Cline vs Windsurf
A side-by-side comparison of Cline and Windsurf — pricing, free tiers, and who each tool is genuinely best for.
| Tagline | Open-source autonomous AI coding agent in VS Code | Agentic IDE with Cascade flows that keep you and the AI in sync |
| Category | AI Coding | AI Coding |
| Pricing | Free and open-source; you pay only for the underlying LLM API tokens you consume | Free tier; Pro from ~$15/user/mo; Teams/Enterprise tiers above |
| Free tier | ||
| Best for | Developers who want a transparent, open-source autonomous coding agent inside VS Code with full control over which LLM they use | Developers wanting an AI-native IDE with tightly integrated agentic flows and a generous free tier. |
| Not for | Non-technical users or those who want a polished SaaS product with support rather than a community-driven open-source tool | Teams that prefer to keep their existing editor and just bolt on completions. |
| Use cases | Autonomous multi-step feature implementation File system read/write operations via AI Running and debugging terminal commands via AI Connecting any OpenRouter-supported LLM to an agent workflow | Agentic multi-step edits Codebase-aware autocomplete Feature implementation Refactoring AI chat over your project |
| Visit Cline | Visit Windsurf |