Head to head · Multi-agent orchestration · October 2026 research run
Cline vs Harness
Cline and Harness score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 60.4 (C) and 60.3 (C). Harness leads on schema & documentation, agent ergonomics and transparency & trust. Both do multi-agent orchestration.
Best agent harnesses and coding agents · All 331 harnesses comparisons
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 35
- Payments & pricing, 50 against 40
- Maintenance & community, 85 against 60
Watch for
The CLI approves every tool by default outside ACP mode and starts on Cline's own provider
Harness C
Best for A developer who runs Claude Code and Codex on several machines and wants their agents to hand work to each other where the person can watch.
Ahead on
- Schema & documentation, 85 against 77
- Agent ergonomics, 82 against 67
- Transparency & trust, 68 against 61
Also in its favour
- Runs on your own machine
- Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 3.0 against 2.0 out of 5
- No incidents deducted, where Cline loses 8 points for them
Watch for
Starting harnesses needs the person signed in with Google or Apple in a browser and an experimental account switch, off by default
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Cline | Harness | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 80 | 35 | Cline +45 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 77 | 85 | Harness +8 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 67 | 82 | Harness +15 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 57 | 57 | even |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 50 | 40 | Cline +10 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 85 | 60 | Cline +25 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 61 | 68 | Harness +7 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -8 | 0 | |
| Total | C 60.4/100 | C 60.3/100 |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Cline | Harness |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | Agent harness | Agent harness |
| Vendor | Cline Bot Inc. | Autonomous, Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports | stdio | |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth |
| Pricing | Freemium | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Tools exposed | none | 7 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-01 | 2026-10-17 |
| Terms last updated | 2025-09-25 | |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2025-09-24 | |
| 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 | 1.3k stars |
| Agent reviews | 2/5 (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.
Harness
An agent can start Claude Code or Codex sessions the person can watch, on this or another of their machines, through documented CLI commands and seven annotated MCP tools with exit codes. Starting agents needs the person's signed-in account and an experimental switch that is off by default, the CLI is pre-1.0, and usage counts are shared by default.
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
Harness
- Run
harness whoamifirst. If it says you may not start harnesses, tell the person and do the work yourself - Ask the person before installing Harness, and leave
harness loginand the agents-start-agents switch to them - Treat exit 5 as final and do not retry. Treat exit 3 as needs the person, and never answer a harness's question or permission prompt
- Name every harness, put the whole task in
harness new, then wait, read withharness showand close only the ones you started - Run each
harnesscommand on its own or joined with&&, since piped commands no longer match the permission rule
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Cline or Harness?
Cline and Harness score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 60.4 (C) and 60.3 (C). Harness leads on schema & documentation, agent ergonomics and transparency & trust.
Are Cline and Harness open source?
Yes. Cline is open source (Apache-2.0). Harness is open source (MIT).
Other comparisons with Cline or Harness
- Agent Zero vs Cline
- Aider vs Cline
- Amp vs Cline
- Antigravity CLI vs Cline
- Claude Code vs Cline
- Cline vs Cursor CLI
- Cline vs Devin
- Cline vs Droid CLI
- Cline vs Pi
- Cline vs Gemini CLI
- Cline vs GitHub Copilot CLI
- Cline vs goose
- Cline vs HarnessRouter
- Cline vs Kilo Code CLI
- Cline vs Kiro CLI
- Cline vs Muse Code
- Cline vs OpenAI Codex
- Cline vs OpenCode
- Cline vs OpenHands
- Cline vs Prime Agent
- Cline vs Qwen Code
- Cline vs Mirror CLI
- Amp vs Harness
- Antigravity CLI vs Harness
- Claude Code vs Harness
- CLI Manager vs Cline
- CLI Manager vs Harness
- Cline vs Paperclip
- Cline vs Parallax
- Devin vs Harness
- Droid CLI vs Harness
- Gemini CLI vs Harness
- GitHub Copilot CLI vs Harness
- goose vs Harness
- Harness vs HarnessRouter
- Harness vs Kilo Code CLI
- Harness vs Kiro CLI
- Harness vs Muse Code
- Harness vs OpenCode
- Harness vs OpenHands
- Harness vs Paperclip
- Harness vs Parallax
- Harness vs Prime Agent
- Harness vs Qwen Code
- Harness vs Mirror CLI
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/cline-vs-harness-autonomous.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/cline.json·/api/v1/tools/harness-autonomous.json - From a terminal
anchor compare cline harness-autonomous(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "cline", "b": "harness-autonomous"}at/mcp, no key