Agentic Index
Augment Code vs Cline (2026)
Augment Code last verified ·Cline last verified
Augment Code and Cline both coordinate multiple coding agents, and one is free. That verdict is the Agentic Index coverage score, graded from each vendor's own published materials.
Cline is an open source VS Code agent with first class MCP support, multi agent team coordination, persistent team state, model portability and a confirmed action safety model. Augment's Cosmos adds specialized agent teams coordinating across the development lifecycle with shared memory and MCP and webhook integrations, from $20 a month flat on Standard with $20 of usage included. Cline costs nothing beyond model usage, paid at cost or on your own key.
On the Agentic Index coding agent ranking, neither Augment Code nor Cline clears the bar, which asks for all five merge loop capabilities documented in full. Augment Code does not document testing, debugging and optimization in full; Cline does not document knowledge grounding and RAG in full, nor testing, debugging and optimization. 3 of the 96 vendors in the lane clear it. See the coding agent ranking
This comparison is published by Agentic Index, an independent agentic AI vendor research platform. Augment Code and Cline are each graded against the same 14 capability Agentic Index taxonomy, from the vendor's own public materials under the Agentic Index verification standard, alongside 1,084 researched vendors. No vendor pays for placement and no vendor has reviewed this page. How this evidence is graded
Choose Augment Code if
- Agent teams working across the lifecycle, beyond the editor, are what you are paying for.
- Webhook integrations mean agents react to events in your systems.
- A commercial vendor with support is what your organization requires.
Choose Cline if
- Free and open source under Apache 2.0, with Plan and Act modes and approval for each action, is hard to argue against.
- Model portability keeps you independent of any provider's pricing decisions.
- A confirmed action safety model is the default control your team wants.
| Feature | A Augment Code |
C Cline |
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| Action & orchestration | ||
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Integrations & Tool Calling Ability to connect agents to real systems through native integrations, OAuth-authenticated actions, custom tools, APIs, webhooks, or MCP-compatible tools. |
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Augment CodeIntegrations & Tool Calling Cosmos connects GitHub and GitHub Enterprise Server, GitLab cloud and self hosted, Azure DevOps, Jira, Linear, Slack, Microsoft Teams, ClickUp, Datadog and PagerDuty, plus any server from its MCP registry, and Experts and the Auggie CLI call external tools through MCP servers and native tools. Tool permissions allow, deny or delegate each tool call to a webhook or script policy, and a Slack mention of @Augment starts an Expert session that posts back in thread. Sourcedocs.augmentcode.com/cosmos/config-mcp, cosmos/connectors/config-slack and cli/permissionsread 2026-10-28 |
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ClineIntegrations & Tool Calling The agent runs terminal commands and reacts to their output, calls MCP servers the developer adds, drives a Chromium browser, and connects to Slack, Discord, Telegram and Linear for conversation and to GitHub Actions and GitLab for headless runs. It works in VS Code and editors built on it, JetBrains, the CLI, the Cline Desktop app in beta, and Cline Cloud from the browser. Sourcecline.bot, cline.bot/desktop, cline.bot/cloud and docs.cline.bot (MCP overview)read 2026-10-22 |
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Workflow Orchestration Ability to sequence, branch, retry, route, and combine deterministic workflow nodes with autonomous agent steps. |
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Augment CodeWorkflow Orchestration Cosmos runs multiple Experts side by side in the cloud, each in its own session. An Expert launches workers as separate parallel sessions and subagents, the docs state that no Expert launches another and that the pull request is the medium Experts hand work through, and a Ticket Dispatcher runs on a schedule and dispatches PR Author for tickets that are safe to attempt. The Project Builder turns a large feature into a design, a ticket breakdown and coordinated implementation, and the Auggie CLI runs subagents in parallel. Sourcedocs.augmentcode.com/cosmos/workers-subagents, cosmos/experts-ticket-dispatcher, cosmos/experts-templates and cli/subagentsread 2026-10-28 |
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ClineWorkflow Orchestration Multi agent teams let coordinator agents delegate to specialist agents with their own tools, agent teams coordinate from the CLI, and a Kanban board runs several coding agents in parallel in isolated git worktrees. Sourcecline.bot and docs.cline.bot (Kanban, agent teams)read 2026-09-29 |
