head to head · open source
pi vs Cline
pi has 106,586 GitHub stars, 13,437 forks, 202 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Cline has 68,517 stars, 7,409 forks, 1,288 open issues and last shipped yesterday. pi leads on adoption by 56% (106,586 vs 68,517 stars). pi is written in TypeScript under MIT; Cline is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. pi has attracted 13% 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.
← all 8884 open source comparisons
Side by side
| pi | Cline | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 107K | ★ 69K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 13K | ⑂ 7.4K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick pi if
- You weight community size — 107K 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 pi
Pi is a modular agent toolkit written in TypeScript for building and running terminal based AI coding agents. It lives in the developer tooling ecosystem and provides composable packages for LLM integration, agent orchestration, and terminal UI rendering. The project centers on @earendil works/pi coding agent , an interactive CLI agent, supported by core runtime, AI abstraction, and TUI libraries.
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 →
More in Developer Tools
Related comparisons
More AI Assisted Coding projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the AI Assisted Coding field.
Frequently asked questions
Is pi or Cline more popular?
pi has 106,586 GitHub stars and Cline has 68,517. pi has the larger community by that measure.
Are pi and Cline free?
Both are open source. pi is licensed under MIT and Cline under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between pi and Cline?
pi 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, pi or Cline?
Choose pi if you want the larger community (106,586 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Cline if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.