head to head · open source
Cline vs SWE-agent
Cline has 68,517 GitHub stars, 7,409 forks, 1,288 open issues and last shipped yesterday. SWE-agent has 20,344 stars, 2,224 forks, 102 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. Cline leads on adoption by 237% (68,517 vs 20,344 stars). Cline is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0; SWE-agent is written in Python under MIT. Cline has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, SWE-agent 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
| Cline | SWE-agent | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 69K | ★ 20K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 7.4K | ⑂ 2.2K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Cline if
- You weight community size — 69K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick SWE-agent if
- You want the SWE-agent feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and SWE-agent fits your workflow better
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 →
About SWE-agent
SWE agent is a Python, MIT licensed open source project in the AI assisted coding and agent ecosystem. It is an agent based model for developer tools that takes a GitHub issue and tries to automatically fix it using a chosen language model. The project is associated with NeurIPS 2024 and is maintained by researchers from Princeton University and Stanford University.
read the full SWE-agent 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 Cline or SWE-agent more popular?
Cline has 68,517 GitHub stars and SWE-agent has 20,344. Cline has the larger community by that measure.
Are Cline and SWE-agent free?
Both are open source. Cline is licensed under Apache-2.0 and SWE-agent under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Cline and SWE-agent?
Cline is written in TypeScript and SWE-agent in Python. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Cline or SWE-agent?
Choose Cline if you want the larger community (68,517 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose SWE-agent if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.