Cline vs OpenHands
Both are catalogued under Coding Agents. The figures come from the GitHub API; the assessments are ours.
ClineAutonomous coding agent living inside your editorOfficialApache-2.0
OpenHandsAutonomous software engineer running in a sandboxed containerOfficialMITAt a glance
| At a glance | Cline | OpenHands |
|---|---|---|
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Languages | TypeScript | Python, TypeScript |
| Deployment | Runs locally | Self-hosted / Runs locally / Managed cloud |
| Maturity | Established | Established |
| Stars | 66.2k | 84.1k |
| Star growth over the last 7 days | +5 ★ | +23 ★ |
| Forks | 7.1k | 10.9k |
| Open issues | 998 | 481 |
| Last commit | 15 Aug 2026 | 15 Aug 2026 |
| Activity | Active | Active |
What each one does
Cline
Runs in VS Code and asks for approval before each file write or terminal command, which keeps a human in the loop without breaking flow. MCP support lets it reach tools beyond the editor. The approval prompts are the safety mechanism — turning them all off removes the main reason to prefer it.
Full entry →OpenHands
Edits files, runs tests and browses documentation inside an isolated container, so a failed run cannot damage the host. Competitive on SWE-bench style benchmarks, but budget carefully before pointing it at a real repository — long autonomous runs consume a great deal of tokens and still need review before anything is merged.
Full entry →What you can do
Cline
- Plan first, then act — Plan mode explores the codebase and proposes a strategy before Act mode executes it, with every file edit and terminal command gated by approval and recorded as a reviewable diff with checkpoints to roll back.
- Run it headless in CI — git diff origin/main | cline "Review these changes for issues" pipes input straight in, and cline --json emits machine-readable events for jq to consume.
- Encode conventions in .clinerules — Coding standards, architecture rules and deployment procedures written into .clinerules files are picked up automatically by the CLI, VS Code extension and JetBrains plugin.
- Run many agents unattended — cline schedule create with --cron "0 9 * * MON-FRI" handles recurring jobs, and the Kanban board gives each task card its own git worktree with auto-commit.
- Reach external systems via MCP — cline mcp manages MCP server connections to databases and APIs, and createTool from @cline/sdk registers custom tools and lifecycle hooks in the same agent.
OpenHands
- Run the whole stack locally —
npm install -g @openhands/agent-canvasinstalls the launcher, and theagent-canvascommand starts the full local stack by default at localhost:8000, with--frontend-onlyand--backend-onlyto run the pieces separately. - Sandbox the agent in Docker — Running
ghcr.io/openhands/agent-canvaswith-v ${PROJECTS_PATH}:/projectsgives the agent access to any project underPROJECTS_PATH, while the npm and from-source launchers carry the README's warning that the agent server has full access to your filesystem. - Switch between agent backends — Agent Canvas talks to OpenHands Agent Servers over REST, one per host/port, so a shared server doing code review and dependency updates and a laptop-local agent sit in the same frontend and are added from the UI.
- Use agents other than OpenHands — Claude Code, Codex, Gemini or any Agent-Client Protocol (ACP) agent runs in the same canvas, and the LLM behind them is yours to choose.
- Automate recurring engineering chores — Paired with the Automation Server, agents run on a schedule or on webhook events — decomposing GitHub issues into tasks, or publishing generated reports to Slack — with integrations for Slack, GitHub, Linear and Notion.