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 396 entries on Flocci AI Tools with no upgrade path built in.
Can I use Cline in a browser, or is there an app?
Cline needs to be installed or self-hosted — it doesn't run in a browser tab. It is available on inside another product, the command line, Mac, Windows, Linux and self-hosting.
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