Posted 27 August 2026
Gemini CLI's free tier is gone — what still works
On 18 June 2026 Google stopped serving Gemini CLI requests for free-tier, Google AI Pro and Google AI Ultra individual accounts. Here is what actually changed, what still works, and which terminal coding agents you can run today without paying.
What Google actually changed
Gemini CLI shipped in June 2025 with the most generous free tier in the category: sign in with a Google account and get a large daily request allowance, no card. That is the part that ended. As announced in discussion #28017, Google stopped serving Gemini CLI requests on 18 June 2026 for individual accounts — free tier, Google AI Pro and Google AI Ultra alike. A paid Google AI subscription does not get you back in; the CLI path was cut for individuals regardless of tier.
Two routes still work. API-key auth — set a Gemini API key and pay Google's per-token API rates — and enterprise Gemini Code Assist licences. If you already have either, your setup is unaffected.
It is also worth correcting the louder version of this story: Gemini CLI is not dead. The repository is still Apache-2.0, still sits at roughly 106,000 stars, and still has commits landing this week. What died is the free path for individual Google accounts, not the project. Google's replacement push is Antigravity CLI — free to use, but closed source, with paid tiers for higher limits and Gemini 3.1 Pro. That is the trade being offered: you keep a free allowance, you give up the source.
What to run instead
Listed roughly by how little setup they need. Disclosure up front: we build the first one.
OB-1
OB-1 is a free, open-source (Apache-2.0) terminal coding agent. No account, no card, no API key: the free path is a router that runs in the CLI process itself over keyless third-party free tiers — kilo, pollinations, ovh and llm7 today, from a registry in the CLI source. The model catalog is curated and signed by Overbrilliant, with a bundled fallback so a network hiccup does not leave you with nothing. On top of that it runs parallel read-only subagents for investigation, Fusion best-of-N for harder work, and a self-correction loop that re-runs until your project's own checks pass, up to three rounds.
Where it is weaker. We build it, so weigh the recommendation accordingly. The zero-setup free path leans on other people's free tiers, which means it is exactly as durable as those tiers are — this is the same class of risk that just bit Gemini CLI users, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. New free models reach free users after a 30-day delay; paid tiers ($9 Starter, $49 Pro, $99 Max) get them immediately. What we can honestly claim is portability rather than immortality: the router runs in your process, providers are swappable, and the same CLI works with your own keys, your own OpenAI-compatible endpoint, or local models if we ever vanish.
Freebuff
From the Codebuff team. Apache-2.0, genuinely free, no API key and no card: a curated catalog of strong open models paid for by text ads shown between agent turns. If you want the shortest possible path from install to first token and you do not mind advertising in your terminal, this is the least friction available. The trade is that someone else picks the models and the funding depends on sponsor deals staying signed.
Pi
pi.dev / earendil-works/pi, MIT licensed, installed as @earendil-works/pi-coding-agent. A well-built terminal coding agent with a unified multi-provider LLM API underneath. It is not a free path: you need to run /login or supply an API key before it does anything. It also deliberately skips subagents and plan mode — a scope decision, not a gap — and ships no built-in permission system, so sandbox or containerize it yourself.
OpenCode
The client is free and open. Models are the question: OpenCode Zen is a $20 pay-as-you-go balance that includes some free models, and otherwise you bring your own provider key. A good pick if you already have keys and want a broad, multi-surface ecosystem around the agent.
Aider
The mature option. Excellent repo-map and git ergonomics, years of real use, broad model support — and no free path of its own. You bring a provider key or a local endpoint and pay for what you use. If Gemini CLI's free tier was the only reason you were not already paying per token, Aider plus a cheap key is the smallest change to your habits.
Keep Gemini CLI, with an API key
Do not throw away a working setup. Gemini CLI is still Apache-2.0 and still maintained, and it works today with a paid Gemini API key or an enterprise Gemini Code Assist licence. Its Docker/Podman and macOS seatbelt sandboxing is genuinely good and better than several tools on this list. The only thing you lost was the free allowance.
The part worth taking away
Every free tier in this category is someone paying a bill on your behalf, and the bills in question are getting larger. Google's was the biggest and it lasted a year. Freebuff is funded by advertisers. OB-1's is funded by third-party free tiers plus our own paid plans. None of these are permanent, and any post that tells you otherwise is selling something.
So the useful question is not "which free tier is best?" but "how expensive is it to leave?". An agent whose client is open source, whose provider is a config line, and that accepts your own key or your own endpoint costs you an afternoon when its free path dries up. A closed client tied to one vendor's account costs you the whole workflow. That is the actual lesson of 18 June, and it applies to us as much as to anyone else on this page.