Cline

Who it is for

For developers and individuals. It runs on Mac, Windows, and Linux. License: Apache-2.0. It is in the DevOps group.

What you pay

Free plan: The pricing page says the open-source VS Code extension and CLI are free for individual developers. You pay the model provider, or Cline's usage billing. No per-token price was printed on that page. JetBrains is listed under Enterprise, which is custom pricing. The JetBrains evaluation license is 30 days and not for production. Hosted price: The open-source column is free. Enterprise is custom. Inference is usage-based. The pricing page does not print a dollar rate for credits. Checked November 10, 2026. Run it yourself: Easy. The pricing page says you can bring your own key or self-host. The free column is the VS Code extension and the CLI on your computer, not a Tabby-style model server. This listing did not install it.

How to switch

• Compared with Sourcegraph Cody. Its price on file: The pricing page does not print a Cody price. The Enterprise plan Cody's docs say it runs on starts at $16K a year. Cody ends on January 31, 2027.

  What you give up: inline autocomplete of a line or more and keep a chosen repository out of chat and autocomplete. You only get part of: add a file, a symbol, or a repository as context, a saved prompt you can run again, and the same assistant in VS Code and JetBrains.

  Free alternatives to Sourcegraph Cody

• Compared with Conductor. Its price on file: The November 4 announcement does not print a dollar price. New signups stopped that day. Existing Pro users keep Pro features for free. Cloud shuts down on November 20, 2026.

  What you give up: more than one agent working at the same time, claude Code, Codex, Cursor, and OpenCode as the agents, and a cloud workspace that keeps working after you close the app. You only get part of: an isolated git checkout for each task, review the diff and open a pull request, and a Mac app.

  Free alternatives to Conductor

How close is it?

A full score means it matches our checklist. It is not a drop-in replacement.

• 60
  Instead of Sourcegraph Cody9 of 9 checked features. A full score means it matches our checklist. It is not a drop-in replacement.What you give up: inline autocomplete of a line or more and keep a chosen repository out of chat and autocomplete. You only get part of: add a file, a symbol, or a repository as context, a saved prompt you can run again, and the same assistant in VS Code and JetBrains.The FAQ says you open Cline in VS Code and type a request. The pricing page includes the VS Code extension on the free column.A maintainer closed the autocomplete request on July 26, 2025 and wrote that it is not a supported feature. An earlier reply on that issue says Cline will not suggest autocomplete.The FAQ says Cline reads and updates multiple files and can run commands, and that you approve the actions. The overview says edits show up as diffs.The FAQ says Cline reads the codebase for a task. The rules doc can name files. The pages checked do not show Cody's @-file, @-symbol, and remote-repository menu.The rules doc stores standing instructions in .clinerules or .cline/rules, and /newrule writes one. Those rules load on later tasks. They are not a prompt library you invoke the way Cody's prompt library works.VS Code is on the free column. The pricing page puts JetBrains on Enterprise. The evaluation license is 30 days, non-commercial, and not for production.The pricing page says you can bring an API key from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and others, or use Cline's provider. The FAQ says you select a model after adding a key.A rule can tell Cline not to modify a path. The docs checked do not keep a chosen repository out of chat and autocomplete.The pricing page lists the CLI on the free column. The overview shows npm i -g cline.
• 32
  Instead of Conductor7 of 7 checked features. A full score means it matches our checklist. It is not a drop-in replacement.What you give up: more than one agent working at the same time, claude Code, Codex, Cursor, and OpenCode as the agents, and a cloud workspace that keeps working after you close the app. You only get part of: an isolated git checkout for each task, review the diff and open a pull request, and a Mac app.The pricing page and the FAQ describe one agent in the editor. They do not describe several agents in separate checkouts.Cline is the agent. It does not launch Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, and OpenCode.Cline edits the project you have open and can change more than one file. The docs checked do not create a git worktree per task.The overview says each edit is a diff you approve. It does not open and merge a pull request as the workspace loop.The free column is a VS Code extension and a CLI, which run on a Mac. It is not a Conductor-style Mac workspace app.The pricing page does not describe a cloud computer that keeps working after you close the laptop. Enterprise mentions VPC deployments, which is a different product line and has no printed price.The pricing page says you bring an API key or pay Cline for inference. It does not print a per-token rate.

Related alternatives

DevOps alternatives

• Free alternatives to Bitbucket
• Free alternatives to Conductor
• Free alternatives to GitHub
• Free alternatives to Jules
• Free alternatives to Ollama Cloud
• Free alternatives to Ona

Free apps in this group

• Aider: Terminal pair programming that commits each edit to git.
• Bugsink: A smaller Sentry-compatible error store.
• Continue: An Apache-2.0 IDE assistant. The repository is read-only after the Cursor acquisition.
• cState: A Hugo status page. Incidents are markdown files.
• Cursor: A coding editor with Tab autocomplete and an agent. Free is limited. The code is closed.
• Devin: The desktop editor formerly sold as Windsurf. Free includes Tab. The code is closed.
• Errbit: An older Airbrake-compatible error catcher.
• Forgejo: A community forge, GPL-3.0 since v9.
• Gatus: A health dashboard with a status page in the config file.
• Gitea: A lightweight Git forge.
• GitHub Copilot: GitHub's coding assistant. Free is capped. The code is not public.
• GitLab Community Edition: The MIT edition of GitLab, without EE.
• GlitchTip: Error tracking compatible with Sentry SDKs.
• Highlight: Session replay and errors, with a split license.
• Kener: A status page with incidents, maintenance, and email subscriptions.
• llama.cpp: LLM inference in C and C++. The license is MIT. llama-server speaks an OpenAI-style API.
• Ollama: Run open models on your own computer. The license is MIT.
• OneUptime: Status pages plus monitors, incidents, and on-call.
• OpenCode: A terminal and desktop coding agent that can open a GitHub pull request.
• OpenHands: Agent Canvas, a self-hosted control center for coding agents.
• Radicle: A peer-to-peer code forge.
• SigNoz: Traces, metrics, and logs in one app.
• SourceHut: Git hosting composed of small services.
• Tabby: A self-hosted completion server. Community is free for up to 5 users.
• Uptime Kuma: Uptime checks, with a public status page of those checks.
• vLLM: An Apache-2.0 model server with an OpenAI-compatible API.

Where we looked

• https://cline.bot/pricing
• https://cline.bot/faq
• https://cline.bot/jetbrains-license
• https://docs.cline.bot/cline-overview
• https://docs.cline.bot/customization/cline-rules
• https://github.com/cline/cline
• https://github.com/cline/cline/issues/5007