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Triggers & Channel Coverage How agents wake up and where they work: schedules, webhooks, message events, CRM events, inbox events, chat, email, voice, and collaboration tools. |
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Augment CodeTriggers & Channel Coverage Cosmos triggers turn events into Expert sessions: GitHub issues, issue comments, pull requests, pushes, check suites and workflow runs, Linear status changes, Slack mentions, GitLab and PagerDuty events, cron schedules and custom webhooks, each filtered with JSONLogic and capped at a runs per minute limit. When a trigger fires, Cosmos opens a session in a sandboxed VM and drops the raw event payload in as the first message, running as a service account identity if configured. The Cloud Agents page says a ticket, pull request or alert can start an agent. Sourcedocs.augmentcode.com/cosmos/config-triggers, cosmos/getting-started and augmentcode.com/product/cloud-agentsread 2026-10-28 |
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ClineTriggers & Channel Coverage The CLI runs agents on cron schedules through its hub, unattended and persisting across restarts, and Cline Desktop runs scheduled tasks too. Agents also run headlessly in CI, answer from Slack, Discord, Telegram and Linear, and take tasks started from the browser or a phone in Cline Cloud. Sourcedocs.cline.bot/cli/scheduling, docs.cline.bot/usage/cline-desktop, cline.bot/cloud and cline.botread 2026-10-22 |
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| Knowledge & context | ||
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Knowledge Grounding & RAG Ability to ground agent behavior in company data through document ingestion, retrieval, external knowledge APIs, semantic search, or RAG layers. |
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Augment CodeKnowledge Grounding & RAG The Context Engine is described as a live map of the entire codebase, always current, that semantically indexes code across hundreds of thousands of files and retrieves curated context from dependencies, documentation, recent changes, commit history and issues. It is served to Augment's own agents and to other agents through an MCP server in local or hosted mode and a Context Engine SDK, and the open source Context Connectors index incrementally. Sourceaugmentcode.com/context-engine, docs.augmentcode.com/context-services/mcp/overview and context-services/context-connectors/how-it-worksread 2026-10-28 |
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ClineKnowledge Grounding & RAG The agent reads the project as it works, with .clinerules for standards, @git and @terminal mentions and MCP servers for outside sources. Cline says it avoids indexing the customer's code, so context is assembled for each run and there is no persistent index, graph or embeddings layer. Sourcedocs.cline.bot enterprise overview and cline.botread 2026-09-29 |
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Memory & State Persistence Ability to persist context across a run, conversation, workflow, user, team, or longer-term memory layer. |
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Augment CodeMemory & State Persistence Experts capture their own memory and store it as readable Markdown in the organization's shared virtual filesystem, scoped per repository, global, channel, project or user, and load it at the start of relevant work. A noisy memory model promotes a learning only once evidence is sufficient. Augment does not say how long Expert memory lasts, when it expires or how to purge it. Sourcedocs.augmentcode.com/cosmos/experts-memory and experts-code-review-memoryread 2026-10-28 |
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ClineMemory & State Persistence Checkpoints capture workspace state during a task for rollback, and the Memory Bank is a method the user sets up through custom instructions, with Cline updating markdown files it reads across sessions. The Memory Bank is not built into the product and has no stated lifetime or purge path, and rules and mode preferences are instructions and settings. Sourcedocs.cline.bot memory bank and checkpointsread 2026-09-29 |
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| Control & trust | ||
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Human Oversight & Guardrails Approval steps, consent checkpoints, escalation rules, structured guardrails, policy constraints, and pause/resume controls. |
