Agentic Index
Cline vs Kilo Code (2026)
Kilo Code began as a fork of Cline and Roo Code, so this is a family comparison. That verdict is the Agentic Index coverage score, graded from each vendor's own published materials.
Cline is the widely adopted original: free, transparent, bring your own key, with per action approvals. Kilo adds an Orchestrator that routes subtasks to specialist modes, more than 500 models at zero markup, a Memory Bank for persistent context, and an optional cloud agent near 55 dollars a month.
On the Agentic Index coding agent ranking, neither Cline nor Kilo Code clears the bar, which asks for all five merge loop capabilities documented in full. Cline does not document knowledge grounding and RAG in full, nor testing, debugging and optimization; Kilo Code does not document testing, debugging and optimization in full, nor observability and auditability. 2 of the 65 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. Cline and Kilo Code 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 956 researched vendors. No vendor pays for placement and no vendor has reviewed this page. How this evidence is graded
Choose Cline if
- You want the larger community, longer track record, and the plainest control model.
- Air gapped and local model deployments are proven paths.
- Simplicity: one agent, explicit approvals, no orchestration layers to learn.
Choose Kilo Code if
- Orchestrator mode fits complex tasks, splitting planning, coding, and debugging across specialist modes.
- Memory Bank persistence stops the agent forgetting your architecture between sessions.
- Zero markup on more than 500 models plus mid task switching optimizes cost per step.
| At a glance | Cline | Kilo Code |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Coding agent | Coding agent |
| Entry price | Free and open source; model usage at cost or on your own key | Free and open source · Teams $15/user/mo · Enterprise custom · inference at provider rates, BYOK, or Kilo Pass from $19/mo |
| Free / trial | Free (OSS self-host) | Free and open source for individuals (VS Code, JetBrains and CLI); free models, local models and BYOK need no Kilo inference plan; 14 day Enterprise trial for teams. |
| Pricing confidence | public exact | public exact |
| Feature | C Cline |
K Kilo Code |
|---|---|---|
| Action & orchestration | ||
|
Integrations & Tool Calling Ability to connect agents to real systems through native integrations, OAuth-authenticated actions, custom tools, APIs, webhooks, or MCP-compatible tools. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
|
Workflow Orchestration Ability to sequence, branch, retry, route, and combine deterministic workflow nodes with autonomous agent steps. |
Full / Explicit |
Full / Explicit
Specialized agents delegate to subagents natively, running concurrently across separate git worktrees with inline diff review, with an Agent Manager and task lists for complex work. |
|
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. |
Full / Explicit
The CLI runs agents on cron schedules, headlessly in CI and from Slack, Discord, Telegram and Linear, so work reaches the agent without a person starting it. |
Full / Explicit |
| Knowledge & context | ||
|
Knowledge Grounding & RAG Ability to ground agent behavior in company data through document ingestion, retrieval, external knowledge APIs, semantic search, or RAG layers. |
Partial |
Full / Explicit
Codebase Indexing embeds the project into a vector database behind a semantic_search tool, with AGENTS.md and context mentions adding instructions and files. |
|
Memory & State Persistence Ability to persist context across a run, conversation, workflow, user, team, or longer-term memory layer. |
Partial |
Full / Explicit
Kilo Memory saves project facts, corrections and session digests automatically and loads them in later sessions, with forget, purge and inspect controls. |
| Control & trust | ||
|
Human Oversight & Guardrails Approval steps, consent checkpoints, escalation rules, structured guardrails, policy constraints, and pause/resume controls. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
|
Security, Identity & Governance RBAC, SSO, auditability, encryption, least-privilege tool access, compliance posture, and data handling policy. |
Partial
Enterprise adds SSO, Member, Admin and Owner roles, provider limits, MCP controls and authentication logs, but no SOC 2 or other attestation is named. |
