Cline vs JetBrains AI Assistant

as AI assistants see them, week of 2026-09-14

brag about it: X · LinkedIn

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	18	11
questions won	13	7

By assistant

Cline

assistant	score	named in, this week	usual spot, this week
ChatGPT	16	30% of answers	#6.7
Claude	31	60% of answers	#7.3
Gemini	4	10% of answers	#11.0
Perplexity	13	20% of answers	#4.3

JetBrains AI Assistant

assistant	score	named in, this week	usual spot, this week
ChatGPT	17	30% of answers	#6.2
Claude	14	30% of answers	#8.2
Gemini	11	20% of answers	#6.0
Perplexity	2	5% of answers	#8.0

Where they differ

Only Cline gets named for

What's the best open-source AI coding assistant?
What's the best AI coding assistant for VS Code?
What are the best free AI coding assistants?
What are the best AI coding agents that can work across a whole codebase?
Which AI coding tool is best for writing tests?
Which AI coding tool writes the most reliable code?
What's the best AI coding assistant for a solo developer building a SaaS?

Only JetBrains AI Assistant gets named for

What's the best AI coding assistant for Python?

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