Cline makes Ling 3.1 Flash free through October 13th
Founder Saoud Rizwan built Cline around developer choice; the offer also directs users to its standalone desktop beta.
By RuntimeWire Staff · Published
Primary source: Cline on X
Why it matters
The limited-time offer could draw developers into Cline's model-flexible runtime and desktop beta. It also tests whether they keep using Cline as the models change.
Cline said on October 3rd that developers can use Ling 3.1 Flash at no charge through October 13th, and directed them to try it in Cline for Desktop, its beta coding-agent app. The offer introduces users to a new model and directs them to Cline outside the editor where it began.
For Saoud Rizwan (@sdrzn), Cline's founder and CEO, the model is the latest test of a product thesis he has described as developer control over the tools behind AI-assisted coding. Cline began as a project Rizwan built for Anthropic's "Build with Claude" hackathon in 2024. It did not win, but the open-source prototype became the foundation for the company.
In an October 3rd post on X, Cline described Ling 3.1 Flash as a 560-billion-parameter mixture-of-experts model with 25 billion active parameters. Vercel's September 30th announcement independently lists those specifications and says the model is intended for coding, multi-step analysis and tool-using agents. The parameter counts are reported specifications, not an independent measure of how well the model performs at software work.
The model is the invitation
Cline is an open-source coding-agent runtime, not a model developer. Its product lets developers use different models and providers in an agent that can inspect a codebase, edit files and run commands. The offer lets developers test a newly available model inside Cline's workflow, rather than evaluate it only through a chat interface.
The desktop link extends that pitch beyond the IDE. Cline's beta app opens a project workspace without requiring an editor window, and its page describes support for macOS, Windows and Linux. Users can connect a provider with their own API key or sign in with a Cline account. The product page lists version 0.0.43 and features including queued follow-up messages, session history across Cline products, and the ability to edit an earlier prompt and rewind the workspace to that point.
The promotion gives users a reason to try the app, while Cline wants developers to keep using its agent harness as models change. The runtime, integrations and developer habits are what Cline needs to retain users. The announcement does not establish whether the free offer is capped or unlimited, so the end date is the concrete term Cline has made public.
The model's size also needs context. Mixture-of-experts models activate only a portion of their parameters for a given token; the 25-billion active figure is not the model's total size. Vercel lists a 262,000-token context window for its AI Gateway version. These specifications describe the available model route, but they do not establish that the model's weights are downloadable or that it will outperform other coding models on developers' own repositories.
A bet on keeping the harness open
Rizwan has framed Cline's product around visibility into prompts, model usage and pricing, alongside the freedom to choose a model. In his 2025 funding announcement, he argued that developers should be able to use the model they choose without an application layer hiding inference costs behind an opaque subscription. A short free-access window fits that emphasis on letting users compare models directly, though it does not by itself resolve the longer-term question of who pays to serve them.
Cline announced a $27 million Series A in July 2025, led by Emergence Capital, with Pace Capital and 1984 Ventures participating. Rizwan described $32 million as the total raised across seed and Series A. Forbes reported a $110 million valuation for the Series A. Those figures predate this model offer; they provide the financing backdrop for Cline's effort to grow from an open-source coding agent into a product that works across editors, terminals and desktop workflows.
The offer tests whether developers will choose Cline's agent environment as its underlying models change. The desktop beta expands where they can use it.