Cline is an open-source AI coding agent that lives inside VS Code, JetBrains, and the terminal, built by Cline Bot Inc. It plans and executes multi-file edits, runs shell commands, and reports back for review, rather than just autocompleting single lines, and it is model-agnostic so teams can bring their own AI provider instead of being locked into one vendor.
Who builds it
- Cline is developed by Cline Bot Inc. as an open-source project with more than 250 contributors.
- Its GitHub repository has passed 64,600 stars and the project reports over 8 million installs across its supported platforms.
Core features
- Multi-file edits with coordinated changes across a project, plus terminal/bash command execution with real-time output monitoring.
- "Plan and Act" mode that separates strategizing from execution so a developer can review an approach before Cline touches files.
- Project-specific
.clinerulesfiles for custom rules and reusable skills. - Model Context Protocol (MCP) and plugin extensibility, including an MCP Marketplace.
- Model-agnostic model access: Anthropic Claude, OpenAI GPT models, Google Gemini, OpenRouter's 200+ models, AWS Bedrock, Azure/GCP Vertex, Cerebras, Groq, and local models via Ollama or LM Studio.
- Headless/CLI mode for CI pipelines and scripting, plus integrations with Slack, Linear, Telegram, and Discord.
Pricing
- Cline the extension is free and open source (Apache 2.0). You install it at no cost and only pay for AI inference — either by bringing your own API key from a provider like OpenAI or Anthropic, or by buying inference credits at cost through Cline with no subscription or seat fee.
- Enterprise is custom-priced (contact sales) and adds the JetBrains extension, SSO/OIDC, an SLA, dedicated support, centralized billing, a team management dashboard, role-based access control, and authentication logs.
Open source and self-hosting
Cline's core is fully open source under the Apache 2.0 license on GitHub, so it can be inspected, self-hosted in the sense of running entirely against your own infrastructure and model provider, and modified by the community. Because Cline is model-agnostic, an organization can route all AI calls through its own Bedrock, Vertex, or Azure OpenAI deployment, keeping inference inside its own cloud boundary rather than a third-party model host it doesn't control.
Who it's for
Individual developers who want a free, provider-flexible autonomous coding agent inside their existing editor will find the open-source tier sufficient, since there is no seat fee and API costs are pay-as-you-go. Larger engineering organizations that need SSO, audit logs, and centralized governance over which models and providers are allowed are the target for the Enterprise tier, which several large companies use according to Cline's own site.
Data handling
By default Cline collects only anonymized product-usage telemetry — which tools and modes were used, task start/finish events, rough token counts — and explicitly never collects source code, file contents, file paths, command arguments, conversation content, or credentials. Telemetry can be switched off at any time in Cline's settings and also follows VS Code's global telemetry preference, so teams that want zero analytics reporting can disable it entirely while still using the agent normally.