Cline vs JetBrains AI Assistant

as AI assistants see them, week of 2026-10-12

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Cline edges out JetBrains AI Assistant overall, scoring 18 to 11, and shows up more often too, named in 23 of 70 answers versus 15 of 70. Cline's strongest showings are for VS Code and open-source questions, where it's named in all 3 of 3 answers each, plus 3 of 4 for free AI coding assistants. JetBrains AI Assistant does best on professional developer and Python questions, each at 3 of 4. Head to head, Cline leads on 8 questions, JetBrains AI Assistant leads on 4, and they tie on 8.

Head to head

metric	Cline	JetBrains AI Assistant
score	20	11
questions won	18	13

By assistant

Cline

assistant	score	named in, this week	usual spot, this week
ChatGPT	17	25% of answers	#4.0
Claude	34	65% of answers	#5.9
Gemini	2	0% of answers
Perplexity	19	37% of answers	#4.6

JetBrains AI Assistant

assistant	score	named in, this week	usual spot, this week
ChatGPT	12	15% of answers	#8.0
Claude	12	20% of answers	#8.0
Gemini	22	55% of answers	#5.8
Perplexity	3	5% of answers	#4.0

Where they differ

Only Cline gets named for

What are the best free AI coding assistants?
What's the best AI coding assistant for VS Code?
What are the best AI coding agents that can work across a whole codebase?
What's the best AI coding assistant I can run locally for privacy?
What's the best AI coding assistant for a solo developer building a SaaS?
What's the best AI tool for writing and fixing React and Next.js code?
Which AI coding assistant gives the best value for the money?

Only JetBrains AI Assistant gets named for

What's the best AI coding assistant for Python?
Which AI coding assistant is best for professional developers?

More comparisons

Not sold on either?

Scores count how often each assistant names a product, weighted by position. How the score works · Full AI coding assistants leaderboard