Bolt.new vs Cline
A side-by-side comparison of capabilities, autonomy, integrations, and pricing to help you choose.
Short answer: choose Bolt.new if you want prompt, edit, and deploy full-stack web apps in the browser (Supervised agent, freemium); choose Cline if you want open-source autonomous coding agent for vs code and jetbrains (Supervised agent, freemium).
| Bolt.new | Cline | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Prompt, edit, and deploy full-stack web apps in the browser | Open-source autonomous coding agent for VS Code and JetBrains |
| Type | agent | agent |
| Autonomy | Supervised agent | Supervised agent |
| Pricing | freemium · Free (1M tokens/mo); Pro from $25/mo | freemium · Free (open source); Teams reported at $20/mo |
| Best for | consumers, developers, smb | developers, mid-market, enterprise |
| Deployment | saas | self-hosted, saas |
| Modalities | text, code | text, code, browser |
| Models | claude, model-agnostic | model-agnostic |
| Protocols | rest-api | mcp, function-calling, rest-api |
| Integrations | Netlify, Supabase, GitHub, Expo | VS Code, JetBrains, Anthropic, OpenAI, Google Gemini, AWS Bedrock |
| Capabilities | 3 documented | 4 documented |
Bolt.new
- +Full dev environment runs in the browser via WebContainers, with the AI controlling filesystem, terminal, and server
- +Generates true full-stack apps (not just UI) and can deploy via Bolt Cloud
- +No local setup; fast for prototyping and iterating by chatting
- -Token-based usage cost can rise quickly on complex or long-running builds
- -Output needs human review and iteration; it is not a hands-off autonomous engineer
Cline
- +Open source (Apache-2.0) with no inference markup; bring your own model keys
- +Plan/Act mode plus per-step approval makes autonomy controllable
- +MCP support, browser control, and adoption reported at large enterprises
- -Auto-approve can run consequential commands; oversight still recommended
- -Costs scale with the model you bring; heavy agentic runs can get expensive
Which should you choose?
Bolt.new is prompt, edit, and deploy full-stack web apps in the browser, best for consumers, developers, smb. Cline is open-source autonomous coding agent for vs code and jetbrains, best for developers, mid-market, enterprise. The right choice depends on the autonomy level you want, your existing integrations, and your budget, all compared above.
This comparison is generated from the sourced Bolt.new and Cline profiles. Open either profile to review its evidence and last-reviewed date.