Apertis for Cline

Cline is a VS Code extension for autonomous AI coding. Cline's context windows are large, which means tokens add up fast — Apertis gives you predictable Coding Plan capacity, a hard PAYG cap so a long autonomous session cannot quietly drain a credit card, and one endpoint covering OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and the leading Chinese models.

Who this is for

Cline users who want a single billing surface across providers
Developers who hit Claude / Codex / GPT usage walls mid-task and want overflow capacity
Anyone uncomfortable with autonomous agents pulling against an uncapped API key

Prerequisites

Cline VS Code extension installed — see the Cline marketplace page or the Cline docs
An Apertis account and API key

Setup

1. Pick a Coding Plan

Cline's autonomous loops can burn tokens quickly. Plus ($60/mo) is a reasonable starting point for daily Cline use; Pro ($25/mo) works for lighter sessions.

2. Create an API key

apertis.ai/settings/apiKeys → Create API Key.

3. Point Cline at Apertis

Cline supports OpenAI-compatible custom endpoints. Open Cline's settings (gear icon in the Cline pane) and look for the API provider section — refer to the Cline docs for the exact field names in your installed version.

The two values Cline needs:

Base URL: https://api.stima.tech/v1
API Key:  sk-YOUR_APERTIS_KEY

4. Verify

Trigger a Cline task. A successful response means the integration is working.

5. Cap your PAYG overflow

Cline can burn tokens fast on multi-step tasks. Set a monthly PAYG cap at apertis.ai/settings/billing before turning Cline loose on a large refactor.

Choosing a model

Cline benchmarks the underlying model heavily — pick from apertis.ai/models based on the workload:

Quick refactors, bounded tasks: gpt-5.5, claude-sonnet-4-6
Long autonomous loops, hard reasoning: claude-opus-4-7
Cost-sensitive exploration: glm-5.1, deepseek-v4-pro, minimax-m2.7

PAYG Overflow

Every plan includes optional pay-as-you-go overflow. Once you exhaust the monthly Coding Plan quota, Apertis charges per-request at the underlying model's cost. You can cap monthly PAYG spending at apertis.ai/settings/billing.

With Cline specifically: set a PAYG monthly cap before starting long sessions. Long autonomous Cline runs are the most common source of "wait, what did this just cost?" feedback.

Common errors

Error	Meaning	Next
Custom endpoint not supported	Cline version too old	Update the extension
`401 Unauthorized`	Key wrong	Re-copy from apertis.ai/settings/apiKeys
Cline stops mid-task	Plan capacity hit, PAYG disabled	Enable PAYG overflow with a cap, or upgrade the plan

Start here

Configure Cline with Apertis