# Cline 63 Hacker News commenters recommended Cline and 20 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 12 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 1 years (3 owners). It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule. **Verdict:** Free open-source VS Code agent that works with your own API key, billed per token. Critics note context loss in long sessions. ## Why people recommend it - Works with many models and providers (5 comments): "My favorite solution to this is to use the Cline coding agent, which is open and allows you to easily switch between different providers and models." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48390436)) "this is the best way to leverage and have a good experience on open weight models with transparency" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48723883)) "cline and opencode provide usage based access and subscriptions for general API access" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49656877)) - Pay per token, cheap, budgetable (4 comments): "Really nice way to budget token spend on a task-by-task basis and your flow isn't interrupted by limits." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47596254)) "Cline Pass ($10/mo) provide 2x to 6x usage for some of the popular open weights" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49001259)) "It scratches the itch very well for me for literal pennies on the dollar." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47621043)) - Good results and granular control (5 comments): "Way faster than before, easy to correct mistakes, doesn't require self-sacrifice or submission." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48526712)) "I've used Cline for a year now and very happy with it. Fits my workflow really well" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48558286)) "it allows me to gas-and-brake the AI and review what it's doing on a granular level" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48042169)) - Active development and new features (2 comments): "a vscode plugin that's been around since the start and has really active development" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47925893)) "Cline released their Kanban solution to dish out tasks to agents" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47966042)) ## What people warn about - Loses context and plan mid-session (2 comments): "past a certain point the context window gets cluttered and it starts trying to redo tasks it has already completed" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49291170)) "At the start of the session it reads the plan.md. during compaction, it forgets it." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49944546)) - Weak results with some models (2 comments): "KiloCode/RooCode/Cline are unable to give a model enough helpful instructions" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46206206)) "I had a lot of issues with Qwen models when it comes to RooCode/Cline" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45833000)) - Heavy token usage (2 comments): "I created this document on some of the problems with Cline and Claude code etc." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48260101)) "Kilo/Roo/Cline all have major implementation issues with token utilization" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47857108)) - Makes changes despite plan mode (2 comments): "the agent would make changes even when their plan mode was enabled" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50151741)) "I usually use Cline but I'm giving up on it for this exact reason" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49569161)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [Claude Code](https://hackerapproved.com/p/claude-code.md): 4522 recommend - [OpenAI Codex](https://hackerapproved.com/p/codex.md): 2474 recommend - [OpenCode](https://hackerapproved.com/p/opencode.md): 1060 recommend - [Gemini CLI](https://hackerapproved.com/p/gemini-cli.md): 172 recommend - [Mistral Vibe](https://hackerapproved.com/p/mistral-vibe.md): 57 recommend ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Cline", https://hackerapproved.com/p/cline/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).