AI Tool Comparison
Comparing as AI Code Generation & AutocompleteCline vs Augment Code

Cline
VS

Augment Code
Verdict by Category
Detailed Comparison
Feature
Cline
Augment Code
Pricing
FreeCline itself is free and open source — there are no seat fees or subscriptions for the core agent. You pay AI inference costs directly to your chosen LLM provider (Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, etc.) with a full per-request cost breakdown shown in the UI. Cline shows every token used and every dollar spent transparently.
ClinePass ($9.99/month) is an optional managed billing subscription that provides 2–5x more usage on popular open coding models compared to standard API rates, with one-click sign-in and no need to manage API keys yourself. It is not required — BYOK (bring your own key) is always available at zero markup.
Enterprise pricing is custom and adds JetBrains extension, SSO/OIDC/SCIM, SLA, centralized billing, RBAC, team management dashboard, authentication logs, limit inference providers, dedicated support, VPC deployments, OpenTelemetry, and advanced config management. Contact sales at cline.bot/contact-sales.
PaidAugment Code uses a usage-based pricing model with two tiers. The Business plan costs $100/month flat for up to 50 seats. This includes $100 of pooled monthly usage across LLM inference (billed at provider list price + 40% service fee), Context Engine API calls, and Cosmos compute. Usage is shared across the whole team. Top-ups are available pay-as-you-go at any time; top-ups expire 12 months after purchase.
The Enterprise plan has custom pricing for teams over 50 seats. It adds custom usage limits and top-up rates, volume-based annual discounts, SSO/OIDC/SCIM, Customer Managed Encryption Keys (CMEK), ISO/IEC 42001 compliance, SIEM integration, data residency options, granular audit trails, multi-region compute, unlimited concurrent sessions, and a dedicated customer success manager with priority support.
All paid plans include a guarantee of no AI training on customer data. A 7-day free trial is available. Previously Augment charged $60/active user/month under a named-seat model before switching to flat/usage-based pricing in October 2025.
Categories
AI Coding AssistantsAI Productivity ToolsAI Developer APIs & PlatformsAI No-Code / Automation Tools
AI Coding AssistantsAI Productivity ToolsAI Developer APIs & Platforms
Summary
Open-source AI coding agent — any model, your keys, full control
AI coding agent with deep Context Engine for large enterprise codebases
Cline Pros & Cons
Pros
- Completely free and open source (Apache 2.0) — no seat fees, no subscriptions, no proprietary lock-in ever
- 67K+ GitHub stars and 8M+ developers — largest open-source coding agent community by any measure
- Full cost transparency at zero markup — the only major coding agent that shows exactly what you pay per request with no hidden pricing
- Model-agnostic with 12+ provider integrations — switch any time without changing workflow or losing your setup
- Plan/Act mode gives full human-in-the-loop control — approve every action or flip to autopilot when confidence is high
- Trusted by engineers at Salesforce, Oracle, Amazon, Microsoft, eBay, Visa, IBM, and LG
Cons
- BYOK means you manage your own LLM API keys and billing — can be confusing for non-technical users used to flat subscriptions
- No built-in inline autocomplete (Tab completions) — Cline is an agent, not a code-completion tool like Copilot or Tabnine
- JetBrains support is still Early Access — not as polished as the VS Code extension
- Some engineers joining OpenAI's Codex team in January 2026 raised community concerns about long-term momentum (Cline confirmed no acquisition and remains independent)
- Enterprise features (SSO, RBAC, JetBrains, SLA) require a custom sales contract — no self-serve team plan available
Augment Code Pros & Cons
Pros
- Deepest codebase context of any AI coding tool — Context Engine indexes 400K+ files with semantic graphs, not just open tabs
- #1 on SWE-bench Pro at 51.80% (Auggie CLI) — top publicly benchmarked coding agent score at publication
- First and only AI coding assistant with ISO/IEC 42001 certification alongside SOC 2 Type II and CMEK
- Usage-based flat pricing ($100/mo for up to 50 seats) is more predictable than per-seat models for variable teams
- Cosmos platform covers the full SDLC — from ticket to PR, code review, tests, incidents, migrations, and onboarding
- Trusted by Adobe, MongoDB, Webflow, Snyk, Pure Storage, Crypto.com, Tekion, and DXC across enterprise codebases
Cons
- No free individual tier — Business plan starts at $100/month with a team minimum; sole developers pay full price for low usage
- Pricing changed three times in 18 months (2023–2025), causing some developer community backlash and unpredictability concerns
- IDE support limited to VS Code and JetBrains — no standalone IDE, no Neovim full feature parity, no Visual Studio
- Closed-source with no self-hosting option — all computation runs on Augment's infrastructure or Enterprise cloud tenants
- Context Engine first-run indexing takes 15–30 minutes on large repos before initial suggestions become fully accurate
- Enterprise plan requires sales contact for pricing — no public list price above the Business tier