Cline Alternatives
Tools that add an AI coding assistant or agent inside the code editor, like Cline. On GitHub, Cline describes itself as: “Autonomous coding agent as an SDK, IDE extension, or CLI assistant.” Below are the 4 other open-source tools we track for the same job, ranked by live maintenance data from GitHub.
Short answer: Ranked by our health score from public GitHub data on 18 October 2026, the most actively maintained alternatives to Cline are Kilo Code (100). Cline itself is still actively maintained (health score 100), so switching is a choice, not a necessity.
Should you switch from Cline?
Cline itself is still actively maintained (health score 100), so switching is a choice, not a necessity. Full Cline record
1 maintained alternatives to Cline, ranked
| # | Tool | Status | Health | Commits, 91 days | Latest release | Licence | Stars |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kilo CodeKilo is the all-in-one agentic engineering platform. Build, ship, and iterate faster with the most popular op… | Active | 100 | 6,533 +245% | 16 Oct 2026 | MIT | 27.7k |
Ranked by status first, then health score (0 to 100). Commits are counted on each project’s default branch; the percentage compares with the same 91 days a year earlier. Stars are bookmarks, not users.
Also in this group, but stopped or in maintenance
| Tool | Status | Health | Commits, 91 days | Latest release | Licence | Stars |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Continueopen-source coding agent | Maintenance mode | 25 | 3 −100% | 19 Jun 2026 | Apache-2.0 | 36.2k |
| TabbySelf-hosted AI coding assistant | No recent commits | 7 | 0 −100% | 25 Jan 2026 | Custom | 33.9k |
| Roo CodeRoo Code gives you a whole dev team of AI agents in your code editor. | Archived | 0 | 0 −100% | 15 May 2026 | Apache-2.0 | 24.3k |
These projects are archived, in maintenance mode or had no commits in the last 91 days. They may still work, but they are a risky choice for a new project.
Compare and explore
Cline alternatives: common questions
What is the best alternative to Cline?
No single tool is best for every project. By maintenance signals on 18 October 2026, the highest-ranked actively maintained alternative is Kilo Code (health score 100, 6,533 commits in the last 91 days). Compare features and the licence before you switch; we have not tested these tools ourselves.
Is Cline still maintained?
Yes. As of 18 October 2026, Cline received 1,057 commits in the last 91 days and its latest commit is from 18 October 2026, and no maintenance notice was found. Its health score is 100 out of 100.
Which Cline alternatives have a permissive licence?
Among the actively maintained alternatives, these use a permissive licence according to GitHub: Kilo Code (MIT). Always read the licence file itself before commercial use.
How are these alternatives chosen and ranked?
We list the tools we track that do the same job as Cline (AI coding assistants for the editor). They are ranked by maintenance status first (active, slowing down, stopped) and by our health score second. The score combines commit activity, the trend against last year, the date of the last commit, the last release and merged pull requests, all from GitHub. It does not measure features, speed, quality or security.
How this works: we group tools by the job they do and rank the ones we track with public GitHub data (commits on the default branch, releases, merged pull requests, archived flag, and maintenance notices in the README), refreshed automatically. We have not tested these tools ourselves, so the ranking says how well each project is maintained, not which one has the features you need.