Claude Code vs Cline

Side-by-side comparison of Claude Code and Cline: pricing, features, API access, and community ratings.

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	Claude Code Agentic AI coding assistant by Anthropic that works directly in your terminal Visit	Cline The open-source AI coding agent for your IDE, terminal, and SDK Visit
Category	Coding & development	Coding & development
Pricing	Freemium	Freemium
Starting price
Free tier
Audience	Technical	All audiences
API available
Open source
Self-hostable
Model provider	Anthropic	Bring Your Own (Claude, GPT, Gemini, Ollama, LM Studio, OpenAI-compatible)
Founded	2021
Headquarters	San Francisco, USA
Key strengths	·Deep codebase understanding via file system access ·Agentic multi-step task execution in the terminal ·Reads, writes, and runs code autonomously ·Tight integration with git and shell workflows	·Model-agnostic: supports Claude, GPT, Gemini, Ollama, and any OpenAI-compatible endpoint ·Open source (Apache 2.0) with 63k+ GitHub stars and 8M+ installs ·Runs across IDE (VS Code), terminal CLI, and embeddable SDK ·Plan-and-Act mode with per-step approval and one-click undo