Every category where a model named Cline for a mid-market B2B company. Share is first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts; rank is within every product named in that category.

Category	Function	Share	Rank	Negative rate	Labels	Quadrant
AI coding assistants	Developer platform	4%	4 of 46	8%	12	accepted challenger

Movement

This is the first edition on this tier, so no move can be computed for Cline yet. From the next edition this section shows, per buyer segment, whether its share moved by more than the measured noise floor.

By model

How each model treated Cline across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Twelve models, six prompts per category.

Model	First choice	Alternative	Mention	Negative	Labels
Claude Haiku 4.5	0	1	1	0	2
GPT-5.4 mini	0	0	0	0	0
Gemini 3.5 Flash	1	1	0	0	2
Perplexity Sonar	0	1	0	0	1
Grok 4.1 Fast	0	1	0	0	1
Mistral Small	0	0	0	0	0
DeepSeek V4 Flash	0	1	1	1	3
Llama 4 Maverick	0	1	0	0	1
Qwen 3.7 Flash	0	1	0	0	1
Kimi K2	0	0	0	0	0
GLM 4.7 FlashX	1	0	0	0	1
MiniMax M2.5	0	0	0	0	0

By framing

Which of the six questions produced the naming. By model says how often; this says asked what. The first-choice count on the right carries the marks of the models that produced it.

FramingLabels by classFirst choices

Direct1 labelNone

Paraphrase0 labelsNone

Comparative4 labelsNone

Budget-constrained11 labels2

Scale-constrained0 labelsNone

Negative3 labelsNone

First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative19 labels in all, every segment counted; 2 of the 2 first choices count toward share, since the comparative and negative framings do not. The bar is one segment per label class, to scale within the framing.

What the models said for it

Verbatim evidence the judge attached to positive labels.

“Cline and OpenCode have emerged as the premier open-source, BYOK coding assistants for VS Code” Gemini 3.5 Flash · AI coding · budget prompt · first choice

“I'd recommend starting with Cline (or Aider) if you want an autonomous agent at zero cost” GLM 4.7 FlashX · AI coding · budget prompt · first choice

“If you want to use your own API keys and maintain total control over cost and model customization: Use Cline.” Gemini 3.5 Flash · AI coding · comparative prompt · alternative

“free, open-source tools — Aider, Cline, and opencode — where the software costs nothing” Claude Haiku 4.5 · AI coding · budget prompt · alternative

And against it

Verbatim evidence attached to negative labels. A warning on a product with few labels is a warning; on a product with many, it is one voice among them.

“Medium Caution (Use with awareness) ... direct terminal access” DeepSeek V4 Flash · AI coding · negative prompt · soft negative

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as Cline, over the 19 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Cline was named but was not.

ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head

GitHub Copilot19 of 198Not in the top three

Cursor13 of 194Not in the top three

Windsurf11 of 194Not in the top three

Aider9 of 190Not in the top three

Claude Code8 of 192Not in the top three

Tabnine7 of 193Not in the top three

Continue7 of 190Not in the top three

Amazon Q Developer5 of 190Not in the top three

Replit AI3 of 191Not in the top three

OpenAI Codex3 of 190Not in the top three

A head-to-head page exists where both products are in a category's top three. The other rows are the same fact without a page behind them, so they link to the product instead.

What carried it into the answer

The sites and pages cited by the answers that named Cline. A fact about retrieval, not a lever on the model.

Citations exist only for the models that return a source list, four of the twelve in this edition, so these counts come from 16 of the 19 answers that named Cline and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

tech-insider.org10

axify.io9

learn.g2.com8

memeburn.com8

ai-plaza.io5

dev.to5

sourcegraph.com5

zapier.com5

daily.dev4

pricepertoken.com4

Sixty-three of the sixty-three domain citations in answers naming Cline came from somebody else's page.

Pages cited

tech-insider.org/best-ai-coding-assistants-202610

axify.io/blog/the-best-ai-coding-assistants-a-full-comparison-of-20-tools9

learn.g2.com/best-ai-coding-assistants8

memeburn.com/best-ai-coding-tools8

ai-plaza.io/blog/2026-top-5-ai-coding-assistants-for-small-businesses-ranked-for-real-prod5

zapier.com/blog/ai-coding-tools5

pricepertoken.com/coding-assistants4

bsi.bund.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/EN/BSI/KI/ANSSI_BSI_AI_Coding_Assistants.pdf3

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

Is this your product?

Claim this page

Claiming is free and changes nothing in the data. A claimed page shows a verified contact who is told when each edition publishes and when Cline's standing changes by more than the noise floor; the right to propose corrections to the vendor table, meaning names the judge wrote that should or should not read as Cline, applied by version and listed in the change log; and a one-line description supplied by the vendor and marked as such.

It does not get any change to labels, shares or verdicts, any preview, or any say over which quotes appear. A verification link goes to your work email; an address at cline.ai is approved on the spot, any other address is reviewed by hand.

Your name and company appear on the claimed page, or the company alone if you ask below. A title and a LinkedIn address appear there too if you give them, and are left off if you do not. Your email address is never published.