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Augment CodeHuman Oversight & Guardrails In Cosmos an Expert brings back a pull request, a review or a finding for a person to approve, and nothing merges without a human at the checkpoint. PR Author opens a draft that stays unpublished until a person marks it ready, work that needs a specification waits for explicit human approval of the spec, the Risk Analyzer auto approves only low risk changes, and Pair Reviewer and checkpoints sit beside them. The IDE agent pauses before terminal commands and external actions unless Agent Auto mode is on, and CLI tool permissions allow, deny, ask the user or delegate calls to a webhook or script policy. Sourcedocs.augmentcode.com/cosmos/software-factory/ticket-to-pr, augmentcode.com/product/cloud-agents, docs/using-augment/agent and cli/permissionsread 2026-10-28 |
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ClineHuman Oversight & Guardrails Plan mode aligns on a strategy before execution, and in Act mode the developer approves every step by default, with auto approve an opt in that can be scoped per action type, plus diffs, checkpoints and one click undo. Sourcecline.bot and docs.cline.bot (plan and act, auto approve)read 2026-09-29 |
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Security, Identity & Governance RBAC, SSO, auditability, encryption, least-privilege tool access, compliance posture, and data handling policy. |
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Augment CodeSecurity, Identity & Governance Augment holds SOC 2 Type II attestation and ISO/IEC 42001 certification, does not train on customer code, and offers customer managed encryption keys. Enterprise adds SSO and OIDC with granular access controls and audit trails, the Cosmos page lists RBAC, and service accounts act as non human identities with their own tokens. SCIM is listed on the Enterprise plan while the Cosmos admin checklist says it will roll out soon. The trust center at trust.augmentcode.com renders only client side. Sourceaugmentcode.com/security, augmentcode.com/pricing, augmentcode.com/product/cosmos and docs.augmentcode.com/cosmos/guides/admin-checklistread 2026-10-28 |
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ClineSecurity, Identity & Governance Enterprise adds SSO with OIDC, SCIM provisioning, role based access control with Member, Admin and Owner roles, remote configuration, limits on inference providers, MCP controls, and authentication and audit logs, and the client side architecture keeps code in the customer's environment. Cline does not name a SOC 2 report or any other attestation. Sourcedocs.cline.bot enterprise overview, cline.bot/enterprise and cline.bot/pricingread 2026-10-22 |
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Observability & Auditability Traces, logs, execution histories, metrics, audit events, and debugging detail for production agent behavior. |
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Augment CodeObservability & Auditability Each Cosmos session records every message, agent turn and tool call, is kept without expiry and can be reopened, shared across the organization or restricted. Automations show a Run History tab and an Event Log with the worker tree visible per session, an Analytics API reports usage, and the Cosmos page lists audit logs that feed a SIEM and replayable runs, though the docs' audit logs section is still an empty placeholder. Sourcedocs.augmentcode.com/cosmos/sessions-overview, cosmos/manage-automations, analytics/overview and augmentcode.com/product/cosmosread 2026-10-28 |
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ClineObservability & Auditability OpenTelemetry export sends per action events to the customer's Datadog, Grafana or Splunk. They include task.tool_used with tool name, success, duration and whether it was auto approved, MCP tool calls with server and status, terminal executions, and accepted and rejected edits, alongside task lifecycle and token events. Enterprise can also keep conversation history in the customer's own S3 or Cloudflare R2 bucket for audit. Sourcedocs.cline.bot/enterprise-solutions/monitoring/opentelemetry-events and prompt storageread 2026-10-22 |
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Deployment & Data Residency Deployment modes and options, including SaaS, dedicated cloud, VPC, on-prem, hybrid, local runtime, and self-hosting. |
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Augment CodeDeployment & Data Residency Cosmos sessions run in Augment hosted sandboxed VMs by default, or on a team's own machines through self hosted daemons. A self hosted Kubernetes option is in early access behind a feature flag and needs outbound access, EU tenants can set EU only inference, and Enterprise lists data residency options and multi region compute. The Cosmos product page names VPC, single tenant and on premises options, but the docs name no region list. Sourcedocs.augmentcode.com/cosmos/environments/daemons, cosmos/guides/self-hosted-k8s, augmentcode.com/product/cosmos and augmentcode.com/pricingread 2026-10-28 |
