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Google's Free Gemini CLI Takes on Claude Code's $200/mo Pricing

Shayan on June 25, 2025

I've been using Cursor for months now to build UserJot with Claude Sonnet and Opus, and it's been pretty solid. But I'm starting to hit its limits ...
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Lemmi

I literally just convinced my manager to approve the $200 Claude plan last week 😭 This timing hurts

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Diorgenes Morais

don't let him know rsrs

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Shayan

😂 REKT

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Jonas Scholz

I don’t think this whole AI thing will establish itself

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Shayan

huh?

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Praveen Rajamani

Awesome post! It is wild how fast things are changing. That free tier from Gemini CLI is super generous, 1,000 requests a day is plenty for most devs. I am curious how long these crazy-good prices will stick around with so much competition now.

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Eli D

They’re burning money to buy market share. For sure it won’t last.

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Andre Emanuel

Google AI is the "official AI" sponsor of DEV.... Go figure.
Don't know about anyone else, but Gemini CLI has been unusable for me the past hour.
Stuck in a timeout loop, even though it's saying it is switching from pro to flash.
I guess that's what happens when things are free.

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ido bistry

Working with it last week and a half(since it came out) and it rocks

This models are about use
The more you use it it gets better

Guess what.... Its going to kill claufld, sunce its google and its free

I didnt try open ai code tool yet
But for me gemini is more the enough....

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Eli D

“It's the same strategy they used with Gmail vs Hotmail, Chrome vs Firefox, and countless other products.”

You are maybe thinking of Microsoft and Netscape? Hotmail and Firefox were also free lol