Cline vs Copilot: open source agent vs GitHub's AI assistant

What is the difference between Cline and Copilot?

Cline is an open source AI coding agent you connect to the model provider of your choice; GitHub Copilot is GitHub's AI assistant, sold as a subscription, with inline completions, an agent in your IDE and a cloud agent that works on GitHub. Cline gives you more control over models and costs. Copilot gives you more surfaces and tight GitHub integration under one plan.

Both run in VS Code and JetBrains IDEs, both have a CLI, and both read AGENTS.md, load Agent Skills and connect to MCP servers. Everything below comes from the official docs as of 24 October 2026.

How does Cline work?

The Cline docs say "Cline is an AI coding agent that lives in your editor and your terminal." The repository is Apache 2.0 licensed and describes it as an "Autonomous coding agent as an SDK, IDE extension, or CLI assistant."

You can install it in several places, per the install docs:

• Extensions for VS Code, Cursor, Windsurf, VSCodium and Antigravity.
• A plugin for JetBrains IDEs.
• A desktop app for macOS and Windows (Windows in beta).
• A CLI that needs Node.js 20 or later.

npm install -g cline
cline auth
cline "add input validation to the signup form"

Cline's core workflow is two modes. In the Plan and Act docs, "Plan mode lets you explore and strategize without changing files," and Act mode edits files and runs commands with the plan in context. You can set a different model for each mode.

By default Cline asks before each action. Its auto-approve settings let you allow categories such as reading files, editing project files, running safe commands, using the browser and using MCP servers, and "Auto Approve is evaluated per tool call." Cline also saves checkpoints in a separate shadow Git repository, so you can undo code changes without losing the conversation.

How does GitHub Copilot work?

GitHub's docs say "GitHub Copilot is an AI assistant that helps you write, understand, and ship software." It "suggests code as you type, answers questions about a codebase, reviews your changes, and works on tasks you assign it."

Copilot spans more surfaces than most tools:

• IDEs: the feature matrix lists VS Code, Visual Studio, JetBrains, Eclipse, Xcode and Neovim. All six get code completion; all but Neovim also get agent mode and MCP.
• Copilot cloud agent: it "can research a repository, plan changes, and implement them in the background," running tests and linters in an ephemeral cloud environment. You start it from the agents panel, a conversation, or an issue or pull request on GitHub.com.
• Code review on pull requests.
• Copilot CLI, started with copilot, with -p for one-shot prompts.

npm install -g @github/copilot
copilot

Copilot offers models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, Moonshot AI and xAI, according to its supported models page.

How do Cline and Copilot compare side by side?

What does each one cost?

Cline. The extension and CLI are open source. You pay for model usage in one of three ways: bring your own key for a cloud provider or a local runtime, use Cline's pay-as-you-go usage billing, or subscribe to ClinePass, "a low-cost monthly subscription" at $9.99 a month as of October 2026. ClinePass covers a curated set of open coding models such as GLM-5.3, Kimi K3 and DeepSeek V4 Pro, and the docs say "You don't need ClinePass to use Cline."

Copilot. The plans page lists, as of October 2026:

• Copilot Free: free, with an allowance of AI credits. It includes Copilot CLI but not the cloud agent.
• Copilot Pro: $10 a month, 1,500 monthly AI credits.
• Copilot Pro+: $39 a month, 7,000 monthly AI credits.
• Copilot Max: $100 a month, 20,000 monthly AI credits.
• Copilot Business: $19 per seat a month. Copilot Enterprise: $39 per seat a month.

Verified students get Copilot Student at no cost.

The tradeoff: Cline's cost tracks the provider and model you pick, which can be very low with local models or very high with large frontier models. Copilot gives you a predictable monthly price with a credit allowance.

How do rules, skills and MCP compare?

Instructions. Cline's rules docs put workspace rules in .clinerules/ or .cline/rules/, keep global rules in ~/Documents/Cline/Rules, and say "Cline recognizes rules from multiple sources." It reads AGENTS.md, .cursorrules and .windsurfrules. Copilot's main file is .github/copilot-instructions.md, with path-specific files in .github/instructions/. Per GitHub's support table, AGENTS.md is read by Copilot Chat in VS Code, the cloud agent and Copilot CLI, but not by code review or JetBrains Copilot Chat. A shared AGENTS.md covers most of both tools. See Copilot custom instructions.

Skills. Both load SKILL.md folders. Cline's skills docs list .cline/skills/ (recommended), .clinerules/skills/ and .claude/skills/, plus ~/.cline/skills/ globally. GitHub's Agent Skills docs list .github/skills, .claude/skills or .agents/skills in a repo, and ~/.copilot/skills or ~/.agents/skills personally. The shared folder is .claude/skills/, which both tools read.

MCP. Cline supports MCP servers in its extensions and CLI; the CLI keeps them in ~/.cline/data/settings/cline_mcp_settings.json. Copilot supports MCP in agent mode in VS Code, Visual Studio, JetBrains, Eclipse and Xcode.

Which should you pick?

Pick on how you want to pay for models and how much you live on GitHub.

Cline tends to fit when:

• You want to choose and switch model providers yourself, including local models.
• You want an open source agent you can inspect and extend, with an SDK.
• You want Plan and Act modes and checkpoints you can roll back.
• You work in Cursor, Windsurf, VSCodium or Antigravity and want the same agent there.

Copilot tends to fit when:

• You want inline completions as you type in most major IDEs, including Visual Studio, Eclipse and Xcode.
• You want to assign issues to a cloud agent and get pull requests back on GitHub.com.
• You want code review on pull requests in the same subscription.
• Your organization buys tools through GitHub and wants per-seat plans.

Many developers use both: Copilot for completions and GitHub tasks, Cline for agent work on a model they pick. Keep AGENTS.md and .claude/skills/ as the shared layer and neither tool needs its own copy. For a related comparison, see Cursor vs Copilot or Claude Code vs Cline.

Keep your prompts and skills portable

Your prompts and skills shouldn't be locked inside one extension. Kipt keeps them as Markdown in a private GitHub repo you own, and installs every skill into Claude Code or Codex with one npx skills add command. If you have a prompt you keep pasting into Cline or Copilot Chat, the free SKILL.md generator turns it into a skill folder you can drop into .claude/skills/.