Gemini CLI

Gemini CLI — Apache-2.0 terminal agent from Google with an unusually generous free tier. Gemini CLI is Google's open-source terminal agent, notable mainly for a free tier that a personal Google account unlocks with no card — the cheapest credible way to run an agent daily. It supports MCP, custom slash commands defined in TOML, checkpointing via /restore, and optional Docker or Seatbelt sandboxing. The official GitHub Action is how it reaches pull requests; the CLI itself stops at your working tree. Built by Google. Founded 2025. Open source under Apache-2.0.

We track it in 1 comparison — Coding agents — so every claim below is a cell in a table you can open and check rather than an impression. Across those rosters it sits against 16 other tools, and what follows is where it visibly separates from them.

Where it wins.

• GitHub stars — 75,000, the best figure of the 9 here.

Each of those is ranked against the whole roster on its category page, not against a hand-picked subset, so a first place here means first of everything we list.

Where it gives ground.

• Local models — No. Codex CLI records Yes.
• Model breadth — one vendor, 14th of 16. opencode records any provider / router.

None of these disqualify it on their own. They are the fields to check against your own requirements before you commit, because they are the ones where a competitor genuinely does better.

Provenance. 23 of 26 tracked fields carry a value for Gemini CLI, and 7 of those cite a document you can open. Last verified 2026-01-15. Every figure keeps its own provenance — measured by us, claimed by the vendor, inferred, or community-reported — and we would rather print a dash than a guess.

Its nearest neighbour in our data is Aider. Gemini CLI is ahead on MCP (Yes against No) and Permissions (allowlist + OS sandbox against prompts every action). Aider takes Local models (Yes against No) and Model breadth (any provider / router against one vendor). That pattern repeats across the rest of the roster — see Gemini CLI alternatives for the other rivals, each compared the same way.

Company

Google

Founded

2025

Licence

Apache-2.0 (open source)

Fields we track

23 of 26

Last verified

2026-01-15

The cheapest credible way to run an agent every day — the free tier is not a trial. In exchange you get a harness a step behind Claude Code and Codex on orchestration, and a PR path that lives in a separate GitHub Action.

Local models

○No11th of 16

Inferred

GitHub stars

75,0001st of 9

Community-reported

Model breadth

one vendor14th of 16

Inferred

Permissions

allowlist + OS sandbox1st of 16

Inferredverified 2026-01-15

BYOK

●Yes1st of 16

Inferredverified 2026-01-15

Headless / CI

●Yes1st of 16

Inferredverified 2026-01-15

MCP

●Yes1st of 15

Inferredverified 2026-01-15

Entry price

$0 /seat/mo1st of 16

Vendor-claimedverified 2026-01-15source

Gemini CLI is the right call in these situations, each one drawn from a field we actually record:

• Solo developers and students who want daily agent use at zero cost.
• Teams already on Vertex who want one billing relationship.
• Anyone wanting an Apache-2.0 base to fork, as Qwen Code did.
• GitHub stars is your binding constraint. Gemini CLI records 75,000, the best figure in the Coding agents roster. We define that field as stars on the primary open-source repository, rounded to the nearest thousand.

Reach for something else when any of the following is a requirement rather than a nice-to-have:

• Local models. Gemini CLI records No on the Coding agents table. Codex CLI records Yes on the same field. If that is a hard requirement rather than a preference, start elsewhere.
• Model breadth. Gemini CLI records one vendor, 14th of 16 in the Coding agents roster. opencode records any provider / router on the same field. If that is a hard requirement rather than a preference, start elsewhere.

We publish this block because a comparison that only lists what a tool is good at is marketing. Every figure above sits on the same page as its source, and the field definitions are on the category tables if you want to check how we measured them.

What we don't know. 3 of the 26 fields we track for Gemini CLI are still blank: Hooks, Terminal-Bench and Bench model. Those render as dashes rather than as zeroes or assumptions, because an empty cell and a bad cell are not the same thing and only one of them is honest. If you know any of these figures and can point at a document, tell us.