Gemini CLI
GoogleGoogle's open source terminal AI coding agent, bringing Gemini models into the shell for coding, debugging, and task automation. Ships built-in tools (Google Search grounding, file ops, shell, web fetch), is extensible via MCP and GEMINI.md system-prompt files, and offers a generous free tier on a personal Google account. Unlike the closed peers (Cursor, Claude Code), it is fully Apache-2.0.
Apache-2.0. ~105k stars, ~2.86M npm downloads/month. Free tier via personal Google account; paid via AI Studio/Vertex.
Openness
5 high confidence- license
- Apache-2.0(OSI)
- source
- public
- core-gated
- ungated
Fully Apache-2.0; commercial relationship is on model quotas, not the tool.
- https://github.com/google-gemini/gemini-cli recorded 2026-06-18
Apache-2.0, ~105k stars, open AI agent CLI
Adoption
5 high confidence~2.86M npm downloads/month for @google/gemini-cli, plus ~105k stars.
- https://api.npmjs.org/downloads/point/last-month/@google/gemini-cli recorded 2026-06-18
~2.86M downloads/month
Capability
5 high confidenceTop-tier coding agent; Search grounding is a standout vs peers.
- https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/technology/developers-tools/introducing-gemini-cli-open-source-ai-agent/ recorded 2026-06-18
official launch; free tier, MCP, GEMINI.md
Unchanged since 2026-07-30 (last edited, not re-checked)