AI coding assistants · RankedCline
Cline is an open-source coding agent for developers and engineering teams, used for agentic coding workflows inside the IDE · cline.bot ↗
Read the same way at every company size.
The standing depends on who is buying. Every model is asked the same questions for each company size.
GitHub Copilot is first at 73%.
GitHub Copilot is first at 80%.
No model named it for this buyer.
Why models recommend it
“Start by installing Cline (in VS Code) or Aider (in terminal)”Gemini 3.5 Flash · Budget-constrained question · first choice
“Lowest-cost flexible option: Cline or Aider — The tools are free, but the company pays separately for model usage”Perplexity Sonar · Budget-constrained question · alternative
“Winners: Cline / Aider + Open Source Models ... You install tools like Cline or Aider. These run locally.”Qwen 3.7 Flash · Budget-constrained question · alternative
“Another free, open-source tool that is vendor-independent and allows you to bring your own API key.”Llama 4 Maverick · Budget-constrained question · alternative
What gives them pause
“Be cautious about these types of tools in sensitive environments... Tools like Cline”GLM 4.7 FlashX · Negative question · warning
Also on the shortlist
The products named in the same answers as Cline, over the 23 answers that named it, and how often each was the first choice instead.
| Product | Named together | Picked instead | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 22 | 13 | Compare → | |
| 19 | 2 | Compare → | |
| 14 | 3 | Compare → | |
| 13 | 0 | View → | |
| 11 | 0 | Compare → | |
| 11 | 0 | View → | |
| 8 | 2 | View → | |
| 6 | 0 | View → | |
| 5 | 0 | View → | |
| 4 | 1 | Compare → |
What the models named instead of Cline →
A side-by-side page exists where both products are among a category's top eight.
At a glance
Stated on Cline's own site, not checked by Gane.
- For
- developers and engineering teams
- Price stated
- 0 USD
- Starting price
- 0
- Free plan or trial
- free
How this is measured
Fourteen AI models from 12 labs are asked the same buying questions six ways, for three company sizes. Standings refresh every edition.
Gane sells AI visibility software. No company can pay to change a result.
Read the method →Sources returned with these answers
Fourteen of the fourteen models returned a source list in this edition: five return the pages they cited and nine the search results they consulted. These counts come from 23 of the 23 answers that named Cline and are not a share of its labels.
Domains cited
Seventy of the seventy-six domain citations in answers naming Cline came from a third party's page. Six were to the publisher's own pages (the Gane Index), which the models cite like any other source; they are not counted as a third party.
Pages cited
Pages are listed as the models cited them.
By model
| Model | First choice | Alternative | Mention | Warning | Labels |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Haiku 4.5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| GPT-5.4 mini | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| Perplexity Sonar | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 |
| Grok 4.20 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Mistral Small | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Llama 4 Maverick | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Qwen 3.7 Flash | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Kimi K2 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| GLM 4.7 FlashX | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 2 |
| MiniMax M2.5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| GPT-6 Luna | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Muse Glimmer 30B | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
What it publishes
| Kind | Pages | Last 90 days | 2025-10 to 2026-09 | Latest | Categories named |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blog | 99 | 9 | 2026-09-14 | ||
| Report or ebook | 8 | undated | |||
| Comparison | 2 | 0 | 2025-09-23 |
Most recent
- 2026-09-14Cline desktop an open source app for open weight models blog
- 2026-09-02How we migrated 11 million users to clines biggest harness upgrade blog
- 2026-08-26Deepseek wins imo gold on 12 cents blog
- 2026-08-26Building a code review agent with cline sdk blog
- 2026-08-18Open sourcing evals for open weight agents blog
- 2026-08-11Nvidia nemotron 3 5 lightning available in cline blog
How it is countedHide how it is counted
Every page cline.bot exposes, subdomains included. Kind is read from the address and title. The last 90 days, the latest date and the twelve months count pages by when they were published, from the site's feeds, a date in the address, or the page's own publication date, read from up to a hundred of its most recently changed pages; a page that says only when it last changed is counted in its kind but not in when, so the recent counts are a floor, and a kind none of whose pages gives a publication date reads undated. Read September 29, 2026.