Cline is free open-source software that bills you for every model call, and Cursor is a $20 a month editor that includes a pool of model usage. On the same model the two cost the same per token: Cursor charges Claude Sonnet 5 at $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output, exactly what you pay through Cline on an Anthropic key. Cursor costs less if you want Tab completions and its own cheaper models; Cline costs less if you code lightly or route work to open models.
Most pages ranking for this comparison stop at "free versus $20" and then quote model prices that are two generations old. Both tools publish their current rates, and once you line them up the decision gets much more concrete.
How much does Cline cost compared to Cursor?
Cline costs nothing to install and nothing per seat for individuals; you pay only for inference. Cursor costs $20 a month for Pro, $60 for Pro Plus and $200 for Ultra, and each plan includes model usage. On Teams, Cursor is $40 a user for a standard seat and $120 for premium, while Cline's team offering is an Enterprise plan quoted on request.
| Cline | Cursor | |
|---|---|---|
| Software | Open source, free for individuals | Proprietary editor |
| Individual plans | None required; optional ClinePass at $9.99 a month for open models | Pro $20, Pro Plus $60, Ultra $200 |
| How model usage is paid | Your own API key, Cline credits at cost, ClinePass, or a Claude subscription | Two included pools, then on-demand usage at the same API rates |
| Claude Sonnet 5, per million tokens | $2 in, $10 out on an Anthropic key | $2 in, $10 out from the Other Models pool |
| Tab completions | Not part of Cline's pricing | Unlimited on Pro, Pro Plus and Ultra |
| Team plan | Enterprise, custom quote, your own inference | Teams $40 standard or $120 premium per user |
What does Cursor's $20 actually buy?
Cursor's $20 buys three things Cline does not sell: unlimited Tab completions, a separate pool with "significantly more included usage" for Cursor's own models (Composer 2.5, Grok 4.6 and Grok 4.5), and an included pool for third-party models such as Claude and GPT, charged against it at each model's API price. It also includes Bugbot and Cloud Agents.
The Cursor Models pool is the part people miss. Composer 2.5 lists at $0.50 per million input tokens and $2.50 per million output, a quarter of Sonnet 5's output rate, and Cursor gives it a much bigger allowance than third-party models. If you let Cursor's own models do the everyday work, the $20 stretches a long way. If you pin every request to Claude, you are mostly paying Anthropic's rate through Cursor, and the included pool runs down at the same speed a Cline token bill would grow.
Cursor is unusually candid about where people land. Its own pricing documentation says daily Tab users and limited Agent users usually stay within included usage, daily Agent users typically reach $60 to $100 a month in total, and power users running multiple agents often pass $200. Past the included amount you either add on-demand usage at the same API rates or move up a tier. Our Cursor pricing breakdown goes through each tier in more detail.
Is Cline cheaper than Cursor?
Cline is cheaper than Cursor in two situations and more expensive in a third. It is cheaper if you use an AI agent only a few days a month, because you pay for those days and nothing else. It is cheaper if you are willing to run open models. It is usually more expensive for a daily agent user who would otherwise lean on Cursor's own included models.
The open-model route is Cline's strongest cost argument. ClinePass is $9.99 a month for two to five times the usage of standard API rates on models such as GLM-5.3, Kimi K2.7 Code, DeepSeek V4 and Qwen3.8 Max, and on your own key DeepSeek V4 Flash lists at $0.44 in and $1.32 out per million tokens at peak. That is well under Composer 2.5's output rate. Whether the output quality holds up on your codebase is the part only a week of real tickets will answer.
For a developer who wants Claude specifically, though, there is no token discount to be had in either tool. Anthropic's own documentation puts Claude Code at around $13 per developer per active day on API rates, and the same tokens routed through Cline cost the same. Twenty working days at that average is about $260, which lands a Claude-heavy Cline user in the same place as a Cursor user on Pro Plus or on-demand usage. At that volume the cheaper move is often a Claude subscription, which we worked through in Cline vs Claude Code pricing, where the break-even is roughly eight active days a month for Max 5x.
Is Cline better than Cursor?
Cline is better if you want to stay in your existing VS Code setup, pick any model including local ones, and approve each file edit and terminal command before it runs. Cursor is better if you want fast inline completions, an editor built around the agent, and background Cloud Agents and Bugbot reviews included in the plan price.
The working styles differ more than the feature lists suggest. Cline evaluates approvals per tool call, and Auto Approve lets you pass routine categories while keeping prompts on risky commands, so you watch the work as it happens. Cursor leans toward letting the agent run and reviewing the result, with the completion engine filling in the gaps as you type. Neither is wrong; they suit different temperaments.
Cline vs Cursor for teams: which costs less?
For a team, Cursor is the predictable one and Cline is the flexible one. Ten developers on Cursor Teams cost $400 a month on standard seats or $1,200 on premium, each seat with its own included Agent limits, plus SSO, central billing, usage analytics and privacy mode enforcement. Cline Enterprise has no published price; it adds SSO, role-based access, provider restrictions, a team dashboard, authentication logs and OpenTelemetry export, and inference runs on a contract you already hold with AWS, Google, Microsoft, Anthropic or OpenAI.
That makes Cline Enterprise attractive to a platform team that already negotiated Bedrock or Vertex rates and wants every developer's usage to flow through them. It also means the bill is metered, and the governance work of watching it sits with you. Where developers bring personal keys instead, finance tends to end up reconciling a monthly stream of provider receipts on expense reports, and teams that already pull receipt data straight into a spreadsheet have an easier time of it than teams keying them in by hand.
Which should you buy?
- You type all day and want completions: Cursor Pro at $20. Nothing in Cline replaces unlimited Tab.
- You use an agent a few days a month: Cline on pay-as-you-go. You pay only for the days you use it.
- You want cheap models for routine work: Cline with ClinePass at $9.99, keeping a Claude key for the hard tasks.
- You run Claude agents every day: neither tool saves you money on Claude tokens. Price a Claude Max plan against your monthly token spend first.
- You manage a team and want one predictable line: Cursor Teams, unless you already have an inference contract you are obliged to use, in which case Cline Enterprise.
There is a third option if what you want from either tool is finished changes rather than faster typing. Agentcode takes a described task on a GitHub or GitLab repository, runs your tests and opens a pull request for review, at $29 a month billed yearly with no API key and no usage meter. The honest trade-offs against Cline are on our Agentcode vs Cline page, and the ones against Cursor are on Agentcode vs Cursor.
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