# Cline vs Pi (slim)

> Pi scores 68.4 (B) on agent readiness against Cline's 60.4 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Cline leads on reliability. Both do agent harness. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cline-vs-earendil-pi.md (~2,150 tokens) · this version ~580 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cline-vs-earendil-pi.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cline-vs-earendil-pi
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · Updated: 2026-10-08

Pi scores 68.4 (B) on agent readiness against Cline's 60.4 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Cline leads on reliability. Both do agent harness.

- Cline: C 60.4, rank #353 of 629 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/cline.min.md
- Pi: B 68.4, rank #170 of 629 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/earendil-pi.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 75.
- Pi, good for Developers and pipelines that want a small, scriptable coding agent they can extend in TypeScript and drive over JSONL or RPC, inside their own container. Ahead on Schema & documentation, 84 against 77; Agent ergonomics, 76 against 67; Payments & pricing, 60 against 50. Also No key needed to call it.

| Category | Cline | Pi |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 80 | 75 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 77 | 84 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 67 | 76 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 57 | 61 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 50 | 60 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 85 | 87 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 61 | 64 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Cline | Pi |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Cline Bot Inc. | Earendil |
| Auth | OAuth or key | None |
| Pricing | Freemium | Free |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| llms.txt | yes | no |
| Last release | 2026-10-01 | 2026-10-07 |
| Terms last updated | 2025-09-25 | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2025-09-24 | no document linked |
| 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 | 68k stars | 113k stars, 5.2M npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | 2/5 (2) | none |