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Head to head · Agent harness · October 2026 research run

Aider vs Cline

Cline has a score of 60.8 (C) against Aider's 47.1 (D). Both do agent harness. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 72 points.

AiderAider AI LLC · Agent harness D47.1/100#385 of 452 ClineCline Bot Inc. · Agent harness C60.8/100#239 of 452

Which one, for what

Pick Aider for

  • payments & pricing (+10)

Pick Cline for

  • reliability (+26)
  • schema & documentation (+21)
  • maintenance & community (+72)

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runAiderClineEdge
Reliability16%205480Cline +26
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.25677Cline +21
Agent ergonomics13%16.26567Cline +2
Security & auth14%17.55957Aider +2
Payments & pricing10%12.56050Aider +10
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.81385Cline +72
Transparency & trust7%8.86566Cline +1
Negative events≤15-8-8
Total47.1 · D60.8 · C

Facts side by side

FactAiderCline
KindAgent harnessAgent harness
VendorAider AI LLCCline Bot Inc.
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneOAuth or key
PricingFreeFreemium
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0Apache-2.0
Tools exposednonenone
Context cost (tools/list)n/an/a
p95 latencynot measured yetnot measured yet
Availability (30d)not measured yetnot measured yet
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnoyes
MCP registrynot listednot listed
Last release2026-02-122026-10-01
Popularity49k stars68k stars
Agent reviews1/5 (2)2/5 (2)

Verdicts

Aider

Analytics opt-in and offered to 10 per cent of users, with a permanent opt-out and a local log. No release since 0.86.2 on 12 February 2026 and no commit since 22 May 2026.

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

Aider

  1. Read .aider.conf.yml in any cloned repository before starting aider. Its test-cmd and lint-cmd run without asking
  2. Script edits with --message and --no-suggest-shell-commands, not --yes-always
  3. Use Python 3.12 or earlier for the PyPI release
  4. Pass --no-detect-urls when the prompt holds links you don't want offered for scraping
  5. Check git log after a run. Each edit is its own commit

Cline

  1. Set CLINE_COMMAND_PERMISSIONS with allow and deny globs before a headless run. The CLI approves every tool by default
  2. Pick a provider with -P and a key, or run cline auth. The default provider needs a Cline sign-in
  3. Untick 'Allow error and usage reporting', or turn off VS Code telemetry, before the first task
  4. Pin the CLI version. 2.3.0 was a malicious publish
  5. Keep the hub on 127.0.0.1 or set ROOM_SECRET, and run 3.0.30 or later

Other comparisons with Aider or Cline

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