How has no one pointed out the business models are different and result in entirely different products and priorities?
Cursor charges $20/mo. So their whole business model revolves around using less than $20 worth of tokens and cheaper models.
With Cline, you pay for your own tokens and can choose whichever model you like (uses openrouter).
You can see the difference almost immediately - everything is better. Context management isn’t kneecapped, edits are comprehensive, cline reads every file that is relevant into the context, and the UX is intuitive.
I was personally blown away — I tell it to do something complex in an existing codebase, and Cline just… does it? And it asks me questions along the way to make sure it’s in alignment with my goals.
This is how AI copilots should feel to use. Cline is by far the best option I’ve tried so far.
Note: I will say though - your token usage WILL be high. I have easily spent over $20 in a single night coding with cline. That’s the entire monthly subscription cost of Cursor spent within an evening.
But it’s easily worth it. Hell, I’ll spend $100 in an hour on tokens if it makes me more productive.
Cursor charges $20/mo. So their whole business model revolves around using less than $20 worth of tokens and cheaper models.
With Cline, you pay for your own tokens and can choose whichever model you like (uses openrouter).
You can see the difference almost immediately - everything is better. Context management isn’t kneecapped, edits are comprehensive, cline reads every file that is relevant into the context, and the UX is intuitive.
I was personally blown away — I tell it to do something complex in an existing codebase, and Cline just… does it? And it asks me questions along the way to make sure it’s in alignment with my goals.
This is how AI copilots should feel to use. Cline is by far the best option I’ve tried so far.
Note: I will say though - your token usage WILL be high. I have easily spent over $20 in a single night coding with cline. That’s the entire monthly subscription cost of Cursor spent within an evening.
But it’s easily worth it. Hell, I’ll spend $100 in an hour on tokens if it makes me more productive.