Cline vs Zed

Which one do AI engines recommend, and how do they differ on price, fit and features?

The short answer

Cline is the stronger AI pick in AI Coding Assistants: it has a visibility score of 5.3 versus 1 for Zed, and ranks ahead in 0% of the answers that name both.

Choose Cline if…

You want the brand AI engines rank higher (5.3 vs 1)
AI answers describe it more positively (54% vs 50% positive)
Usage-based pricing suits your budget better than per seat
Open-source with bring-your-own API key

Choose Zed if…

Per seat pricing suits your budget better than usage-based
Ideal for small teams already on GitHub
Works with VS Code and JetBrains

AI visibility side by side

Latest weekly run · Nov 3

Metric	Cline	Zed
Visibility score	5.3%	1%
Change vs last week	New	New
Rank in AI Coding Assistants	#16	#26
Share of voice	2.6%	0.4%
Mentions this run	13	2
Positive in AI answers	54%	50%

The stronger value in each row is marked with a ✓.

Visibility score trend

Weekly runs over the last 60 days

Cline 0pp · Zed 0pp over 0 weekly runs.

Engine by engine

Cline leads on 3 of 3 engines

ChatGPT

0.9%

AI Mode

4.6%

Perplexity

8.3%

ClineZed

Head to head in AI answers

1 engine answers name both brands

0Cline ranked higher

1Zed ranked higher

Prompt	Engine	Cline	Zed
Official website of the top AI coding assistant vendors	ChatGPT	#17	#16

Features, pricing & fit

Dimension	Cline	Zed
Pricing model	Usage-based	Per seat
Entry price	Contact sales	Free; paid from $10 per seat / mo
Free plan	Yes	Yes
Deployment	Runs in your editor, terminal or own apps, with local or cloud AI models, and VPC deployments on Enterprise.	Desktop editor on Windows, macOS and Linux, with remote development over SSH, WSL and dev containers. Users can run local Ollama models, and API keys for hosted providers are kept on the local machine.
Support	Community support for the open-source version, Priority and dedicated support on Enterprise, SLA on Enterprise	—
Founded	—	2021
Headquarters	San Francisco, CA, United States	Boulder, Colorado
Employees	11–50	11–50
Funding	Seed · $32M raised	Series B · $42M raised
Best for	Individual developers and teams who want an open-source agent with their own provider keys, and organizations that need SSO, audit logs and team management on Enterprise.	Developers who want a fast editor with AI optional, and teams that need org-level control over AI features and data sharing through the Business plan.