Frequently Asked Question

Is Gemini CLI free to use?

There is a substantial free tier. Signing in with a personal Google account uses OAuth, and at the time of writing grants 60 requests per minute and 1,000 requests per day at no cost, with access to Gemini models at a one-million-token context window. For learning, personal projects, and occasional professional work, that is a generous allowance.

The alternative is a Gemini API key from Google AI Studio, exported as GEMINI_API_KEY. A key gives explicit model selection and is the right choice for scripting, where an interactive browser login is not possible. Enterprise users authenticate through Google Cloud with Vertex AI instead.

Gemini CLI is itself open source, so the tool costs nothing regardless of which authentication route you choose. Rate limits change, so treat the figures above as indicative and check the current documentation.