Gemini CLI Is No Longer Free: What Changed and Where to Go

If you have been running gemini from your terminal for free, that stopped working on June 18, 2026. Google announced the change on May 19 and, a month later, cut off free individual access to Gemini CLI, steering those users toward a new, closed-source tool called Antigravity CLI. Here is what actually changed, what did not, and where to go if you want to keep an AI agent in your terminal.

What actually changed (and what didn't)

Google stopped serving free requests to Gemini CLI for individual users on June 18, 2026. Per Google's notice, that includes people on the free tier and those on the Google AI Pro and Ultra plans who were using the CLI.
Individual users are pointed to Antigravity CLI (agy), a new Go-based tool that ships alongside the Antigravity 2.0 desktop app.
The part a lot of the coverage got wrong: the open-source gemini-cli project is not gone. Google's own repository notice says it "remains available to the community as an Apache 2.0 licensed repository with no changes." What ended is the free hosted quota, not the code.
The catch: Antigravity CLI itself is closed-source. So the move is less "we are shutting it down" and more "the free, open path is being nudged toward a proprietary one."

Who is still fine

Two groups are unaffected. Enterprise users with a Gemini Code Assist Standard or Enterprise license, or access through Google Cloud, keep full Gemini CLI support. And anyone willing to plug in a paid API key (Vertex AI or AI Studio) can keep running the open-source gemini-cli exactly as before. The binary and the license did not change; the free ride did.

The backlash, briefly

The announcement did not land well. On Google's own thread, the notice drew roughly 295 downvotes to 6 upvotes. The recurring complaints: Antigravity burns tokens faster, ships with reduced quotas, is missing features people relied on in gemini-cli, and trades an open tool for a closed one. Worth knowing before you migrate to it by default.

Your options if you want a terminal AI agent

The short version: you have three reasonable paths, and none of them forces you onto Antigravity.

Keep gemini-cli, bring your own key. It is still Apache-2.0 and still works with a paid Google API key. Best if you are already invested in the Gemini models.
Switch agents. Claude Code (Anthropic) and Codex CLI (OpenAI) are the two other mature terminal agents. We keep an up-to-date walkthrough of all three in How to Use AI CLI Tools.
Change what the models cost you. If the reason you were on the free tier was budget, the lever is the backend, not the agent. typed is a Claude-Code-compatible backend with monthly billing and no 5-hour reset windows: you run Claude Code exactly as you would, pointed at a cheaper pool.

Whichever agent you land on, it runs in your terminal, and the terminal matters more than people expect for agent work: split panes, a companion shell, inline images. Yaw auto-detects Claude Code, Codex, and Gemini CLI and drops you into a side-by-side layout automatically, and we wrote up why the terminal is the right home for these tools.

The bottom line

Nothing was taken from you if you are willing to pay for a key: the open-source gemini-cli is intact. What Google removed is the free lane, and what it is steering you toward, Antigravity CLI, is closed-source and, so far, unloved. Treat the cutoff as a prompt to pick the agent and backend that actually fit your budget and your workflow, not as a forced march to the default replacement.

Published by Yaw Labs.