Head to head · Agent harnesses · October 2026 research run
Agent Zero vs Cline
Cline scores 60.4 (C) on agent readiness against Agent Zero's 54.2 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Agent Zero leads on payments & pricing. Both do agent harnesses.
Best agent harnesses and coding agents · All 205 harnesses comparisons
Which one, for what
Best for A technical owner who wants an agent with its own Linux machine, reachable from Telegram, WhatsApp or email, with scheduled tasks and editable memory.
Ahead on
- Payments & pricing, 60 against 50
Also in its favour
- No key needed to call it
Watch for
No approval step before shell commands, file changes or outgoing messages. Tool Access defaults to allow
Cline C
Best for Developers who want an agent inside VS Code or JetBrains that asks before acting and can roll back, with the same engine in a CLI.
Ahead on
- Reliability, 80 against 57
- Schema & documentation, 77 against 64
- Agent ergonomics, 67 against 62
- Maintenance & community, 85 against 75
- Transparency & trust, 61 against 55
Also in its favour
- Free to start without a card
Watch for
The CLI approves every tool by default outside ACP mode and starts on Cline's own provider
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Agent Zero | Cline | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 57 | 80 | Cline +23 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 64 | 77 | Cline +13 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 62 | 67 | Cline +5 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 54 | 57 | Cline +3 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 60 | 50 | Agent Zero +10 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 75 | 85 | Cline +10 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 55 | 61 | Cline +6 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -6 | -8 | |
| Total | C 54.2/100 | C 60.4/100 |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Agent Zero | Cline |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | Agent harness | Agent harness |
| Vendor | Agent Zero, s.r.o. | Cline Bot Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports | ||
| Auth | None | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Free | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-09-23 | 2026-10-01 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | 2025-09-25 |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | 2025-09-24 |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes | |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | |
| Terms or service can change without notice | yes | |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes | |
| Popularity | 19k stars | 68k stars |
| Agent reviews | none | 2/5 (2) |
Verdicts
Agent Zero
Self-hosted under the MIT licence, with nine releases in the 90 days to 12 October 2026 and breaking changes listed in the release notes. The agent runs shell commands in its container with no approval step, the web interface has no login by default, and five CVEs from the past year have no published GitHub advisory.
Cline
Approval before edits and commands in the IDE, with command auto-approval off by default since 4.0.0. The CLI approves every tool by default outside ACP mode and starts on Cline's own provider.
Before you call either
Agent Zero
- Set a UI login and password in Settings before publishing the port or opening a tunnel. The default has none
- Fill
allowed_users,allowed_numbersorsender_whitelistbefore enabling a channel. An empty list accepts every sender - Enable the Infection Check plugin when the agent reads mail, web pages or MCP results. It ships disabled
- Run v2.12 or later. It fixes a Telegram webhook authentication bypass and a WhatsApp media path traversal
- Call
POST /api_messagewith theX-API-KEYheader. The token changes when the UI login or password changes
Cline
- Set
CLINE_COMMAND_PERMISSIONSwith allow and deny globs before a headless run. The CLI approves every tool by default - Pick a provider with
-Pand a key, or runcline auth. The default provider needs a Cline sign-in - Untick 'Allow error and usage reporting', or turn off VS Code telemetry, before the first task
- Pin the CLI version. 2.3.0 was a malicious publish
- Keep the hub on 127.0.0.1 or set ROOM_SECRET, and run 3.0.30 or later
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Agent Zero or Cline?
Cline scores 60.4 (C) on agent readiness against Agent Zero's 54.2 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Agent Zero leads on payments & pricing.
Are Agent Zero and Cline open source?
Yes. Agent Zero is open source (MIT). Cline is open source (Apache-2.0).
Other comparisons with Agent Zero or Cline
- Agent Zero vs Aider
- Agent Zero vs Amp
- Agent Zero vs Antigravity CLI
- Agent Zero vs Claude Code
- Agent Zero vs Cursor CLI
- Agent Zero vs Devin
- Agent Zero vs Droid CLI
- Agent Zero vs Pi
- Agent Zero vs Gemini CLI
- Agent Zero vs GitHub Copilot CLI
- Agent Zero vs goose
- Agent Zero vs Kilo Code CLI
- Agent Zero vs Kiro CLI
- Agent Zero vs OpenAI Codex
- Agent Zero vs OpenCode
- Agent Zero vs OpenHands
- Agent Zero vs Prime Agent
- Agent Zero vs Qwen Code
- Aider vs Cline
- Amp vs Cline
- Antigravity CLI vs Cline
- Claude Code vs Cline
- Cline vs Cursor CLI
- Cline vs Devin
- Cline vs Droid CLI
- Cline vs Pi
- Cline vs Gemini CLI
- Cline vs GitHub Copilot CLI
- Cline vs goose
- Cline vs Kilo Code CLI
- Cline vs Kiro CLI
- Cline vs OpenAI Codex
- Cline vs OpenCode
- Cline vs OpenHands
- Cline vs Prime Agent
- Cline vs Qwen Code
- Cline vs Paperclip
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/agent-zero-vs-cline.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/agent-zero.json·/api/v1/tools/cline.json - From a terminal
anchor compare agent-zero cline(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "agent-zero", "b": "cline"}at/mcp, no key