# Cline vs MiniMax Code (slim)

> MiniMax Code scores 67.5 (B) to Cline's 60.4 (C) for agent harnesses. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cline-vs-minimax-code.md (~3,500 tokens) · this version ~580 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cline-vs-minimax-code.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cline-vs-minimax-code
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-10-19
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)

MiniMax Code scores 67.5 (B) on agent readiness against Cline's 60.4 (C), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Cline leads on reliability and maintenance & community. Both do agent harnesses.

- Cline: C 60.4, rank #573 of 1175 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/cline.min.md
- MiniMax Code: B 67.5, rank #277 of 1175 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/minimax-code.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 63; Maintenance & community, 85 against 77.
- MiniMax Code, good for Scripted coding runs on MiniMax's models or any compatible model, driven by JSON output and exit codes. Ahead on Agent ergonomics, 75 against 67; Payments & pricing, 60 against 50. Also Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 3.5 against 2.0 out of 5; No incidents deducted, where Cline loses 8 points for them.

| Category | Cline | MiniMax Code |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 80 | 63 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 77 | 81 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 67 | 75 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 57 | 57 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 50 | 60 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 85 | 77 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 61 | 61 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Cline | MiniMax Code |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Cline Bot Inc. | MiniMax |
| Pricing | Freemium | Free |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | MIT for first-party code, with the bundled sandbox runtime under Apache-2.0. The desktop app's source isn't published |
| Last release | 2026-10-01 | 2026-10-15 |
| Terms last updated | 2025-09-25 | 2026-01-19 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2025-09-24 | 2026-01-19 |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 68k stars | 2k stars, 6.8k npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | 2/5 (2) | 3.5/5 (4) |