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Cline vs Continue.dev

Cline is an autonomous coding agent for IDEs; Continue adds CI checks and is fully open source

Which to pick

Pick Cline if you want…

  • Self-hosted AI coding agent for IDEs and terminals
  • Autonomous IDE agent

Pick Continue.dev if you want…

  • Open-source AI code assistant for IDEs and CI
  • A free, open-source tool

Side by side

What it is
Cline:Open-source autonomous coding agent that works in IDEs, terminals and can be embedded in products.
Continue.dev:Continue.dev is an open-source AI coding assistant that adds code suggestions and checks to IDEs and CI pipelines.
Best for
Cline:Self-hosted AI coding agent for IDEs and terminals
Continue.dev:Open-source AI code assistant for IDEs and CI
Who it’s for
Cline:Individual developers and engineering teams needing AI-assisted coding without vendor lock-in.
Continue.dev:Developers who want AI assistance in their editor and CI without vendor lock-in
Pricing
Cline:Freemium
Continue.dev:Open source
Plans
Cline:Individual (Open Source) Free
Continue.dev:—
Open source
Cline:Yes, 69,660 GitHub stars
Continue.dev:Yes, 36,079 GitHub stars
Works with
Cline:VS Code, JetBrains, CLI, Slack, Discord, Telegram, Linear, GitHub Actions
Continue.dev:—

Cline features

  • Plan-and-Act workflow. Toggle between planning steps and executing them, with optional auto-approve.
  • Multi-file edits. Coordinated changes across a project with linter-aware fixes, diffs and one-click undo.
  • Terminal integration. Runs bash commands, reacts to live output and can be used in CI pipelines.
  • Custom rules & skills. Define .clinerules to enforce coding standards and deployment conventions.
  • Model agnostic. Supports Claude, GPT, Gemini, Ollama, LM Studio and any OpenAI-compatible endpoint.
  • Extensible via MCP & plugins. Register custom tools, lifecycle hooks and integrate databases or APIs.
  • Team & automation features. Multi-agent teams, scheduled cron jobs and integrations with Slack, Linear and CI systems.
  • Desktop app. Native desktop client for Mac, Windows and Linux, no editor required.

Continue.dev features

  • AI code suggestions. Provides context-aware code completions and suggestions while you type.
  • Automated code checks. Runs AI-driven linting and quality checks as part of your CI workflow.
  • Open-source foundation. The full codebase is freely available for anyone to inspect, modify, or extend.
  • IDE integration. Hooks into popular editors to surface assistance directly in the development environment.

Cline vs Continue.dev FAQ

Is Cline or Continue.dev free?+

Cline has a free plan (Individual (Open Source)) and paid plans. Continue.dev is free and open source.

Is Cline or Continue.dev open source?+

Yes, both are open source: Cline (cline/cline on GitHub, Apache-2.0 license) and Continue.dev (continuedev/continue on GitHub, Apache-2.0 license).

On DevHunt

Based on each tool's website and DevHunt data. Details may change; check the official sites.