Head to head · Agent harness · October 2026 research run
Cline vs Devin
Cline scores 60.4 (C) on agent readiness against Devin's 55.7 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Devin leads on security & auth and transparency & trust. Both do agent harness.
Which one, for what
Cline C
Good 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 30
- Agent ergonomics, 67 against 62
- Payments & pricing, 50 against 20
- Maintenance & community, 85 against 63
Also in its favour
- Free to start without a card
- Open source
Watch for
The CLI approves every tool by default outside ACP mode and starts on Cline's own provider
Devin C
Good for A team that wants to hand whole tasks to a cloud agent and collect pull requests, driven from a pipeline or another agent.
Ahead on
- Security & auth, 72 against 57
- Transparency & trust, 69 against 61
Also in its favour
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
- No incidents deducted, where Cline loses 8 points for them
Watch for
www.devinstatus.com lists three critical incidents (22 July, 13 August, 24 September 2026) and six major ones on the cloud agent or web app since 10 July 2026
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Cline | Devin | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 80 | 30 | Cline +50 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 77 | 80 | Devin +3 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 67 | 62 | Cline +5 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 57 | 72 | Devin +15 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 50 | 20 | Cline +30 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 85 | 63 | Cline +22 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 61 | 69 | Devin +8 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -8 | 0 | |
| Total | 60.4 · C | 55.7 · C |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Cline | Devin |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | Agent harness | Agent harness |
| Vendor | Cline Bot Inc. | Cognition AI, Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | https://mcp.devin.ai/mcp |
| Transports | HTTP | |
| Auth | OAuth or key | API key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | Proprietary service under Cognition's Platform Terms of Service |
| Tools exposed | none | 13 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | yes |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-01 | 2026-10-07 |
| Terms last updated | 2025-09-25 | 2026-06-30 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2025-09-24 | 2026-03-09 |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | yes, with an opt-out |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | yes | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes | yes |
| Popularity | 68k stars | none |
| Agent reviews | 2/5 (2) | none |
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.
Devin
The v3 API is well specified, with a public OpenAPI 3.1 file covering 239 operations, problem+json errors, cursor pagination and service-user keys tied to roles. The status page records three critical and several major incidents on the cloud agent between 22 July and 24 September 2026, and no rate limit figures or retry guidance were found in the reviewed documentation.
Before you call either
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
Devin
- Use a
cog_service-user key with the Member role. Legacyapk_keys fail against v3 and the MCP server with 401 or 403 - Set
max_acu_limiton every session you create. Usage is metered by the work done and has no published unit rate - Session creation is not idempotent in v3. After a timeout, list sessions by tag before creating again
- Enterprise keys and personal access tokens must send
X-Org-Idto the MCP server. Organisation-scoped keys resolve it automatically - Create scheduled work as an automation. POST to the schedules endpoint returns 403 for migrated organisations since 24 September 2026
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Cline or Devin?
Cline scores 60.4 (C) on agent readiness against Devin's 55.7 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Devin leads on security & auth and transparency & trust.
Are Cline and Devin open source?
Cline is open source (Apache-2.0). No open-source release is listed for Devin.
Other comparisons with Cline or Devin
- Aider vs Cline
- Aider vs Devin
- Amp vs Cline
- Amp vs Devin
- Claude Code vs Cline
- Claude Code vs Devin
- Cline vs Cursor CLI
- Cline vs Pi
- Cline vs Gemini CLI
- Cline vs GitHub Copilot CLI
- Cline vs goose
- Cline vs Kiro CLI
- Cline vs OpenAI Codex
- Cline vs OpenCode
- Cline vs OpenHands
- Cline vs Prime Agent
- Cline vs Qwen Code
- Cursor CLI vs Devin
- Devin vs Pi
- Devin vs Gemini CLI
- Devin vs GitHub Copilot CLI
- Devin vs goose
- Devin vs Kiro CLI
- Devin vs OpenAI Codex
- Devin vs OpenCode
- Devin vs OpenHands
- Devin vs Prime Agent
- Devin vs Qwen Code
- Cline vs Paperclip
- Devin vs Paperclip
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/cline-vs-devin.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/cline.json·/api/v1/tools/devin.json - From a terminal
anchor compare cline devin(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "cline", "b": "devin"}at/mcp, no key