Cline vs Cursor
Side by side, as alternatives to Cursor. Rows that differ are highlighted; the strongest value in a row is marked. Unknown means no source yet.
Also replaces Cursor: + OpenCode+ OpenAI Codex CLI+ Gemini CLI+ Zed+ OpenHands+ goose
Cost and coverage
Price
$0 software; you run it
Free plan with limited AI use; Plus $8/month, Premium $30/month, Super $100/month, Ultra $200/month; third-party models billed separately by usage source ↗
Code in an AI-first editor
No: No
Confirmed: Yes
Multi-line tab completion and next-edit prediction
No: No
Confirmed: Yes
Let an agent plan and edit across many files
Partial: Partly
Confirmed: Yes
Run terminal commands and tests from the agent
Partial: Partly
Confirmed: Yes
Ask questions about your whole codebase
No: No
Confirmed: Yes
Connect tools and data through MCP
Partial: Partly
Confirmed: Yes
Run agents in the cloud in the background
Partial: Partly
Confirmed: Yes
Jobs covered
4 of 7 jobs
All 7
Popularity and activity (from GitHub)
Stars
70,739
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Gain this week
Unknown
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Signal
Building history
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Commits / 4 wk
209
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Latest release
desktop-v0.0.48 · 2026-10-17
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Commits / 12 wk
840
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People committing / 12 mo
67+
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Issues opened / closed, 30 days
271 / 148
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Facts, with sources on each project page
Runs on my machine?
Confirmed: Yes, in your editor, terminal or desktop app; optional Cloud Agents run in Cline's hosted sandbox
Hosted by the vendor
Code licence
Confirmed: Apache-2.0 for the repo; the JetBrains plugin is not open source
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Model weights licence
Confirmed: No separate model weights
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Commercial use
Confirmed: Allowed under Apache-2.0
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Paid services needed?
Partial: Not required with local models (Ollama, LM Studio) or your own keys; Cline Provider, ClinePass and Cloud Agents are optional
Subscription
Hardware
Partial: No figures for Cline itself; cloud models run via provider APIs; for local models the docs suggest 16-32 GB RAM for small/quantized models, 32-64 GB for mid-size coding models and 64 GB+ for larger ones
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Operating systems
Partial: Desktop app for macOS and Windows (Windows in beta); the extension runs in VS Code, Cursor, Windsurf, VSCodium and JetBrains IDEs, and the CLI needs Node.js 20+; Linux is not named in the install docs
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Setup effort
Confirmed: Easy; install from the VS Code or JetBrains marketplace, or npm install -g cline, then add a provider key or local model
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Stars over time
Switch to Growth % to compare projects of different sizes fairly.
The chart appears after a few nightly checks.
Notes for a video or post
A plain summary with today's date and a link to the sources. Check each project page before you publish.
Want share images and a ready video description? Open a project's creator kit.
Numbers: GitHub, fetched nightly. Facts: read from each project's own documentation, with the source on its page. How we check. cline/cline ↗