Cline vs Continue — Pricing, Plans, and Verified Costs (2026)
Cline and Continue both start at Free on their entry tier.
How pricing works
These two tools don't price the same way, so the headline numbers below aren't directly comparable until you plug in your own volume.
- Cline (Per Usage) — Cline bills purely on usage. There is no fixed per-seat fee, so the monthly cost depends entirely on how much you consume.
- Continue (Per Seat) — Continue bills on a fixed plan, so the listed price is what you pay regardless of volume.
Per-minute, per-credit and per-token rates exclude any downstream model, speech or telephony costs unless the vendor states otherwise.
Open-source autonomous coding agent that runs in VS Code as an extension. Cline itself is free — users bring their own LLM API key (Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Groq, OpenRouter, local models via Ollama). Cost is entirely determined by underlying LLM token usage. Popular with developers who want an agent-first coding experience but prefer to pay direct LLM costs rather than a marked-up subscription.
Open-source AI code assistant that runs as an extension in VS Code, JetBrains, and other editors. Individual use is free (BYOK for LLM). Continue for Teams costs $10/user/mo and adds shared prompts, custom AI blocks, and analytics. Enterprise adds SSO, on-prem, and custom integrations. Positioned as the open-source alternative to GitHub Copilot with full customization of models and prompts.
All plans compared
| Tier role | Plan | Cline monthly | Cline annual | Continue monthly | Continue annual |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free / starter | Cline (extension) / — | Free | Free | — | — |
| Teams | Teams / — | $20 | $20 | — | — |
| Enterprise | Enterprise / — | Custom | Custom | — | — |
Tier names differ across vendors. Rows are aligned by tier role, not name. Full tier structures on each tool's page.
What each is best for
Cline is worth it if… developers who already have LLM API access and want an autonomous coding agent without a subscription markup. The BYOK model is the differentiator — typical monthly cost is $5-50 in Claude Sonnet tokens depending on usage, which beats most $20-60/mo subscription tools if you're a light user.
Continue is worth it if… developers and teams that want to customize their AI coding stack — choose your own model, write custom prompts, share blocks across the team. Individual tier is free with BYOK; Teams ($10/user/mo) is the cheapest way to standardize prompts across a team.
Bottom line: Choose based on how you want to pay — Cline is per usage, Continue is per seat.
Choose Cline over Continue if…
Choose Cline if…
- You want to pay only for actual usage (per usage, a free entry tier).
- You match the profile Cline is built for: developers who already have LLM API access and want an autonomous coding agent without a subscription markup.
- You need a general-purpose developer & infrastructure option rather than a vertical-specific one.
Choose Continue if…
- You want fixed-price predictability (per seat, a free entry tier).
- You match the profile Continue is built for: developers and teams that want to customize their AI coding stack — choose your own model, write custom prompts, share blocks across the team.
- You need a general-purpose developer & infrastructure option rather than a vertical-specific one.
At a glance
| Cline | Continue | |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | No | No |
| Entry price | Free | Free |
| Enterprise available | Yes | No |
| Pricing model | Per Usage | Per Seat |
| Last verified | September 20, 2026 | September 20, 2026 |
| Full pricing | View full pricing | View full pricing |
Pricing last verified September 20, 2026. Tracked daily.