Cline vs OpenAI Codex

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

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Cline and OpenAI Codex land close overall, scoring 18 and 21 out of 100. Cline shows up in 23 of 70 answers, just edging out Codex's 22, but Codex wins more head-to-head matchups: named more often in 9 questions versus Cline's 5, with 6 tied. Cline stands out for free, open-source, and VS Code setups, getting picked in all 3 answers on both open-source and VS Code questions. Codex leads on whole-codebase agents and terminal work, swept 3 of 3 for terminal use. By assistant, ChatGPT favors Codex (37 vs 16), while Claude scores them nearly evenly at 30 and 31.

Head to head

metric	Cline	OpenAI Codex
score	18	21
questions won	13	12

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

OpenAI Codex

assistant	score	named in, this week	usual spot, this week
ChatGPT	37	55% of answers	#4.2
Claude	30	45% of answers	#4.3
Gemini	0	0% of answers
Perplexity	8	10% of answers	#3.0

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's the best AI coding assistant I can run locally for privacy?

Only OpenAI Codex gets named for

What's the best AI coding assistant that works in the terminal?
Which AI coding assistant is best for large codebases?
What's the best AI coding assistant for building mobile apps?

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