What is Cline?
Cline is listed under Terminal & CLI Agents, in the Code & Development category on Flocci AI Tools. Open-source autonomous coding agent for VS Code. It is free, with no paid plan attached, and it lives at cline.bot.
What Cline does
- Open-source autonomous coding agent for VS Code
- Plan/Act modes with approvals
- Bring your own API key or model
- MCP tool support
Cline — straight answers
Is Cline free?
Cline is listed as fully free — there is no paid tier attached to it in the catalog. That makes it one of the 115 entries on Flocci AI Tools with no upgrade path built in.
What can Cline do?
Cline does 4 things the catalog singles out: Open-source autonomous coding agent for vs code; plan/act modes with approvals; bring your own api key or model; mcp tool support.
What is the best free alternative to Cline?
Aider is the closest free alternative: it sits in the same Terminal & CLI Agents sub-category and is free. Crush, Gemini CLI and Goose also start free. The full list is on the alternatives page.
See the full list →Cline alternatives
Compare all alternatives →Claude Code
Terminal & CLI Agents
- Terminal-native agent, best on large codebases
- Top reasoning quality (Opus-class)
- MCP tools, subagents and hooks
- Included with Claude paid plans
OpenAI Codex CLI
Terminal & CLI Agents
- #1 on Terminal-Bench with GPT-5-series
- Runs in terminal, IDE or the cloud
- Sandboxed autonomous edits
- Included with ChatGPT plans
Gemini CLI
Terminal & CLI Agents
- Open-source terminal agent from Google
- Huge free daily model quota
- Built-in tools and MCP support
- Great value for everyday coding
Aider
Terminal & CLI Agents
- Open-source AI pair programmer in your terminal
- Git-aware commits and edits
- Works with any model (bring your key)
- Free to use
OpenCode
Terminal & CLI Agents
- Fully open-source terminal/IDE/desktop coding agent, MIT licensed
- Bring-your-own model across 75+ providers, free models included
- Parallel agent sessions with shareable session links
Crush
Terminal & CLI Agents
- Terminal coding agent from Charm with LSP-aware context
- Cross-platform incl. Android/BSD, MCP server support over HTTP/stdio/SSE
- Agent Skills standard support for extensibility