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ClineDeployment & Data Residency Enterprise runs in the customer's VPC, on premises or air gapped, and the client side architecture sends inference straight to the customer's own Bedrock, Vertex, Azure OpenAI or local models without passing through Cline's servers. The open source agent runs in the developer's editor, terminal or desktop app, Cline Desktop can run the agent on a remote machine over SSH, and Cline Cloud runs each session in its own cloud sandbox. Sourcecline.bot/enterprise, cline.bot/cloud and docs.cline.botread 2026-10-22 |
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| Solution readiness | ||
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Prebuilt Agents, Templates & Packs Ready-made workflows, packaged employees, templates, blueprints, industry solutions, and role-specific agents that reduce time-to-value. |
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Augment CodePrebuilt Agents, Templates & Packs Augment ships fourteen Template Experts, including PR Author, PR Fixer, Deep Reviewer, Pair Reviewer, Risk Analyzer, Verifier, Incident Investigator, Feedback Triager, Project Builder, Ticket Manager, Ticket Dispatcher and Data Analyst. Skills are defined at organization, user and project scope, and custom slash commands and published examples add reusable workflows. There is no marketplace. Sourcedocs.augmentcode.com/cosmos/experts-templates, cosmos/config-skills and cli/custom-commands-examplesread 2026-10-28 |
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ClinePrebuilt Agents, Templates & Packs An MCP Marketplace ships in the open source product as a catalog of servers installable in one click, and modular Skills package instruction sets for specific tasks. Sourcecline.bot/pricing and docs.cline.bot (skills, MCP overview)read 2026-09-29 |
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| Platform extensibility | ||
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Model Flexibility & Routing Ability to work across multiple foundation models, route tasks to different models, or let buyers bring their own providers and keys. |
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Augment CodeModel Flexibility & Routing The user chooses among models from Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, xAI, DeepSeek, Zhipu and Moonshot AI, with Prism routing as an option. In Cosmos the choice is made per Expert or per session, and in the Auggie CLI with /model or --model. Bring your own key is available to customers with enterprise agreements. Sourcedocs.augmentcode.com/models/available-models, cosmos/guides/admin-checklist and augmentcode.com/product/cosmosread 2026-10-28 |
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ClineModel Flexibility & Routing Cline works with every major provider on the customer's own key, including Claude, GPT, Gemini, local Ollama or LM Studio and any OpenAI compatible endpoint, with enterprise connections to Bedrock, Vertex and Azure OpenAI and admin limits on which providers teams may use. Sourcecline.bot and cline.bot/enterpriseread 2026-09-29 |
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APIs, SDKs & MCP Extensibility Composability layer: stable APIs, SDKs, MCP tool consumption/serving, custom tools, and integration into internal systems. |
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Augment CodeAPIs, SDKs & MCP Extensibility The Auggie SDK in TypeScript and Python builds custom integrations and agents on Auggie with typed and streaming output and custom tools, the CLI runs headless with --print and auggie cloud manages Cosmos Experts, environments and sessions with service account tokens and JSON output. The Context Engine ships an SDK with an API reference and its own MCP server, codebase-retrieval, in local stdio or hosted HTTP mode. Sourcedocs.augmentcode.com/cli/sdk, context-services/sdk/api-reference and context-services/mcp/overviewread 2026-10-28 |
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ClineAPIs, SDKs & MCP Extensibility The Cline SDK publishes TypeScript packages for embedding Cline's agent runtime in other applications, and the CLI runs headless for scripts and pipelines. Sourcedocs.cline.bot/sdk/overview and CLI overviewread 2026-09-29 |
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Testing, Debugging & Optimization Testing, debugging, scoring, retries, fallbacks, quality gates, and optimization loops for improving agent workflows before and after deployment. |
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Augment CodeTesting, Debugging & Optimization A Verifier Expert runs an end to end verification pass against a running environment and reports evidence backed findings, and Cosmos offers replayable runs. Both check the customer's code and the agent's output, and Augment offers no harness to evaluate or regression test agent behavior itself. Sourcedocs.augmentcode.com/cosmos/experts-verifier and augmentcode.com/product/cosmosread 2026-10-28 |
