Google shipped Gemini CLI last month. Free tier, open source,
1,000 requests/day. No credit card required.
I compared it against Claude Code on real codebases for two weeks.
Here's what the data shows:
Where Gemini CLI wins:
- 1M token context window — entire codebase in memory at once
- Simple tasks: unit tests, type errors, quick fixes
- These fill 60-70% of a typical dev day
- Quality gap with Claude largely disappears here
Where Claude Code wins:
- Multi-file refactoring (10+ files)
- Complex architectural changes
- Picking up existing code patterns
The routing rule:
One question handles 90% of decisions — does this task require
system-level understanding, or is it a single-file operation?
One developer tracked this for a week. Dropped from $200/mo to $20/mo.
