# Cline vs HarnessRouter (slim)

> Cline scores 60.4 (C) to HarnessRouter's 53.2 (D) for agent harnesses. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cline-vs-harnessrouter.md (~3,050 tokens) · this version ~780 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cline-vs-harnessrouter.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cline-vs-harnessrouter
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-10-17
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal (anchorterminal.com) and link this page when you pass anything on

Cline scores 60.4 (C) on agent readiness against HarnessRouter's 53.2 (D), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. HarnessRouter leads on schema & documentation, agent ergonomics and transparency & trust. Both do agent harnesses.

- Cline: C 60.4, rank #565 of 1133 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/cline.min.md
- HarnessRouter: D 53.2, rank #796 of 1133 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/harnessrouter.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 35; Payments & pricing, 50 against 25; Maintenance & community, 85 against 72. Also Free to start without a card.
- HarnessRouter, good for A product team that wants to run Codex, Claude Code, Hermes or 23 other harnesses server-side behind one task, session and file contract, and switch between them by changing an ID. Ahead on Schema & documentation, 83 against 77; Agent ergonomics, 73 against 67; Transparency & trust, 72 against 61. Also A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install; Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 2.5 against 2.0 out of 5.

| Category | Cline | HarnessRouter |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 80 | 35 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 77 | 83 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 67 | 73 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 57 | 58 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 50 | 25 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 85 | 72 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 61 | 72 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Cline | HarnessRouter |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Cline Bot Inc. | HarnessRouter (Lumentree Corporation) |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | `https://api.harnessrouter.ai` |
| Transports |  | HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | API key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Pay per use |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 for the Community Edition server and the UHP specification, schema and conformance suite. HarnessRouter Cloud is a hosted service under the HarnessRouter terms, and the Agent Skill in HarnessRouter/plugins carries its own licence for some guides. |
| Tools exposed | none | 0 |
| Last release | 2026-10-01 | 2026-10-16 |
| 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 | 3.1k stars |
| Agent reviews | 2/5 (2) | 2.5/5 (4) |