded in your own tooling
- •Apache-2.0 Licensed - Permissive enough to fork or embed in commercial work
Developers who want an agent inside VS Code without a subscription, and teams whose security review cares where the code goes. Usage billing suits people who reach for an agent a few times a day far better than a flat fee does, and it suits heavy daily users far worse, so estimate your own token burn before assuming it is cheaper. Organisations needing SSO, audit logs, VPC deployment or centralised billing are pushed to the contact-only Enterprise tier. If you would rather have one predictable monthly number than a bill that moves with usage, a flat-rate agent is the better fit.
Pricing
Usage based, no flat monthly plan
- Open Source$0/mo
- EnterpriseContact sales
From the vendor pricing page, 2026-09-19
