Is Cline Safe? — Trust Score: 82.2/100

What Is Cline?

Cline is a AI tool in the coding category. Autonomous coding agent for your IDE.

As of March 2026, Cline has 58,568 stars on github, making it one of the most popular tools in its category in the AI ecosystem. But popularity alone does not equal safety — which is why Nerq independently analyzes every tool across 13+ trust signals.

How Nerq Assesses Cline's Safety

Nerq's Trust Score is calculated from 13+ independent signals aggregated into five dimensions. Here is how Cline performs in each:

• Security (1/100): Cline's security posture is poor. This score factors in known CVEs, dependency vulnerabilities, security policy presence, and code signing practices.
• Maintenance (1/100): Cline is potentially abandoned. We track commit frequency, release cadence, issue response times, and PR merge rates.
• Documentation (1/100): Documentation quality is insufficient. This includes README completeness, API documentation, usage examples, and contribution guidelines.
• Compliance (100/100): Cline is broadly compliant. Assessed against regulations in 52 jurisdictions including the EU AI Act, CCPA, and GDPR.
• Community (1/100): Community adoption is limited. Based on GitHub stars, forks, download counts, and ecosystem integrations.

The overall Trust Score of 82.2/100 (A) reflects the weighted combination of these signals. This exceeds the Nerq Verified threshold of 70, indicating the tool meets our standards for production use.

Who Should Use Cline?

Cline is designed for:

• Developers and teams working with coding tools
• Organizations evaluating AI tools for their stack
• Researchers exploring AI capabilities in this domain

Risk guidance: Cline is well-suited for production environments. Its high trust score indicates robust security, active maintenance, and strong community support. Standard security practices (dependency pinning, access controls, monitoring) are still recommended.

How to Verify Cline's Safety Yourself

While Nerq provides automated trust analysis, we recommend these additional steps before adopting any AI tool:

1. Check the source code — Review the repository's security policy, open issues, and recent commits for signs of active maintenance.
2. Scan dependencies — Use tools like npm audit, pip-audit, or snyk to check for known vulnerabilities in Cline's dependency tree.
3. Review permissions — Understand what access Cline requires. AI tools should follow the principle of least privilege.
4. Test in isolation — Run Cline in a sandboxed environment before granting access to production data or systems.
5. Monitor continuously — Use Nerq's API to set up automated trust checks: GET nerq.ai/v1/preflight?target=cline/cline
6. Review the license — Confirm that Cline's license is compatible with your intended use case. Pay attention to restrictions on commercial use, redistribution, and derivative works. Some AI tools use dual licensing or have separate terms for enterprise customers that differ from the open-source license.
7. Check community signals — Look at the project's issue tracker, discussion forums, and social media presence. A healthy community actively reports bugs, contributes fixes, and discusses security concerns openly. Low community engagement may indicate limited peer review of the codebase.

Common Safety Concerns with Cline

When evaluating whether Cline is safe, consider these category-specific risks:

Best Practices for Using Cline Safely

Whether you're an individual developer or an enterprise team, these practices will help you get the most from Cline while minimizing risk:

When Should You Avoid Cline?

Even well-trusted tools aren't right for every situation. Consider avoiding Cline in these scenarios:

• Scenarios where Cline's specific capabilities exceed your actual needs — simpler tools may be safer
• Air-gapped environments where the tool cannot receive security updates
• Projects with strict regulatory requirements that haven't been explicitly validated

For each scenario, evaluate whether Cline's trust score of 82.2/100 meets your organization's risk tolerance. The Nerq Verified status indicates general production readiness, but sector-specific requirements may apply.

How Cline Compares to Industry Standards

Nerq indexes over 204,000 AI agents and tools across dozens of categories. Among coding tools, the average Trust Score is 62/100. Cline's score of 82.2/100 is significantly above the category average of 62/100.

This places Cline in the top tier of coding tools that Nerq tracks. Tools scoring this far above average typically demonstrate mature security practices, consistent release cadence, and broad community adoption.

Industry benchmarks matter because they contextualize a tool's safety profile. A score that looks moderate in isolation may actually represent strong performance within a challenging category — or vice versa. Nerq's category-relative analysis helps teams make informed decisions by showing not just absolute quality, but how a tool ranks against its direct peers.

Trust Score History

Nerq continuously monitors Cline and recalculates its Trust Score as new data becomes available. Our scoring engine ingests real-time signals from source repositories, vulnerability databases (NVD, OSV.dev), package registries, and community metrics. When a new CVE is published, a major release ships, or maintenance patterns change, Cline's score is updated within 24 hours.

Historical trust trends reveal whether a tool is improving, stable, or declining over time. A tool that consistently maintains or improves its score demonstrates ongoing commitment to security and quality. Conversely, a downward trend may signal reduced maintenance, growing technical debt, or unresolved vulnerabilities. To track Cline's score over time, use the Nerq API: GET nerq.ai/v1/preflight?target=cline/cline&include=history

Nerq retains trust score snapshots at regular intervals, enabling trend analysis across weeks and months. Enterprise users can access detailed historical reports showing how each dimension — security, maintenance, documentation, compliance, and community — has evolved independently, providing granular visibility into which aspects of Cline are strengthening or weakening over time.

Cline vs Alternatives

In the coding category, Cline scores 82.2/100. It ranks among the top tools in its category. For a detailed comparison, see:

• Cline vs AutoGPT — Trust Score: 74.7/100
• Cline vs ollama — Trust Score: 73.8/100
• Cline vs langchain — Trust Score: 87.6/100

Key Takeaways

• Cline has a Trust Score of 82.2/100 (A) and is Nerq Verified.
• Cline demonstrates strong trust signals and is well-suited for production use with standard security precautions.
• Among coding tools, Cline scores significantly above the category average of 62/100, demonstrating above-average reliability.
• Always verify safety independently — use Nerq's Preflight API for automated, up-to-date trust checks before integration.

Related Safety Checks