Best AI coding agents, compared
How Claude Code, Cursor, Cline, and Aider actually differ, beyond the marketing pages.
The honest answer is that most of these agents converge on the same core loop, read the codebase, propose edits, run something to verify, and differ mainly in where they live (terminal vs. editor), how much they cost, and how much control they give you over the model and the diff-review flow.
CLI-first agents like Claude Code and Aider fit naturally into an existing terminal-and-git workflow. Editor-native agents like Cursor Agent Mode and Windsurf give you an integrated diff view and are usually the easier on-ramp for people who want to stay in a familiar IDE. Open-source options like Cline and OpenHands trade some polish for full control over the model and, in OpenHands' case, full self-hosting.