Claude Code vs Gemini CLI 2026: Pricing After the Free Tier Ended

Short answer: for an individual developer in 2026, Claude Code is the one you can still buy on a personal plan. Claude Pro costs $17 a month billed annually or $20 month to month, read on Claude's pricing page on October 19, 2026. Gemini CLI stopped serving free Code Assist users and Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers on June 18, 2026; it now runs on a Gemini Code Assist Standard seat at $19 a month billed annually, or on a paid API key.

That change rewrites most of the comparisons still ranking for this query. The old pitch was "pay Anthropic monthly or use Gemini CLI for free", and the free half moved to a different product: Google sent consumer users to Antigravity CLI, which has its own free tier. So the real choice today is Claude Code against Gemini CLI on a business licence, or Claude Code against Antigravity CLI if free is what you want.

Toolradar data: among the 161 terminal tools Toolradar tracks, Claude Code is listed as an alternative to 59 other tools, second in the category, and Gemini CLI to 20, thirteenth, as of October 2026 (see the Claude Code and Gemini CLI profiles). Buyers still cross-shop the two, which is why the pricing shift matters.

Quick verdict

Dimension	Claude Code	Gemini CLI
Free access	No, Claude's Free plan excludes Claude Code	Ended June 18, 2026 for individuals; consumer users moved to Antigravity CLI
Cheapest way in	Pro, billed annually or monthly	Code Assist Standard, $19 per user/mo annual or $22.80 monthly
Heavier plan	Max, from $100/mo, 5x or 20x Pro usage	Code Assist Enterprise, $45 per user/mo annual or $54 monthly
Daily allowance	Rolling usage limits, no request count published	1,500 requests per user per day on Standard, 2,000 on Enterprise
Pay per token	Claude API key at API rates	Paid Gemini API key or Vertex AI
Source code	Proprietary	Open source, Apache 2.0
Where it runs	Terminal, VS Code, JetBrains, desktop app, web	Terminal, plus Code Assist IDE extensions on a licence

What changed on June 18, 2026

Google announced on May 19, 2026 that Gemini CLI and the Code Assist IDE extensions would stop serving requests for Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers and for everyone using Gemini Code Assist for individuals free of charge, from June 18. The announcement on the Google Developers Blog points those users to Antigravity CLI instead.

Organisations are not affected. Teams on a Code Assist Standard or Enterprise licence keep Gemini CLI with the latest Gemini models, and Gemini CLI stays reachable with paid Gemini API keys. The Gemini CLI README now opens with the same notice for unpaid-tier and Google One users.

This is why older articles mislead. Google's own quota and pricing page still lists 1,000 requests a day for a Google account on Code Assist for individuals and 250 a day on an unpaid API key. Those are the limits of a tier that no longer serves requests, so do not plan a free Gemini CLI workflow around them.

What one developer pays

For a solo developer the comparison is now Claude Pro against a Code Assist Standard seat, because those are the cheapest plans that run each agent.

Plan	Monthly billing	Annual billing	What it covers
Claude Pro	$20	$17/mo ($200 billed up front)	Claude Code plus the Claude apps
Claude Max	From $100	Not listed	5x or 20x Pro usage, priority access
Gemini Code Assist Standard	$22.80 per user	$19 per user/mo	Gemini CLI, IDE extensions, 1,500 requests a day
Gemini Code Assist Enterprise	$54 per user	$45 per user/mo	Gemini CLI, 2,000 requests a day, enterprise controls

Sources: Claude pricing and Gemini Code Assist pricing, read October 19, 2026.

On annual billing, Claude Pro is $200 paid up front against $228 a year for a Code Assist Standard seat, our arithmetic on Google's printed annual rate, a $28 gap. Claude Pro is the cheaper entry on both billing cycles. Month to month, Pro is $2.80 below Standard.

The bigger difference is what the money buys. Claude Pro is a consumer plan with the Claude apps, Projects and Claude in Chrome bundled in. Code Assist Standard is a business licence aimed at an organisation's Google Cloud project, and the README tells paid licence users to set a Google Cloud project before they log in. A freelancer without one has more setup to do before the first prompt.

What a team of 10 pays

At team scale the two vendors land close together, and the seat type matters more than the brand.

10 developers, billed annually	Price per seat	Per year (our arithmetic)
Claude Team, Standard seat	$20/mo	$2,400
Claude Team, Premium seat (5x Standard usage)	$100/mo	$12,000
Gemini Code Assist Standard	$19/mo	$2,280
Gemini Code Assist Enterprise	$45/mo	$5,400

Code Assist Standard undercuts Claude Team Standard by $120 a year for ten people, which is noise next to the usage question. A Claude Team Standard seat gets "more usage than Pro" with no number attached, while Code Assist prints 1,500 requests per user per day. If you need a figure you can put in a procurement form, Google publishes one and Anthropic does not.

Claude Enterprise works differently: the same seat price as Team Standard, billed annually with a 20-seat minimum, plus usage charged at API rates. Claude Team also includes up to $500 a month in pooled API credits. For a wider look at seat prices across agents, see our AI coding assistant pricing comparison.

Paying per token instead

Both agents accept an API key, and that is the route for CI jobs, scripts and anyone who prefers a metered bill to a seat. Anthropic's Claude Code cost guide says enterprise deployments average about $13 per developer per active day and $150 to $250 per developer per month, with 90% of users staying below $30 per active day.

List prices per million tokens, read October 19, 2026:

Model	Input	Output
Claude Sonnet 5.5	$2	$10
Claude Opus 5.5	$4	$20
Gemini 4 Argon, through November 30, 2026 (both rates double December 1)	$2	$10

Sources: Claude API pricing and Gemini API pricing.

