# Cline vs Paperclip (slim)

> Cline scores 60.4 (C) on agent readiness against Paperclip's 59 (C), and leads in 2 of 7 scored categories. Paperclip leads on security & auth and payments & pricing. Both do agent multi agent. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cline-vs-paperclip.md (~2,200 tokens) · this version ~580 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cline-vs-paperclip.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cline-vs-paperclip
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · Updated: 2026-10-08

Cline scores 60.4 (C) on agent readiness against Paperclip's 59 (C), and leads in 2 of 7 scored categories. Paperclip leads on security & auth and payments & pricing. Both do agent multi agent.

- Cline: C 60.4, rank #353 of 629 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/cline.min.md
- Paperclip: C 59, rank #390 of 629 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/paperclip.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 66; Maintenance & community, 85 against 78.
- Paperclip, good for Someone running several coding or operations agents who wants one place for tasks, budgets, approvals and history across harnesses. Ahead on Security & auth, 64 against 57; Payments & pricing, 60 against 50.

| Category | Cline | Paperclip |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 80 | 66 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 77 | 81 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 67 | 70 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 57 | 64 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 50 | 60 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 85 | 78 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 61 | 65 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Cline | Paperclip |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Cline Bot Inc. | Paperclip Labs, Inc. |
| Pricing | Freemium | Free |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Last release | 2026-10-01 | 2026-10-05 |
| Terms last updated | 2025-09-25 | 2026-07-23 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2025-09-24 | 2026-07-23 |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | yes, with an opt-out |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice | yes | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 68k stars | 99k stars, 60k npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | 2/5 (2) | none |