Free vs Premium: Testing Google’s Gemini CLI against Claude Code

Google released Gemini CLI three weeks ago which is a free, open source alternative to one of the most sophisticated AI development tools available Claude Code. For developers paying $20 min monthly for Claude Code, this presents a viable free option.

I spent two weeks testing both tools on identical projects to understand whether free can compete with premium in AI development.

The Challenge

I designed a test involving complete Postgres database layer implementation in a sample saas application which included schema design, sample data seeding, querying and indexing. I used the same context and instructions for the agents. I used Opus 4 for planning and Sonnet 4 for implementation while Gemini mostly used the 2.5 pro model and switched to 2.5 flash later on.

Overall Performance

Gemini CLI: Completed in 13 minutes with active guidance, Required more interactions to maintain consistency.

Claude Code: Completed in 7 minutes with minimal supervision, Required comparatively (~50%) less interactions.

Pricing

Gemini CLI: Free(ish) with generous limits (60 requests/minute, 1000/day).
Claude Code: $20 minimum monthly plan with limit resetting every 5 hours

Context Understanding

Gemini CLI:

• 1 million token context window (5x larger than Claude Code)

• Built-in Google Search integration and MCP tools support

• Multimodal capabilities for processing images, files, and diverse data types

Claude Code:

• 200k token context window but superior context compacting

• Better architectural decision awareness

• A plan mode adding to some deterministic nature

• Few bugs and consistent reliability across sessions

Code Quality

Gemini CLI follows instructions literally, implementing exactly what you request. Output can feel quite basic but achieves core functionality reliably. Sticks precisely to specifications without creative additions.

Claude Code produces polished implementations. It applies current best practices in schema design, normalization, and data integrity, sometimes even suggesting improvements or optimizations beyond the initial prompt.

Pain Points

Gemini CLI:

• Frequent rate limiting forces model downgrades (Pro to Flash)

• Uses about 4 times as many tokens as Claude, which quickly erases its advantage of having a larger context window.

• Gets stuck in implementation loops during complex tasks

• Lacks dedicated project initialization commands

• Defaults to outdated frameworks (Bootstrap vs Tailwind)

• Unpredictable behaviour and difficulty recovering from tool failures

• Issues understanding local image files as context

Claude Code:

• Expensive subscription costs for heavy usage ($100 and $200 monthly plans)

• Sometimes adds unwanted features without requests

• Runs out of tokens quickly on the $20 dollar plan and have to wait for it to reset.

Assessment

After two weeks of intensive testing, here's my honest take: Gemini CLI is not there yet on the podium with Claude Code but it’s free tier offers an incredible entry point to understand these workflows before investing in premium tools. I’d say it delivers ~60% of Claude Code's capabilities at zero cost. Claude Code still remains the king for reliability, stability and that intangible taste that makes code feel professionally crafted.

There’s some hope

Within three weeks of launch, the GitHub repository exploded with activity, 146 pull requests, daily commits and a thriving community of contributors.

While Claude Code evolves at Anthropic's pace, Gemini CLI could catch up rapidly through community contributions. I’d say it will take some months to catchup with Claude and be competitive.

📌 AI Term of the Day: Hallucination

What it is

Hallucination in AI refers to when a language model generates information that sounds plausible and authoritative but is actually incorrect, fabricated or unsupported by its training data. This includes everything from made up API endpoints and non existent libraries to convincing but false explanations of how systems work.

👀 What devs should look out for.

• The Windsurf fiasco - Cognition(Devin) to buy AI startup Windsurf days after Google poached CEO in $2.4 billion licensing deal.

• A recent controlled study by the nonprofit METR has found that AI engineering tolls slowed down SWEs by 19% when working in familiar, large open-source codebases.

• Cursor's recent pricing change was met with strong backlash forcing them to do refunds.

🎧️ Listen to this while you commute.

• The new Code - OpenAI - Sean Grove, OpenAI reveals how specifications, not prompts or code are becoming the fundamental unit of programming.

• How to spend your 20s in the AI era - Y Combinator

• Perplexity’s race to build AI Agentic search - Y Combinator

💬 Quick question: What's the most time consuming part of your development workflow? Reply and I’ll build a tutorial to automate it.

📱 Stay connected: Follow me on LinkedIn and Twitter/X for daily AI tool breakdowns and quick wins