head to head · open source
Orca vs Cline
Orca has 71,017 GitHub stars, 4,642 forks, 5,801 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Cline has 68,517 stars, 7,409 forks, 1,288 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Orca leads on adoption by 4% (71,017 vs 68,517 stars). Orca is written in TypeScript under MIT; Cline is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. Orca has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, Cline 11%. Orca 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
| Orca | Cline | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 71K | ★ 69K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.6K | ⑂ 7.4K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Orca if
- You weight community size — 71K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- 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 Orca
Orca is an agent desktop environment (ADE) that runs multiple AI coding agents in parallel, each in its own isolated git worktree. It unifies workflow, monitoring, and collaboration around AI assisted coding across desktop, mobile, and remote runtimes. Built for developers who rely on several AI coding tools simultaneously, Orca eliminates context switching by tracking all agents and their outputs in one place.
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 Orca or Cline more popular?
Orca has 71,017 GitHub stars and Cline has 68,517. Orca has the larger community by that measure.
Are Orca and Cline free?
Both are open source. Orca is licensed under MIT and Cline under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Orca and Cline?
Orca is written in TypeScript 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, Orca or Cline?
Choose Orca if you want the larger community (71,017 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Cline if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.