Full / Explicit
Enterprise SSO with OIDC and SCIM, roles and audit logs; trust.kilo.ai lists parent Anaconda's SOC 2 Type 2 reports, with Kilo's place in their scope not stated. |
|
Observability & Auditability Traces, logs, execution histories, metrics, audit events, and debugging detail for production agent behavior. |
Full / Explicit
OpenTelemetry export sends per action events, including tool use, MCP calls, terminal executions and accepted or rejected edits, to the customer's Datadog, Grafana or Splunk. |
Partial
An organization dashboard, in editor visibility, inline diffs and checkpoints, but no retained per action trace or exportable audit log of agent actions has been found. |
|
Deployment & Data Residency Deployment modes and options, including SaaS, dedicated cloud, VPC, on-prem, hybrid, local runtime, and self-hosting. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
| Solution readiness | ||
|
Prebuilt Agents, Templates & Packs Ready-made workflows, packaged employees, templates, blueprints, industry solutions, and role-specific agents that reduce time-to-value. |
Full / Explicit
An MCP Marketplace ships as a catalog of servers installable in one click, alongside modular Skills for specific tasks. |
Full / Explicit
Skills ship as sharable packages of expertise and workflows, alongside the shipped Code, Ask, Plan and Debug agents, custom agents in .kilo/agents and an MCP marketplace. |
| Platform extensibility | ||
|
Model Flexibility & Routing Ability to work across multiple foundation models, route tasks to different models, or let buyers bring their own providers and keys. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
|
APIs, SDKs & MCP Extensibility Composability layer: stable APIs, SDKs, MCP tool consumption/serving, custom tools, and integration into internal systems. |
Full / Explicit |
Full / Explicit
Plugins get the @kilocode/sdk client for the local Kilo server, with lifecycle hooks and workspace adaptors, and MCP servers, skills and custom agents extend Kilo further. |
|
Testing, Debugging & Optimization Testing, debugging, scoring, retries, fallbacks, quality gates, and optimization loops for improving agent workflows before and after deployment. |
Partial
The agent runs tests, makes linter aware fixes and checks UI work in a real browser, but no harness to evaluate or regression test agent behavior is documented. |
Partial
The Debug agent, Code Reviewer and Security Agent work on the customer's code; no harness evaluates the agent's own behavior. |
| Specialist automation | ||
|
Browser & Computer Use Browser, desktop, or remote/local computer control for workflows that cannot be handled through stable APIs alone. |
Full / Explicit
A browser action tool drives a Chromium browser the agent navigates, clicks, types and scrolls in, and remote browser support reuses an existing Chrome session's logins. |
Full / Explicit
Browser Use is a core documented capability alongside terminal control, and the cloud agent can drive the browser headlessly. |
Pricing snapshot
Sourced from the Index pricing dataset · open each vendor's profile for full detail.
| Pricing | C Cline |
K Kilo Code |
|---|---|---|
|
Entry price Lowest public entry point |
Free and open source; model usage at cost or on your own key | Free and open source · Teams $15/user/mo · Enterprise custom · inference at provider rates, BYOK, or Kilo Pass from $19/mo |
|
Pricing confidence How public the numbers are |
Public, exact | Public, exact |
|
Billing Primary billing axis |
usage | Free and open source to install and use, with model usage billed by consumption. You bring your own key and pay the model provider directly at zero markup, or route through the Kilo Gateway and pay published provider rates, and the optional KiloClaw always on cloud agent is a flat monthly subscription with inference billed separately. |
|
Variable cost Workload / overage exposure |
Medium variable cost | High variable cost |
|
Free tier / trial Try before you buy |
Free tier
|
Free tierTrial
|
|
Buying motion Self-serve vs sales call |
Self-serve | Self-serve |
Kilo Code began as a fork of Cline and Roo Code and is now developed independently by Kilo-Org.
More comparisons with Cline or Kilo Code
Other matchups in coding agents
Not the pairing you were after? These compare a different set of coding agents on the same 14 capabilities.