Gemini CLI Alternatives 2026: 7 Free Ways to Replace It

On May 8, 2026, Google made it official: Gemini CLI is deprecated. The announcement — titled Transitioning Gemini CLI to Antigravity CLI — went up on the Google Developers blog, and the fallback plan was blunt. On June 18, 2026, the personal tier hit a hard stop: the gemini command stopped working on personal accounts. The successor is Antigravity CLI, the terminal agent Google shipped alongside Antigravity 2.0 at I/O.

That move strands a lot of people: anyone who wired gemini into daily workflows, dotfiles, or CI on a free account. It also lands in a stingy year — mid-2026 saw Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, and Windsurf all tighten their free quotas, so "just buy another subscription" is not the answer everyone wants. Three months after the cutoff, searches for a Gemini CLI alternative are still climbing. This guide covers all three ways out: the official migration to Antigravity CLI, the free and open-source tools that replace it, and how to point any of them at DeepSeek's API so the bill stays near zero.

TL;DR — the best Gemini CLI alternatives

| Tool | Free tier | Form | Best for | | -------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------ | ----------------------------------------------- | | Antigravity CLI (official successor) | Free with a Google account; Gemini quotas apply | Terminal agent (agy) | Gemini CLI migrants staying on Google's stack | | OpenCode | BYOK free; optional $10/mo tier | Terminal agent (TUI) | Terminal users who want any model, any key | | Kilo Code | Open source, BYOK free; $20 bonus credits for new users | VS Code / JetBrains / CLI | Editor-first devs who want provider routing | | Cline | Open source, BYOK free | VS Code extension + Desktop app | Visual, step-by-step agent runs in the editor | | aider | Open source, BYOK free | Terminal pair-programmer | Minimalists and git-native workflows | | Codex CLI | Included with a ChatGPT account; plan limits apply | Terminal agent + desktop app | Developers already in the OpenAI ecosystem | | Claude Code | No free tier — paid Claude plans (2026 quotas tightened) | Terminal agent | Anthropic loyalists with a subscription budget |

If the thing you're fleeing is the subscription itself, jump straight to the DeepSeek section below — every BYOK tool in that table can run on a pay-per-token API instead.

What happened to Gemini CLI?

The short version: Google retired its own terminal agent and folded the job into Antigravity.

• May 8, 2026 — the announcement. Google published "Transitioning Gemini CLI to Antigravity CLI" on the official Google Developers blog, naming Antigravity CLI as the successor.
• June 18, 2026 — the hard stop. The personal tier was cut off and the gemini CLI stopped working on personal accounts. Third-party coverage (DataCamp's Gemini CLI write-up) and an active gemini-cli GitHub discussion (#27274) documented users comparing notes as access died.
• The official exit door. Google maintains a migration guide at antigravity.google/docs/cli/gcli-migration — that page is the canonical answer to "what replaced Gemini CLI".

Read generously, the reasoning is consolidation: at I/O in May 2026 Google launched Antigravity 2.0 — an updated desktop app plus the new CLI — and decided one agent brand beats two. The practical consequences are what matter: there is no maintained "Gemini CLI classic" for personal accounts, and there is no official page ranking your alternatives. This post exists because Google will never write one.

The official migration path: Antigravity CLI

Antigravity CLI is Google's terminal agent, shipped with Antigravity 2.0 at I/O 2026 alongside the updated desktop app and Gemini 3.5 Flash. If you liked how Gemini CLI worked, this is the like-for-like move:

• The binary is agy, not gemini. First muscle-memory change: every script and alias that calls gemini needs updating.
• Install is a one-line curl script from the official getting-started page, and the migration guide walks Gemini CLI users through the transition.
• Free to start with a Google account; heavy usage is aimed at the $100/month AI Ultra tier.
• Models are Gemini-family only. Native support for third-party endpoints is limited — only some Linux/Cloudtop setups can point at OpenAI-compatible endpoints. If your migration plan involved non-Google models, our Antigravity + DeepSeek guide documents what works and what doesn't.

For a faithful migration, agy is the obvious answer. For model choice or cost control, the rest of this list is more interesting.

