Cline vs Roo Code
A side-by-side comparison of Cline and Roo Code, two Agent tools, drawn from Ignaite's continuously-verified listings.
Compared from listings verified as of
At a glance
The honest brief
Cline
BYO-key VS Code agent that shows and asks approval for every edit and command — no markup, no lock-in.
- No vendor markup on token costs
- Approves every edit/command before running
- Bring any model (Claude, local, etc.)
- Plan/Act split for review before changes
- BYO-key means you pay provider token costs
- VS Code only, no standalone IDE
- Slower than Cursor on equivalent tasks
- No codebase indexing or background agents
Roo Code
Forked from Cline to push harder on autonomy and configurability, staying fully open and model-agnostic with no vendor lock-in.
- Custom role-based modes with own prompts
- Modes hand off mid-task
- Run frontier APIs or a local model
- Direct file and terminal access
- API token costs are on you
- Autonomy needs careful approval review
- Centered on VS Code and forks