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Facts checked against both vendors on September 28, 2026.
GitHub Copilot is the easier buy: $10 a month for an individual, $19 per user for Business, completions plus chat plus agents in every major editor, and a cloud agent that works from GitHub issues. Cline is the open source alternative for developers who want an agent they can audit, point at any model provider including their own cloud or local hardware, and run without a subscription. Pick Copilot for convenience and GitHub integration; pick Cline for control and cost transparency.
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Copilot and Cline overlap on the agent loop, reading a codebase, planning, editing files and running commands, but they are built on opposite assumptions. Copilot is a managed service from GitHub with a subscription that includes model usage and agents that live in your editor and on GitHub.com. Cline is an Apache 2.0 open source agent that runs client-side in your editor or terminal and bills you nothing itself; you pay the model provider you choose.
Cline is an open source AI coding agent under the Apache 2.0 license. It reads and writes files, executes terminal commands and watches their output, and acts only with your explicit approval on each step. It installs as an extension in VS Code, Cursor, Windsurf, VSCodium and Antigravity, as a JetBrains plugin, as a CLI for interactive or headless use, and as a desktop app on macOS and Windows with parallel sessions. Plan mode explores without changing files; Act mode carries the context over and makes the changes; every change is tracked with checkpoints. Providers include Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, AWS Bedrock, Azure, GCP Vertex, Ollama and any OpenAI-compatible API.
GitHub Copilot is a managed assistant that works inside Visual Studio Code, Visual Studio, JetBrains IDEs, Neovim, Xcode, Eclipse and Azure Data Studio. It provides code completion and next-edit suggestions, chat, an agent mode in the editor, a cloud coding agent you assign to GitHub issues that works in a GitHub Actions environment and opens pull requests, Copilot code review, a CLI, Copilot Spaces for shared project context, MCP integration and a choice of models from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google and others.
Cline's Open Source plan is free with no subscription: the VS Code extension, the CLI, a client-side architecture, model inference at cost or with your own keys, an MCP marketplace and multi-root workspaces. You pay for inference in one of three ways: bring your own API keys and pay your provider directly, add Cline credits for pay-as-you-go access with some models tagged free, or subscribe to ClinePass at $9.99 a month for two to five times the usage on curated open coding models, subject to five-hour, weekly and monthly limits. Enterprise is custom priced and adds SSO, an SLA, centralized billing, role-based access control, limits on inference providers and a team dashboard.
GitHub Copilot Free is $0 with 2,000 completions a month, a limited allowance of AI credits and automatic model selection only. Pro is $10 a month with 1,500 AI credits, Pro+ is $39 a month with 7,000 credits and access to premium models, and Max is $100 a month with 20,000 credits. One AI credit equals $0.01, unused credits do not carry over, and a $10 additional usage budget covers 1,000 credits. Business is $19 per user a month with 1,900 credits per user; Enterprise is $39 per user a month with 3,900 credits per user and requires GitHub Enterprise Cloud.
Model freedom and cost transparency. Cline connects directly to Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Bedrock, Vertex, Azure, OpenRouter, Cerebras, Groq, local Ollama or LM Studio and any OpenAI-compatible endpoint. You pay provider rates, use your negotiated cloud contract, or run inference on your own hardware. Copilot's model list is curated by GitHub and metered in AI credits.
Data stays with you. Cline's client-side architecture means no code upload, no indexing and no training on your data, and its enterprise overview lists VPC, on-premises and air-gapped deployment with logs exported to Datadog, Grafana and Splunk through OpenTelemetry. Copilot is a cloud service; policies govern what is sent, but inference runs on GitHub's side.
The agent is explicit and portable. Plan mode cannot edit files, Act mode can, checkpoints record every change and each action waits for approval. It runs inside Cursor and Windsurf as well as VS Code and JetBrains, and the CLI runs headless in scripts and pipelines.
It is a complete assistant, not only an agent. Copilot includes code completion and next-edit suggestions, chat, agent mode, a cloud coding agent, code review, a CLI and Copilot Spaces, all under one subscription with model usage included.
GitHub integration is native. You assign an issue to Copilot, it researches the repository, plans, makes changes on a branch inside GitHub Actions and opens a pull request, and GitHub says it runs without extra cost inside your included Actions minutes and AI credits. Copilot code review comments on pull requests, and Copilot Enterprise indexes the organization's codebase and supports fine-tuned models.
Editor coverage is wider and pricing is simple. Copilot runs in Visual Studio, Xcode, Eclipse, Neovim and Azure Data Studio as well as VS Code and JetBrains. Pro is $10 a month with a published credit allowance, Business is $19 per user, and the free tier gives 2,000 completions a month.
Pick Cline if you want to choose and pay for your own models, run inference locally or inside your own cloud, keep code off any vendor's servers, audit the agent's source, or run it inside an editor Copilot does not support. It suits individual developers with API keys, platform teams with cloud contracts, and organizations with strict data residency rules.
Pick GitHub Copilot if you want the least setup, the widest editor support, completions and agents in one subscription, and an agent that works from GitHub issues and pull requests. It suits most teams already on GitHub, and it is the only one of the two with a free tier that includes completions.
Built from each tool's listing. Vendors can update their own listing after claiming it.
The Open Source plan is free with no subscription; you pay for inference through your own API keys, Cline credits on a pay-as-you-go basis, or ClinePass at $9.99 a month for higher usage on curated open models. Enterprise is custom priced with SSO, RBAC, provider limits and a team dashboard.
Free is $0 with 2,000 completions a month. Pro is $10 a month with 1,500 AI credits, Pro+ $39 a month with 7,000, Max $100 a month with 20,000. Business is $19 per user a month with 1,900 credits; Enterprise is $39 per user a month with 3,900 credits on GitHub Enterprise Cloud. One credit equals $0.01.