Free and open-source alternatives

• OpenCode — the open-source terminal agent with roughly 172K GitHub stars. It's free in BYOK form (bring your own API key), with an optional $10/month tier if you want hosted convenience. One caution from 2026: security researchers disclosed two critical vulnerabilities (including an unauthenticated HTTP server RCE) early in the year — since patched, but this is a tool to keep updated. Our OpenCode tutorial walks through a full first session.
• Kilo Code — an open-source coding agent across VS Code, JetBrains, and the terminal (a fork of Roo Code, which itself started as Cline). BYOK is permanently free, new accounts get $20 in bonus credits on their first top-up, and DeepSeek is a first-class built-in provider among 30+ options. Our Kilo Code tutorial covers setup, the credits, the DeepSeek connection and the Roo migration in 12 steps.
• Cline — the open-source VS Code extension (~63K stars) that both Roo and Kilo descend from. It recently shipped an open-source Cline Desktop app supporting open-weight models, parallel agents, and 300+ models — a good pick if you want agent runs you can watch step by step.
• aider — the veteran terminal pair-programmer. Lighter than the agents above: no TUI ceremony, excellent git integration, works with any API key you bring.
• Codex CLI — OpenAI's terminal agent, now paired with a desktop app. Sign in with a ChatGPT account and usage follows your plan; skills and MCP support have landed. The ceiling is set by OpenAI, though — the 2026 quota-tightening wave did not skip it.
• Claude Code — excellent, and subscription-only: no free tier, with Anthropic tightening limits in mid-2026 like everyone else. If you're leaving Gemini CLI because the free tier disappeared, Claude Code recreates the same problem at a higher price.

Skip the subscription: run your agent on DeepSeek

The superpower of every BYOK tool above is that the "model bill" is a dial you control. DeepSeek's API is OpenAI-compatible — you set a base URL and a model name, and OpenCode, Kilo Code, Cline, and aider all take the same two values:

| Setting | Value | | ------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------- | | Base URL | https://api.deepseek.com | | Model (default for coding)| deepseek-flash — 1M context, 384K max output | | Model (heavy reasoning) | deepseek-v4-pro | | API key | DeepSeek developer console |

Pricing is pay-per-token, with an off-peak schedule that cuts the peak price in half ($/1M tokens, per DeepSeek's pricing docs):

| Model | Input (cache miss), off-peak / peak | Output, off-peak / peak | | ------------------ | ----------------------------------- | ----------------------- | | deepseek-flash | $0.15 / $0.30 | $0.60 / $1.20 | | deepseek-v4-pro | $0.66 / $1.32 | $1.98 / $3.96 |

Two notes worth their space. First, off-peak is roughly half the peak price, and peak hours are only weekdays 01:00–04:00 and 06:00–10:00 UTC — schedule batch work outside those windows and everything is effectively half price (cache hits cost far less still). Second, DeepSeek retired its previous model names on July 24, 2026 — older tutorials will happily hand you names that no longer route, so treat the two above (current as of September 2026) as the source of truth.

We keep full walkthroughs for the common setups: the DeepSeek harness setup guide covers terminal agents end to end, using DeepSeek in Cursor covers the editor crowd, and Antigravity + DeepSeek documents the workarounds for Google's own CLI.

FAQ

Is Gemini CLI really deprecated, or just "transitioning"? Really deprecated. Google announced the transition on May 8, 2026, and the personal tier stopped working on June 18, 2026. The official migration guide points every personal user to Antigravity CLI — there is no maintained Gemini CLI path anymore.

What's the best free Gemini CLI alternative? Antigravity CLI if you want to stay on Google's stack — free with a Google account. OpenCode if you live in the terminal and want model freedom. Kilo Code or Cline if you'd rather work inside VS Code. The three open-source picks all cost nothing on a BYOK basis.

Can I still use the Gemini API in my scripts? The June 18 cutoff retired the CLI for personal accounts. Google's model APIs are separate products and paid access continues — what disappeared is the free personal-tier usage bundled with the CLI. For scripts, either follow the official migration to agy or repoint a BYOK agent at whichever API you actually pay for.

How do I connect DeepSeek to my coding agent? Set the base URL to https://api.deepseek.com, pick deepseek-flash (default) or deepseek-v4-pro (heavy reasoning) as the model, and paste in an API key from DeepSeek's developer console. OpenCode, Kilo Code, Cline, and aider all accept the same OpenAI-compatible setup — full steps in our DeepSeek harness setup guide.

Antigravity CLI vs Claude Code — which should I pick? Antigravity CLI is free to start and keeps you in Google's ecosystem, with a $100/month AI Ultra tier for heavy use. Claude Code has no free tier and tightened its quotas in 2026, though many rate its agentic quality as the benchmark. If neither subscription appeals, a BYOK agent running DeepSeek's API gives you a comparable terminal workflow for pay-per-token money.

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Doing the migration right now? Our Antigravity + DeepSeek guide covers the official agy migration and the compatible-endpoint workarounds side by side, and the OpenCode tutorial rebuilds a real first session in the terminal from key to finished task.

Or skip the terminal part of the job entirely: DeepSeek Artifacts turns a one-line description into a running React app with a live preview — no signup, no card. Generate your first app free and keep the code, whichever agent you settle on.