Cline vs Windsurf (now Devin Desktop)

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.	Windsurf (now Devin Desktop) Agentic AI IDE acquired by Cognition in 2025 and rebranded Devin Desktop in June 2026.
Category	harness	harness
Vendor type	hybrid	commercial
Pricing	freemium	freemium
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	+ Full IDE experience with agent, tab completion, and multi-file edits integrated + Backed by Cognition's proprietary SWE coding models plus frontier model access + Free tier available; settings and extensions carried over from Windsurf
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	− Closed source and tied to Cognition's platform and credit quotas − 2025-2026 ownership changes and the Devin rebrand forced workflow migrations (e.g. Cascade deprecation)
Used in stacks	0	0