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Facts checked against both vendors on September 28, 2026.
Cursor is a paid, integrated editor with its own agent, cloud agents, code review and team controls, priced from $20 a month. Cline is an open source agent under the Apache 2.0 license that runs inside the editor you already have, costs nothing itself, and bills you only for the model inference you choose. Pick Cursor if you want one vendor and a polished end-to-end product; pick Cline if you want to control your models, your costs and your data.
AI-enhanced code editor with predictive edits and natural language commands.
This is a comparison between a product and a component. Cursor sells an editor with an agent built in and charges a subscription that bundles model usage. Cline is an extension and CLI you install into VS Code, JetBrains, or even into Cursor itself, and you pay whichever model provider you point it at.
The differences are in packaging, cost structure, and how much of the stack you want to own. Everything below comes from the vendors' own pages as of September 2026.
Cursor is a desktop editor whose vendor calls it a coding agent for building ambitious software. Its product pages list Agents in the editor, Cloud Agents that run autonomously and in parallel on their own machines, a CLI that also works in Slack and reviews pull requests on GitHub, Automations for scheduled or triggered agents, a Plan Mode and Bugbot for code review. Models come from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, SpaceXAI and Cursor's own Composer line, and it extends through MCP servers, plugins, skills and rules.
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.
Cursor's Hobby plan is free with limited Agent requests and access to Composer. Pro is $20 a month, Pro Plus $60 a month and Ultra $200 a month. Cursor's docs describe two monthly usage pools, one for Composer and Grok models with significantly more included usage and one for third-party models charged at API rates; beyond that you continue on pay-as-you-go at the same rates. Teams is $40 per user a month on Standard and $120 per user a month on Premium, which has five times the Agent limits, and adds centralized billing, Bugbot reviews, usage analytics and SAML or OIDC SSO. Enterprise is custom.
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.
It is a finished product rather than a kit. The editor, the agent, the tab completion, the cloud agents, the code review bot, the CLI and the Slack and GitHub integrations are designed together and billed together.
Cloud execution and automation are built in. Cursor's Cloud Agents run in parallel on their own machines and demo features end to end, and Automations run agents on schedules or triggers.
Team and enterprise features are broader. Teams adds a shared marketplace for rules and skills, Bugbot reviews on pull requests, usage analytics and SSO, and Enterprise adds SCIM, allowlists for repositories, models and MCP servers, auto-run, browser and network controls, audit logs and an API for tracking AI-written code. Cline Enterprise covers SSO, RBAC, provider limits and observability, but pull request review and the marketplace are not part of it.
You control the models and the bill. Cline connects directly to Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Bedrock, Vertex, Azure, OpenRouter, Cerebras, Groq, local Ollama or LM Studio and any OpenAI-compatible endpoint, so you pay your provider's rates, use negotiated cloud contracts, or run models on your own hardware. Cursor meters third-party models through its own pools.
It is open source and stays in your editor. The Apache 2.0 license means you can read, fork and audit the agent, and the client-side architecture means no code upload, no indexing and no training on your data. It runs in VS Code, JetBrains, the terminal and inside Cursor and Windsurf, so adopting it does not require changing tools. The enterprise overview lists VPC, on-premises and air-gapped deployment and log export to Datadog, Grafana and Splunk via OpenTelemetry.
The workflow is explicit. Plan mode cannot modify files, Act mode can, the conversation carries across the switch, and every change is checkpointed.
Pick Cursor if you want the best integrated experience and are happy to pay a subscription for it: one editor, one bill, cloud agents, automations, Bugbot and team administration included. It suits individuals and teams who value polish and do not want to assemble tooling, and enterprises that want detailed controls over what the agent may touch.
Pick Cline if you want to keep your editor, choose your own models and providers, run inference locally or inside your own cloud, or audit the agent's source. It suits developers who already have API keys, teams with negotiated cloud contracts, and organizations that require code to stay inside a VPC or an air-gapped network.
Built from each tool's listing. Vendors can update their own listing after claiming it.
Hobby is free. Pro is $20 a month, Pro Plus $60 a month and Ultra $200 a month, with pay-as-you-go at API rates beyond included usage. Teams is $40 per user a month (Standard) or $120 per user a month (Premium); Enterprise is custom.
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 and a team dashboard.