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.