Cline: what 35 developers actually say.
35 Hacker News opinions from 28 developers, Nov 2025 – Nov 2026. 30 come from people who say they use it. Here is what they praise, what they complain about, and who switched.
The case for Cline, in one paragraph.
Cline earns 73% approval across 35 opinions. Developers are divided on it.
Pick it if you
- Want to switch model providers mid-task
- Care about cost and usage limits
- Use VS Code and want an open-source extension
Look elsewhere if you
- Need reliable complex refactors and diff application
- Expect plan mode to block all edits
- Need fast responses or efficient token use
Where it wins and loses.
Mentions across 35 opinions. Bars are counts, not votes; a tool can be both praised and criticized on the same topic.
View data table
| Topic | Praise | Complaints | Mentions |
|---|
How opinion has moved.
Monthly approval, Dec 2025 – Oct 2026. Bars show opinion volume; low-volume months are still included but faded.
View data table
| Month | Approval | Opinions |
|---|---|---|
| Dec 2025 | 50% | 3 |
| Jan 2026 | 100% | 5 |
| Mar 2026 | 67% | 3 |
| Apr 2026 | 71% | 7 |
| May 2026 | 33% | 3 |
| Jul 2026 | 100% | 4 |
| Oct 2026 | 50% | 3 |
What developers say.
Summaries are paraphrased. Each links to the original Hacker News comment.
Praise
4 selectedRecommends Cline's pass subscription over Zai and OpenCode.
Switched from OpenCode to Cline and prefers its interface.
Uses Cline with VS Code and Mimo for big refactors and says it rarely makes mistakes.
Cline works fine out of the box for most cases, especially with a provider that has good KV caching.
Complaints
4 selectedCline's plan mode still made changes, which motivated building their own harness.
Claude-backed Cline made many errors on a Spring Boot 3-to-4 migration and could not fix its own mistakes.
Built an MCP server to address LLM mistakes they saw in Cline and Claude Code.
Tried Cline but couldn't get it working well, partly because it expected OpenAI's output format.
Questions developers ask.
Is Cline worth it?
Is Cline better than OpenCode?
Is Cline good for large refactors?
The data behind this page.
Cline has 73% approval across 35 opinions from 28 authors, and 30 of the opinions are firsthand. Cost and usage limits get the most consistent praise, at 6 positive to 1 negative and 4 positive to 0 negative. Reliability is the weak spot, with 3 positive and 5 negative comments about slow runs, plan mode still making edits, and loops on complex diffs. Monthly approval has swung widely: 100 in July, 75 in August, 100 in September, then 50 in October on 3 opinions.
Every number comes from public Hacker News comments collected through the HN Search API. A language model tagged each comment for sentiment, first-hand use, topic and switches; a human spot-checks samples. No vendor can pay for placement.
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