At 30 million input and 3 million output tokens a month, Sonnet 5.5 costs $90 and Opus 5.5 costs $180, our arithmetic before caching. Gemini 4 Argon matches Sonnet at $90 until November 30 and matches Opus from December 1. There is a catch on the Google side: the README says Gemini CLI has not been optimised for Gemini 4 Argon and recommends Antigravity for it, so the newest Gemini model is not the natural fit for this CLI. Our Gemini API pricing and Claude API pricing pages cover the full model ladders.

Where each one runs

Claude Code runs in the terminal, in VS Code and Cursor through an extension, in JetBrains IDEs, in a desktop app for macOS and Windows, and in the browser for cloud sessions. That spread matters if half your team never opens a terminal: the Claude Code overview installs the same agent in each place.

Gemini CLI is a terminal tool first. It installs with npx, npm or Homebrew, connects to MCP servers, reads project context from GEMINI.md files and runs non-interactively in scripts. It is fully open source under Apache 2.0, which is the one advantage Claude Code cannot match: you can read and fork the agent itself, while Claude Code ships under Anthropic's commercial terms, all rights reserved. For Claude Code's own workflow, our how to use Claude Code guide walks through setup.

If you wanted the free option: Antigravity CLI

Google's replacement for individual users is Antigravity CLI, and its pricing page lists a $0 individual plan with unlimited tab completions, unlimited command requests and basic weekly rate limits. Google AI Pro, at $19.99 a month on Google One, raises those limits and adds a flexible AI credit pool. Google publishes no request count for either tier.

Moving over is designed to be light. The migration guide says Antigravity CLI keeps reading GEMINI.md and AGENTS.md files, and a single agy plugin import gemini command converts Gemini CLI extensions to Antigravity plugins. Google's announcement adds that agent skills, hooks and subagents carry over, though without full feature parity at launch.

So if "free" was the reason Gemini CLI made your shortlist, compare Claude Code with Antigravity CLI, not with Gemini CLI. Our Claude Code vs Codex page covers the other agent with a free entry point.

Which should you choose?

Pick by who pays and how you want to be billed:

• Solo developer or freelancer: Claude Code on Pro. It is the cheaper plan that runs either agent, and it needs no Google Cloud project.
• Team already on Google Cloud: Gemini CLI on Code Assist Standard. The seat is $1 a month below Claude Team Standard on annual billing, and the 1,500-request daily cap is written down.
• You want to read or fork the agent: Gemini CLI, the only open-source option of the two.
• You want free: Antigravity CLI, Google's successor for individual users, accepting unpublished weekly limits.
• Heavy daily use on one person: Claude Max, or an API key if your usage is uneven.

If you are weighing Claude Code against editor-first tools, read our Claude Code vs Cursor and GitHub Copilot vs Claude Code comparisons, and the Claude Code review for its limits in detail. Price changes across the category are logged in our AI coding tool changes tracker.

How we checked

Louis Corneloup, founder of Dupple and Toolradar, prepared this comparison for developers choosing a terminal agent. Prices and plan terms were read on October 19, 2026 on Claude's pricing page, the Gemini Code Assist site, Google One plans, the Gemini API pricing page and Antigravity pricing. The June 18 change comes from Google's announcement and the Gemini CLI README. Devshot runs no test lab, so this page compares prices, limits and documented features, not code quality. Yearly and team totals are our arithmetic on printed prices. Toolradar figures come from its live tool profiles, October 2026.

FAQ

Is Gemini CLI still free in 2026?

Not for individual users. Since June 18, 2026, Gemini CLI no longer serves requests for free Gemini Code Assist for individuals users or for Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers. It works with a Code Assist Standard or Enterprise licence or a paid API key. Google moved free users to Antigravity CLI, which has a $0 plan with basic weekly rate limits.

How much does Claude Code cost?

Claude Code comes with Claude Pro at $17 a month billed annually ($200 up front) or $20 billed monthly, and with Max from $100 a month. Claude's Free plan does not include it. Teams buy Standard or Premium seats on Claude Team, and API users pay per token, from $2 input and $10 output per million tokens on Sonnet 5.5.

Is Claude Code better than Gemini CLI?

On price for one person, Claude Code wins: Pro costs less than a Code Assist Standard seat on both billing cycles and needs no Google Cloud project. Gemini CLI wins on openness, because it is open source under Apache 2.0, and on published limits, with 1,500 requests per user per day on Standard. Neither vendor publishes a benchmark that settles code quality.

What replaced Gemini CLI for free users?

Antigravity CLI, Google's terminal agent built on the same harness as the Antigravity 2.0 desktop app. Its individual plan is $0 with unlimited command requests and basic weekly rate limits, and Google AI Pro raises the limits. It reads existing GEMINI.md and AGENTS.md files and converts Gemini CLI extensions with one import command.

Which is cheaper for a team of 10?

On annual billing, Gemini Code Assist Standard costs $2,280 a year for 10 developers and Claude Team Standard costs $2,400, a $120 gap. Enterprise tiers diverge more: Code Assist Enterprise is $5,400 a year for 10, while Claude Enterprise charges a seat fee plus API-rate usage with a 20-seat minimum.

Can I use both with an API key?

Yes. Claude Code accepts a Claude API key billed at API rates, and Gemini CLI remains available on paid Gemini API keys and Vertex AI. Sonnet 5.5 and Gemini 4 Argon both list at $2 input and $10 output per million tokens until November 30, 2026, after which Argon's rates double.

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Cite this: Devshot, "Claude Code vs Gemini CLI 2026: Pricing After the Free Tier Ended", November 2026.

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