Head to head
Cline vs GitHub Copilot
Comparing 5 documented Cline incidents against 5 for GitHub Copilot.
Verdict
Cline has the lower average failure severity (5.5/10 vs 8.2/10), making it the statistically safer choice of the two — though both agents have documented critical incidents.
| Metric | Cline | GitHub Copilot |
|---|---|---|
| Documented incidents | 5 | 5 |
| Average severity | 5.5 | 8.2 |
| Critical | 1 | 3 |
| High | 0 | 1 |
| Verified | 5 | 5 |
Severity at a glance
Cline
5.5
medium
GitHub Copilot
8.2
high
Failure modes
ClineDistribution of failure modes across all documented incidents.
GitHub CopilotDistribution of failure modes across all documented incidents.
The incidents behind these numbers
Cline
10.0Clinejection: an AI issue-triage workflow enabled arbitrary code execution on the CI runner5.8Cline's tool-call JSON repair silently executed truncated write_file and terminal arguments as valid4.5Cline's Plan mode edits files without switching to Act or asking permission3.8Cline's execute_command reported a failing Ruff lint check as passing over Remote-SSH3.2Cline keeps performing unrelated actions and repeats them after being explicitly told to stop
GitHub Copilot
10.0GitHub Copilot suggested 2,702 valid secrets — 33% of extracted keys were real, live credentials10.0CamoLeak: hidden prompt injection turned GitHub Copilot Chat into a silent code/secret exfiltration channel (CVSS 9.6)10.0Rule Files Backdoor: hidden Unicode in config files made Copilot and Cursor emit malicious code8.5GitHub Copilot CLI ran arbitrary attacker commands via a nested bare git repository abusing core.fsmonitor (CVE-2026-45033)2.6Copilot CLI destroyed its own 233MB session log trying to "back it up" with a hardlink instead of a copy