G
GAI coding assistant and agents for editors, terminal, desktop and GitHub
Free, from $10/mo
Cline vs LM Studio
Pricing, features, platforms and who each one suits — side by side.
C
Choose Cline if…
- you want open source you can self-host or audit
- you work on VS Code, JetBrains, macOS
- you're in its core audience: software developers, engineering teams
L
Choose LM Studio if…
- you're in its core audience: developers, privacy-conscious professionals
Side by side
Feature Cline LM Studio
Pricing modelFreeFreemium
Starting priceFree$20/mo
Free plan
Free trial
API
Open source
Trains AI on your content—No
Data retention—Prompts and responses not retained; cloud requests processed transiently (Zero Data Retention)
Security and compliance—GDPR
Updates, last 90 days—7
GitHub stars70.9K—
Agent mode—
CLI / terminal—
Bring your own key—
Local / self-hosted models—
MCP support—
PlatformsVS Code, JetBrains, macOS, Windows, Linux, Slack, Discord, Telegram—
CategoryCode AssistantsLocal & Open Models
CompanyCline Bot Inc.Element Labs, Inc.
Based inUnited StatesUnited States
Founded——
Part of——
Key features
C Cline
- Plan and Act modes with step approval or auto-approve
- Multi-file edits with diffs, checkpoints and one-click undo
- Runs bash commands and reacts to their output
- Supports Claude, GPT, Gemini, Ollama, LM Studio and OpenAI-compatible endpoints
- .clinerules files that teach the agent your project conventions
- MCP server integrations and SDK plugins
- Runs headless in GitHub Actions, GitLab and other CI pipelines
- Multi-agent teams with cron-scheduled automations
L LM Studio
- Bionic agent creates and edits documents, slides and PDFs
- Coding, automation and computer control tasks
- In-app download of local LLMs
- Runtime powered by MLX and llama.cpp
- Real-time on-device voice transcription in multiple languages
- Optional US-hosted open frontier models with zero data retention
- LM Link connects up to 5 devices on Free
- JavaScript and Python SDKs plus the lms CLI
Plans and prices
From each vendor's site. Prices change — confirm before buying.
Cline
Open SourceFree
EnterpriseCustom
LM Studio
Free$0
Bionic+$20 USD/month
Pro$100 USD/month
Strengths and limitations
Cline
- Free and open source for individual developers
- Works with any major model provider, including local models
- Available as an IDE extension, CLI, desktop app and SDK
- Inference sold at cost, or bring your own API key
- The JetBrains extension is listed only under the Enterprise plan on the pricing page
- Enterprise pricing is available only through sales
- Advanced config management and fine-grained permissions are still marked as coming soon
LM Studio
- Free plan includes the agent, local models and offline transcription
- Voice data is processed locally
- Cloud services are stated to use Zero Data Retention
- SDKs for JavaScript and Python plus a CLI
- Hosted frontier models require a paid plan starting at $20/month
- Free plan has only limited web search
- Team subscription plans are not yet available
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Built from each vendor's public website; we haven't tested them hands-on. Editorial policy