Cline Pricing 2026
Complete pricing guide with plans, hidden costs, and cost analysis
Cline has a free plan; paid plans are quote-based.
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Is Cline a fit?
Derived from this product's own pricing and contract record — not a review.
Not a fit if
- Your budget cannot absorb renewal increases — 5-30% of license costs.
- The sticker price is your whole budget — API Token Costs Without Caching.
All Cline Plans & Pricing
| Plan | Monthly | Annual | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Source checked Nov 4, 2026 0: U1: n | Free | Free | Not specified |
| What's included at Open Source
Limits
| |||
| Enterprise checked Nov 4, 2026 0: C1: u | Contact Sales | Contact Sales | Not specified |
| Verified on Cline's pricing page · checked Nov 4, 2026 Custom: “Contact Sales”
Get this price at Cline →
| |||
| What's included at Enterprise
Limits
| |||
View all features by plan (compare side-by-side)
Open Source
- VS Code Extension
- CLI access
- Secure client-side architecture
- Bring your own API keys (BYOK)
- MCP Marketplace integration
- Multi-root workspaces
- Community support
- Plan/Act modes
- Terminal execution
- File editing capabilities
- Browser automation
Enterprise
- All Teams features
- Single Sign-On (SSO)
- Service Level Agreement (SLA)
- Dedicated support
- Authentication logs
- Advanced config management (coming soon)
- Fine-grained permissioning (coming soon)
- OIDC, SCIM provisioning
- VPC deployments
- OpenTelemetry integration
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Cline has a free plan; paid plans are quote-based. Plan: Open Source (free). Custom pricing is available on request. The median contract is $240/year based on 14 community cost mentions.
Use the interactive pricing calculator to estimate your exact cost based on team size and requirements.
- Free tier: Yes
Cline offers 2 pricing tiers: Open Source, Enterprise.
Compared to other ai coding assistants software, Cline is positioned at the budget-friendly price point.
- Median contract: $240/yr from 14 purchases Thin data
- 1 documented hidden costs beyond list price
How much does Cline cost?
Cline Pricing Overview
Cline has a free plan; paid plans are quote-based. The Open Source plan is free. The Enterprise plan requires contacting sales for a custom quote.
Cline and annual price increases of 5-30% of license costs.
The median Cline customer pays $240/year based on 14 community cost mentions.
There are at least 1 documented hidden costs beyond Cline's list price, including implementation, training, and add-on fees.
This pricing was last verified in November 4, 2026 from 1 independent source.
Cline (formerly Claude Dev) is an autonomous AI coding assistant designed as a VS Code and JetBrains extension that enables developers to collaborate with artificial intelligence on coding tasks. With over 4 million installations and 57,400+ GitHub stars, Cline has become a popular open-source alternative to proprietary AI coding tools.
Unlike subscription-based competitors, Cline uses transparent usage-based pricing where developers pay only for AI inference costs. The extension itself is free - you bring your own API keys from providers like Anthropic (Claude), OpenAI (GPT), Google (Gemini), or others. This approach eliminates vendor lock-in and provides complete cost transparency.
Cline features Plan/Act modes for structured development, terminal integration for command execution, automated file editing, and the Model Context Protocol (MCP) for custom tool creation. The platform works across major programming languages and includes browser automation for testing capabilities.
How Cline Pricing Compares
Compare Cline pricing against top alternatives in AI Coding Assistants.
Compare Cline vs Alternatives
Before committing to Cline, compare pricing with these 3 alternatives in the same category.
What Companies Actually Pay for Cline
The median Cline buyer pays $240/year based on 14 community cost mentions.
Cline Cost by Company Size
Example costs for teams of different sizes. Each figure is labelled with the period it covers.
$0 for Cline Open Source, plus modest pay-as-you-go API costs
Occasional weekend coding with light AI assistance for debugging and small feature additions. Using Claude Sonnet with BYOK for 2-4 hours per week.
$0 for Cline Open Source, plus API costs that scale with usage
Daily development work with moderate AI assistance for code generation, refactoring, and documentation. Using Claude Sonnet 4.5 for 20-30 hours per week with prompt caching.
How Cline Pricing Compares
| Software | Starting Price | Top Price |
|---|---|---|
| Cline | Custom | Custom |
| Aider | Free | $100/month |
| Amazon Q Developer | Free | $19/user/month |
| Augment Code | $20/month | $100/month |
| Bolt.new | Custom | Custom |
| Continue | $3/month | $20/month |
Detailed pricing comparisons:
Cline Contract Terms
Cline contracts do not auto-renew. Changes require advance notice. These terms are sourced from verified buyer experiences.
How to Negotiate Cline Pricing
Cline contracts are negotiable. These 4 tactics are sourced from real buyer experiences and procurement specialists.
Cline is free and open-source; all costs come from LLM API calls you configure. Use Claude Haiku 5.5 ($0.10/1M input tokens for prompts up to 100K; Anthropic, Oct 2026) instead of Claude Sonnet or Opus for routine tasks to cut API costs by 80-95% with minimal quality loss on simple tasks.
Anthropic API pricing documentationCline allows setting token limits per session. Configure a conservative default to prevent runaway costs on complex tasks. Teams without limits can see unexpectedly large API bills from unconstrained agentic runs.
Cline user community reportsSince Cline is bring-your-own-key, selecting an LLM provider that supports prompt caching (e.g., Anthropic Claude with caching) dramatically reduces per-run costs by avoiding re-sending the full context window on every tool call.
Hacker News community discussionIf your team uses Cline at scale, apply for Anthropic's enterprise API pricing. Enterprise contracts offer volume discounts, committed spend commitments ($10K-50K/year), and better rate limits than pay-as-you-go.
Anthropic enterprise API programCline Pricing FAQ
01 Is Cline free?
Yes, Cline's Open Source tier is completely free for individual developers. You download the VS Code or JetBrains extension at no cost and bring your own API keys from providers like Anthropic, OpenAI, or Google. However, you'll pay API costs directly to your chosen AI provider based on usage. Teams pricing is free through Q1 2026, then $20/month per user with the first 10 seats always free.
02 How much does Cline cost?
The Cline Open Source plan is free at $0 per month. You pay your AI model provider separately for inference, so your actual cost depends on which models you use and how intensively you code with Cline. Light users will spend less and heavy users more. Enterprise pricing is custom-quoted.
03 What is Cline (formerly Claude Dev)?
Cline is an autonomous AI coding assistant that works as a VS Code and JetBrains extension. It helps developers write code, edit files, execute terminal commands, and automate browser testing. With over 4 million installations and 57,400+ GitHub stars, Cline uses Plan/Act modes to let you review AI decisions before execution. It integrates with multiple AI providers through the Model Context Protocol (MCP) and maintains a secure client-side architecture. The project was formerly known as Claude Dev but rebranded to Cline.
04 How does Cline compare to Cursor?
Cline is open-source and works in VS Code and JetBrains, whereas Cursor is a proprietary fork of VS Code. With Cline you pay your model provider directly for what you use, while Cursor bundles a subscription with usage-based pricing once included credit is depleted. Light users may prefer Cursor's more predictable subscription, while heavy users may appreciate Cline's flexibility and lack of vendor lock-in. Both can become expensive with heavy use, since intensive agentic sessions consume a lot of tokens.
05 Why do my Cline API costs get so high?
Without prompt caching, Cline sends the entire conversation history as input tokens on every tool call. At providers priced at $2/1M input tokens, a long agent session can accumulate significant charges rapidly. Switching to a provider or model that supports prompt caching reduces this substantially.
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