OpenCode vs Roo Code vs Cline (2026): One of These Shut Down

First, the News: Roo Code Shut Down on May 15, 2026

If you searched for this comparison expecting three live options, the field changed. Roo Code's repository was archived — read-only — on May 15, 2026, with v3.54.0 as the final release. The paid Roo Code Cloud and Router services went offline with unused balances refunded. The team's stated reason, announced April 20: "we do not believe IDEs are the future of coding." The company bet itself on Roomote, a Slack-first cloud agent that runs tasks end to end across Slack, GitHub, and Linear.

Two successors carry the lineage forward. Zoo Code is the official community handoff — it republished v3.54.0 to the VS Code Marketplace one day after the shutdown. Kilo Code is the larger pre-existing fork (it shares Cline ancestry with Roo) and published a migration guide. Roo installs still function, but with no security patches, staying put is the one option with a deadline attached.

The Live Comparison: OpenCode vs Cline

With Roo out, the open-source coding agent decision is a clean philosophical split. OpenCode (SST/Anomaly, v1.15.13 as of May 30, 2026) is terminal-native: a TUI with multi-session parallel agents, 75+ model providers, and Git-independent undo. At ~170k GitHub stars it is the fastest-growing open-source coding tool on record. Cline (v3.84.0, with CLI 2.0 and an SDK shipped in 2026) is IDE-first: VS Code and JetBrains, browser use, MCP servers, a Plan/Act toggle — and the only real enterprise story in the category, backed by $32M from Emergence Capital.

Feature Comparison

All three columns retained for reference — Roo Code's reflects its frozen final state.

OpenCode: The Terminal Momentum Machine

One lineage note worth getting right: OpenCode split in 2025. The original Go-based project by Kujtim Hoxha became Crush under Charm; the SST team kept the OpenCode name and rewrote it in TypeScript on Bun. The project compared here is the SST/Anomaly one at opencode.ai — 814 releases deep, with its own OpenTUI terminal framework.

What distinguishes it in practice: multi-session parallel agents in one terminal (rare among CLI tools), LSP integration across Rust, TypeScript, PyRight, Swift, and Terraform, and /undo + /redo checkpoints that work independently of Git. The business runs on hosted model gateways (OpenCode Zen and Go) rather than venture funding, with reported seven-figure annualized revenue — though exact gateway pricing isn't clearly published yet, so verify before budgeting around it.

Cline: The Institutional Open-Source Agent

Cline is what open source looks like with a balance sheet: $32M from Emergence Capital (July 2025), an enterprise tier with SSO, OpenTelemetry audit logging, and VPC or air-gapped deployment, and a 2026 product arc — CLI 2.0 in February, the Cline SDK in May — that repositions it from a VS Code extension into an agent runtime.

The capability set is the broadest in the category: Plan/Act mode separation, multi-file edits with automatic error fixing, live bash execution, browser use, MCP servers, and checkpoint undo with diff review. The cost is literal: Cline's deliberate don't-limit-context philosophy makes it the most token-hungry tool of its class — practitioners report ~300k tokens inside five iterations, and the April 2026 Anthropic billing change moved that consumption onto metered API rates. The 3.5/5 marketplace rating tracks those complaints more than the capabilities.

Who Should Use What?

What the Roo Shutdown Says About This Category

Roo Code had 24k stars, three million cumulative downloads, and a passionate community — and none of it paid the bills against vendor-native agents shipping weekly. The lesson for tool selection is not "avoid small projects." It is that sustainability now belongs in the evaluation matrix next to features: OpenCode runs on gateway revenue, Cline on venture capital and enterprise contracts, and both models beat the alternative Roo demonstrated. When a free tool holds your daily workflow, its business model is your business.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Roo Code still usable in June 2026?

Technically yes, practically no. The repository was archived on May 15, 2026, and the final release is v3.54.0 — existing installs keep working but receive no updates or security patches, and the paid Roo Code Cloud and Router services are offline with unused balances refunded. Active users should migrate to Zoo Code (the official community successor, republished to the VS Code Marketplace on May 16, 2026) or Kilo Code, which shares the same Cline-fork lineage and published a migration guide.

Why did Roo Code shut down?

The company made a strategy bet, not a distress exit. In April 2026 the team stated they do not believe IDEs are the future of coding and pivoted entirely to Roomote (roomote.dev), a Slack-first cloud agent that runs tasks end to end across Slack, GitHub, and Linear. With roughly $5M raised, they chose to concentrate on one product. The VS Code extension was archived a month later.

Which is cheapest to run: OpenCode or Cline?

Both are free open-source tools where you pay only model-token costs, but their consumption profiles differ sharply. Cline draws the most cost criticism in the category — practitioner reports describe ~300k tokens consumed within five iterations, a consequence of its deliberate don't-limit-context philosophy. OpenCode's terminal loop is leaner. On either tool, the April 2026 Anthropic change that moved third-party tools to metered API billing makes token discipline matter more than it did.

What's the difference between OpenCode and Crush?

They're the two halves of a 2025 project split. The original Go-based tool by Kujtim Hoxha became Crush after he partnered with Charm; the SST/Anomaly team kept the OpenCode name and rewrote it in TypeScript on the Bun runtime. The OpenCode in this comparison is the SST/Anomaly project at opencode.ai — the one with ~170k stars and the active release train.

Do both OpenCode and Cline support MCP and checkpoints?

Yes. OpenCode supports local and remote MCP servers and uses Git-independent /undo and /redo checkpoints. Cline supports MCP servers plus browser use, with checkpoint-based undo that shows you a reviewable diff. Cline's capability surface is broader overall; OpenCode's is leaner and terminal-shaped.

Which has real company backing?

Cline is the clear institutional pick: $32M led by Emergence Capital (July 2025), an enterprise tier, and a 2026 SDK strategy. OpenCode is run by SST/Anomaly and monetizes through hosted model gateways with reported seven-figure annualized revenue but no disclosed venture round. Roo Code raised about $5M and left the market — a reminder that backing alone doesn't guarantee continuity, but absence of any business model is the bigger risk.

Final Verdict

• Choose OpenCode if the terminal is home. The parallel sessions, model flexibility, and release velocity are unmatched, and the MIT license plus local-first posture keep you in control. Accept the fork-history confusion and the assumption of CLI fluency.
• Choose Cline if your team lives in VS Code or JetBrains, or if procurement needs an enterprise tier with SSO and audit logs. Budget deliberately for its token appetite — though Cline advocates argue, with some justice, that higher spend per task buys fewer iterations and less manual fixing. Measure cost per completed task, not per token.
• If you're coming from Roo Code, Zoo Code preserves your setup with the least friction and Kilo Code offers the larger successor community — but the shutdown is also a clean moment to test whether OpenCode or Cline fits better than the fork lineage ever did.

For the full scored field including SWE-agent, Goose, and the autonomous sandbox agents, see the Open-Source AI Coding Agents 2026 pillar, and for the sandbox-vs-pair-programmer decision, OpenHands vs Aider.