Gemini CLI vs Claude Code — Two Weeks of Terminal AI, Honest Impressions

I've been running both Gemini CLI and Claude Code in parallel for a couple of weeks now on real projects — not toy examples, not contrived benchmarks. A Next.js app, some Python data scripts, a refactoring job I'd been putting off. Here's what I actually think. What these tools are Both are AI assistants that live in your terminal. You open a directory, run a command, and start talking to an LLM that can read your files, write code, and execute things on your behalf. Gemini CLI is Google's take on it. Backed by Gemini 2.5 Pro, with a context window somewhere around 1 million tokens. Claude Code is Anthropic's — uses Claude Sonnet 4, 200K context window. The other big difference: Gemini CLI is free (something like 1,000 requests per day on the free tier). Claude Code requires either an API key (usage-based, roughly $3/M input tokens, $15/M output for Sonnet 4) or the $20/mo Max subscription. Setup is straightforward for both: # Gemini CLI npm install -g @google/gemini-cli gemini # Claud