AI Tutorials
AI Coding Agent
Cline

Cline: Best Agentic Coding Agent for VS Code

Cline is the most autonomous free agent I’ve used. Install the VS Code extension, configure a BYOK provider, give it a task, and watch it work. It reads files, writes code, runs terminal commands, handles errors, and iterates — often without prompting you between steps.

The tradeoff is cost visibility. Because it’s aggressive about tool use, a single Cline session on Claude Sonnet can easily cost $5-10. Pair it with a cheaper model for routine work. Gemini 2.5 Flash and GPT-5 Mini both do surprisingly well at a fraction of the price.

Best for: Developers who want “press go and walk away” behavior without leaving VS Code.

Key Features

  • Plan/Act separation: Cline shows you the plan before executing. You approve, modify, or reject it before any file changes happen.
  • Terminal access: Runs npm run test, git commit, build scripts, and arbitrary shell commands as part of task execution
  • File creation and editing: Creates new files, modifies existing ones, and removes what’s no longer needed
  • Browser automation: Controls a headless browser to test web UIs as part of an agentic task
  • Multi-model support: Claude Sonnet 4.6, GPT-4o, Gemini 2.5 Pro, or any local model via Ollama
  • MCP integration: Marketplace-backed connectors to databases, APIs, design tools, and dev services
  • Real-time cost monitoring: Tracks token usage so agentic runs don’t generate unexpected bills

Pros

  • Plan/Act oversight is the right abstraction: AI does the work, you stay in control at each decision point
  • MCP ecosystem makes it possible to build agents that understand your actual stack, not just your current file
  • The community is large enough that most integration questions are already answered on Discord or GitHub
  • Works with local models via Ollama for fully private, offline use

Cons

  • Best fit is still editor-first workflows. Terminal purists may prefer Aider or OpenCode.
  • Agentic runs consume API tokens faster than completion-only tools. Budget accordingly.
  • Vague task descriptions produce worse results. Precision in prompts matters more here than with completion tools.
  • Not optimized for lightweight inline completions. Pair it with Continue for that.

License and Hosting

  • License: Apache-2.0. No commercial restrictions.
  • Self-hosting: Local models via Ollama run entirely on your machine. Cloud APIs (Anthropic, OpenAI) send code to the provider’s servers.
  • Install: VS Code Extension Marketplace. Search “Cline”.

Best For

Developers doing feature-level work in VS Code who want AI that handles the full task, not just the next line. If you currently write a feature from a ticket description, Cline changes that into: describe task, review plan, approve, iterate on review.

Skip Cline if you’re outside VS Code, prefer pure autocomplete, or want to delegate tasks entirely without approval at each step.

List of free AI models supported by Cline

Based on the OpenRouter configuration file stored in Cline C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Code\User\globalStorage\saoudrizwan.claude-dev\cache\openrouter_models.json the following completely free models (input value = 0 and output value = 0) are supported:

🤖 Free models (input & output = 0)

Model ID Model Name Context
inclusionai/ling-3.0-flash:free Ling-3.0-flash (free) 262K
poolside/laguna-s-2.1:free Poolside: Laguna S 2.1 (free) 262K
poolside/laguna-xs-2.1:free Poolside: Laguna XS 2.1 (free) 262K
cohere/north-mini-code:free Cohere: North Mini Code (free) 256K
google/gemma-4-31b-it:free Google: Gemma 4 31B (free) 262K
google/gemma-4-26b-a4b-it:free Google: Gemma 4 26B A4B (free) 262K
nvidia/nemotron-3-ultra-550b-a55b:free NVIDIA: Nemotron 3 Ultra (free) 1M
nvidia/nemotron-3-super-120b-a12b:free NVIDIA: Nemotron 3 Super (free) 262K
nvidia/nemotron-3-nano-30b-a3b:free NVIDIA: Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B (free) 256K
nvidia/nemotron-3-nano-omni-30b-a3b-reasoning:free NVIDIA: Nemotron 3 Nano Omni (free) 256K
nvidia/nemotron-nano-12b-v2-vl:free NVIDIA: Nemotron Nano 12B 2 VL (free) 128K
nvidia/nemotron-nano-9b-v2:free NVIDIA: Nemotron Nano 9B V2 (free) 128K
nvidia/nemotron-3.5-content-safety:free NVIDIA: Nemotron 3.5 Content Safety (free) 128K
openai/gpt-oss-20b:free OpenAI: gpt-oss-20b (free) 131K

💡 Recommendations for programming

The best free models for coding tasks among those listed above are:

  1. NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra (free) — 550B, large context, strong reasoning
  2. NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super (free) — 120B, optimized for multi-agent programming
  3. Cohere North Mini Code (free) — specialized for coding agents
  4. Poolside Laguna S 2.1 (free) — coding agent model
  5. OpenAI gpt-oss-20b (free) — open-weighted OpenAI programming

You can use openrouter/free to automatically select the best free model for each task.

🌐 Free router

  • openrouter/free — Free Models Router: Automatically select a free model randomly from OpenRouter’s list of free models (200K context).

⚠️ Important Note

  • google/lyria-3-pro-preview và google/lyria-3-clip-preview: Input/output pricing is 0, but it’s a music creation model (Lyria 3), charged per song/clip ($0.08/song, $0.04/clip), and not shared across all code.
  • deepseek/deepseek-chat: Input cost = 0 but output = $1.0287 — not entirely free.
OpenCode