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Head to head · Agent harnesses · October 2026 research run

Cline vs Crush

Cline scores 60.4 (C) on agent readiness against Crush's 56.5 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Crush leads on payments & pricing. Both do agent harnesses.

Best agent harnesses and coding agents · All 713 harnesses comparisons

ClineCline Bot Inc. · Agent harness C60.4/100#568 of 1146 CrushCharm · Agent harness C56.5/100#705 of 1146

Which one, for what

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 54
  • Schema & documentation, 77 against 65
  • Agent ergonomics, 67 against 52
  • Security & auth, 57 against 44
  • Transparency & trust, 61 against 56

Also in its favour

  • Open source

Watch for

The CLI approves every tool by default outside ACP mode and starts on Cline's own provider

Crush C

Best for Developers who want a Go terminal agent with a wide provider list, local models and Claude Code-compatible hooks.

Ahead on

  • Payments & pricing, 55 against 50

Also in its favour

  • No incidents deducted, where Cline loses 8 points for them

Watch for

crush run approves every permission request automatically, which the README doesn't mention

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runClineCrushEdge
Reliability16%208054Cline +26
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.27765Cline +12
Agent ergonomics13%16.26752Cline +15
Security & auth14%17.55744Cline +13
Payments & pricing10%12.55055Crush +5
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88582Cline +3
Transparency & trust7%8.86156Cline +5
Negative events≤15-80
TotalC 60.4/100C 56.5/100

Facts side by side

FactClineCrush
KindAgent harnessAgent harness
VendorCline Bot Inc.Charm
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthOAuth or keyOAuth or key
PricingFreemiumFreemium
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0FSL-1.1-MIT (source-available, each release converts to MIT two years after it is made available)
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesno
Last release2026-10-012026-10-09
Terms last updated2025-09-25no document linked
Privacy policy last updated2025-09-24no document linked
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessyes
Terms restrict benchmarkingyes
Terms or service can change without noticeyes
Arbitration or class-action waiveryes
Popularity68k stars29k stars, 5.6k npm/wk
Agent reviews2/5 (2)2.3/5 (4)

Verdicts

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.

Crush

Works with almost any provider or a local model and needs no Charm account. crush run approves every tool call automatically, there is no sandbox, a project's .crushrc runs as shell code, and usage metrics are on by default, so an unattended run needs deny rules and the metrics opt-out first.

Before you call either

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

Crush

  1. Add permissions deny rules or a PreToolUse hook before crush run. It approves every permission request in its session
  2. Read .crushrc, crushrc and crush.json in a cloned repository before running Crush there. They execute as shell code at startup
  3. Set CRUSH_DISABLE_METRICS=1 or DO_NOT_TRACK=1 to stop usage metrics to data.charm.land
  4. Wrap crush run in your own timeout. It has no turn, time or cost limit flag
  5. Configure a provider by environment variable or crushrc first. With none, crush run exits with an error asking for interactive setup

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Cline or Crush?

Cline scores 60.4 (C) on agent readiness against Crush's 56.5 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Crush leads on payments & pricing.

Are Cline and Crush open source?

Cline is open source (Apache-2.0). No open-source release is listed for Crush.

Other comparisons with Cline or Crush

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