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ClineTesting, Debugging & Optimization The agent makes linter aware fixes, runs tests and checks UI work in a real browser, and checkpoints let a failed attempt be rolled back. These check the agent's own output, and Cline offers no harness to evaluate or regression test agent behavior. Sourcecline.bot and docs.cline.botread 2026-09-29 |
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| Specialist automation | ||
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Browser & Computer Use Browser, desktop, or remote/local computer control for workflows that cannot be handled through stable APIs alone. |
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Augment CodeBrowser & Computer Use Experts and the CLI work through the IDE, terminal, repositories, sandboxed VMs, CI and MCP connected tools. No first party page describes the agent driving a browser or operating software through a graphical interface; the MCP page names browser automation only as a category of server a customer can add. Sourceaugmentcode.com/product/cloud-agents, augmentcode.com/product/cosmos and docs.augmentcode.com/cosmos/config-mcpread 2026-10-28 |
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ClineBrowser & Computer Use A browser action tool drives a Chromium browser the agent navigates, clicks, types and scrolls in, reading a screenshot and console logs after each action, and remote browser support reuses an existing Chrome session's logins. Sourcedocs.cline.bot and cline.botread 2026-09-29 |
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Pricing snapshot
Sourced from the Index pricing dataset · open each vendor's profile for full detail.
| Pricing | A Augment Code |
C Cline |
|---|---|---|
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Entry price Lowest public entry point |
From $20 per month flat (Standard, up to 50 seats, $20 of usage included) | Free and open source. Model usage is paid at cost, on the developer's own key, or through ClinePass at $9.99 a month for a curated set of open models. |
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Pricing confidence How public the numbers are |
Public, partial | Public, exact |
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Billing Primary billing axis |
A flat monthly team plan with a dollar amount of usage included, plus metered LLM and compute usage beyond it. | Usage. The main cost is model inference, paid to the developer's own provider or bought as Cline inference credits at cost. ClinePass is an optional flat monthly subscription for a curated set of open models. |
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Variable cost Workload / overage exposure |
High variable cost | Medium variable cost |
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Free tier / trial Try before you buy |
No free tierTrial
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Free tier
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Buying motion Self-serve vs sales call |
Mixed | Self-serve |
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Pricing verified When this pricing was last checked |
Product updates
Newest first, each linked to its source.
Augment Code
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· Funding / partnership
Augment Code agreed to sell Cosmos, the Auggie CLI, the Code Context Engine and related technology to Harness, and the team behind those products is moving to Harness to keep developing them.
Source -
· Observability / auditability
Augment Code released Cosmos Week 30, introducing session forking to branch conversations from completed turns and cost analytics with detailed charts for enterprise organizations.
Source -
· Workflow orchestration
Augment Code released Auggie CLI 0.33.0, introducing cloud triggers to enable or disable persistent workflow triggers and a worker sessions view to display child worker processes.
Source
Cline
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· Workflow orchestration
Cline for VS Code v4.1.25 starts rolling out Cline Cloud sessions, which run a task in a hosted sandbox on a GitHub repository and branch the user picks.
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· Workflow orchestration
A local Cline agent session can now be handed to a cloud agent and back, through the shared cloud handoff added in SDK v0.0.87.
Source -
· Deployment / data residency
Cline Desktop v0.0.35 adds Linux support through x64 deb and rpm packages alongside its existing macOS and Windows builds.
Source
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