# Cline vs Droid CLI (slim)

> Cline scores 60.4 (C) to Droid CLI's 59.1 (C) for agent harnesses. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cline-vs-droid-cli.md (~2,500 tokens) · this version ~630 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cline-vs-droid-cli.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cline-vs-droid-cli
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · Updated: 2026-10-09

Cline scores 60.4 (C) on agent readiness against Droid CLI's 59.1 (C), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Droid CLI leads on agent ergonomics and security & auth. Both do agent harnesses.

- Cline: C 60.4, rank #512 of 950 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/cline.min.md
- Droid CLI: C 59.1, rank #560 of 950 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/droid-cli.min.md
- Cline, 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 49; Payments & pricing, 50 against 10; Maintenance & community, 85 against 79. Also Free to start without a card; Open source.
- Droid CLI, good for Teams that want a terminal coding agent with tiered autonomy, command rules and an optional sandbox, and that will pay for a Factory plan. Ahead on Agent ergonomics, 72 against 67; Security & auth, 63 against 57. Also No incidents deducted, where Cline loses 8 points for them.

| Category | Cline | Droid CLI |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 80 | 49 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 77 | 79 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 67 | 72 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 57 | 63 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 50 | 10 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 85 | 79 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 61 | 64 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Cline | Droid CLI |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Cline Bot Inc. | Factory |
| Pricing | Freemium | Paid |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | Proprietary, under Factory's Terms and Conditions. The `droid` npm package is marked `UNLICENSED` and the public repository holds documentation only. The Python SDK is Apache-2.0 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-01 | 2026-10-08 |
| Terms last updated | 2025-09-25 | 2026-07-14 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2025-09-24 | 2026-08-20 |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice | yes | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 68k stars | 49 stars, 7.8k npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | 2/5 (2) | none |