Cline vs Goose

Pick two tools from the same category to compare side-by-side.

	Cline Open-source coding agent that runs as an IDE extension and CLI with bring-your-own-key model access.	Goose Open-source, on-machine AI agent created by Block, now hosted at the Linux Foundation's Agentic AI Foundation.
Category	harness	harness
Vendor type	hybrid	open source
Pricing	freemium	free
Strengths	+ Open source (Apache 2.0) with full BYOK model flexibility + Plan/Act split gives explicit human approval before execution + MCP support and .clinerules for repo-specific configuration + Runs in VS Code, JetBrains, Cursor, and as a CLI	+ Fully open source (Apache 2.0) under neutral Linux Foundation governance + MCP-native extension model with a large extension catalog + Desktop app, CLI, and API interfaces; runs entirely on your machine + Provider-agnostic, including local models via Ollama
Tradeoffs	− Token costs fall directly on the user and can run high with frontier models − Per-step approval workflow is slower than fully autonomous harnesses	− No hosted/cloud offering; users manage their own keys and token spend − Broader general-purpose focus means fewer coding-specific guardrails than dedicated coding harnesses
Used in stacks	0	0