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We hear these two confused with each other every week, and they could hardly feel more different. So, once and for all: what each ride actually is, who it suits, and the loophole, because two parks let you skip the choice entirely.
A zipline is the closest most of us will get to actual flight. Harness, cable, step, and then gravity owns you for anywhere between ten seconds and a full minute while the forest slides past below. There is nothing to do up there. Some parks give you a hand-brake for the landing, otherwise your job is to exist and look around. How intense it gets depends on how high and how long the line is, and the big ones do something strange to people. Ask anyone who has ridden Kingkong Smile's 1,200 metre crossing or the 900 at Skyline: about halfway across, the fear runs out. You have been scared, it got boring, and now you are just... up there, calm, watching mountains. Guests spend the van ride home failing to put that feeling into words.
Physically it demands nothing. The guides clip everything and gravity does the work, so the only muscle involved is nerve, briefly, at platform one.
A coaster is a completely different animal because you are in charge. Cart, raised rail, hillside dropping away, brake lever in your fist. Squeeze it and you trundle scenically through the canopy. Let go and suddenly there are g-forces and the corners arrive very fast. It thrills without needing height, you are never far off the ground, and how wild the ride gets is a decision you re-make at every bend, which is precisely why some people prefer it and why zipline purists sniff at it. Pong Yang runs 1.2 kilometres of the real thing. Jungle Flight's zipline roller coaster is the odd hybrid, a curving rail you hang from in a harness, half flight, half slalom, fully its own category.
Pong Yang pairs its 1.2 kilometre coaster with a zipline circuit, one ticket, same forest. Skyline Adventure runs the full 21-line zipline course plus a 2.1 kilometre luge, which is the coaster feeling on an open track. Those two parks exist precisely so you do not have to pick a side, and they are our answer for most first-timers: ride both, then argue about which was better over khao soi on the drive home.