head to head · open source
caveman vs Cline
caveman has 108,615 GitHub stars, 6,296 forks, 155 open issues and last shipped today. Cline has 69,634 stars, 7,572 forks, 1,288 open issues and last shipped today. caveman leads on adoption by 56% (108,615 vs 69,634 stars). caveman is written in Go under Apache-2.0; Cline is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. caveman has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, Cline 11%. Cline was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| caveman | Cline | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 109K | ★ 70K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-10-01 | 2026-10-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.3K | ⑂ 7.6K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick caveman if
- You weight community size — 109K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Cline if
- You want the Cline feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and Cline fits your workflow better
About caveman
why use many token when few do trick Your AI coding agent bills by the word and writes like it knows that. Caveman make it stop. ▶️ ThePrimeagen reacts: "No way this actually works" 🏆 1 on GitHub Trending · July 2026 · 🥇 1 Repository of the Day on Trendshift · April 2026 1 on Hacker News · 904 points · 366 comments · 8 Product of the Day on Product Hunt 📄 Cited in CAVEWOMAN , an Adobe Research paper that measured caveman style output cutting cost 1.4 to 2.4×, up to 3× · 🧪 Tested by JetBrains on 86 real coding tasks: "costs you nothing measurable in quality" ⚡ One command, no account, no API key. npx skills…
read the full caveman overview →
About Cline
Cline is an open source AI coding agent that operates across multiple interfaces: as a CLI tool, desktop application, VS Code extension, JetBrains plugin, and SDK. It lives in the developer tooling ecosystem and is built with TypeScript under the Apache 2.0 license. The project solves the problem of fragmented AI assisted coding workflows by unifying agent capabilities—code generation, command execution, project wide edits, and human in the loop approval—into a single extensible engine that works consistently across environments.
read the full Cline overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is caveman or Cline more popular?
caveman has 108,615 GitHub stars and Cline has 69,634. caveman has the larger community by that measure.
Are caveman and Cline free?
Both are open source. caveman is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Cline under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between caveman and Cline?
caveman is written in Go and Cline in TypeScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, caveman or Cline?
Choose caveman if you want the larger community (108,615 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Cline if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.