Claude Code alternatives: 10 coding agents compared

Claude Code alternatives compared

The table below lines up ten Claude Code alternatives by license, starting price and the models they run. Four of the ten are terminal agents like Claude Code, and six publish their source code.

Terminal agents closest to Claude Code

• Codex CLI is open source under Apache-2.0, comes included with ChatGPT Plus at $20 a month, and runs GPT-6 Astra (which scores 59.60% on Vals AI's Terminal-Bench 4.0 against 65.15% for Claude Opus 5.5).
• OpenCode is free under the MIT license, connects to 75+ providers and local models, and lets you sign in directly with a ChatGPT Plus, ChatGPT Pro or GitHub Copilot account.
• Antigravity CLI (agy) is Google's terminal agent with a $0 Individual tier on basic weekly rate limits and Gemini 4 Argon access when you have Google AI Pro at $19.99 a month.
• Kimi Code CLI is Moonshot AI's MIT-licensed terminal agent that runs Kimi K3 using a Kimi Code account or a Moonshot API key at /login.

# Codex CLI
npm install -g @openai/codex

# OpenCode
curl -fsSL https://opencode.ai/v2/install | bash

# Antigravity CLI
curl -fsSL https://antigravity.google/cli/install.sh | bash

# Kimi Code CLI
curl -fsSL https://code.kimi.com/kimi-code/install.sh | bash

Editor and IDE alternatives

If you want an agent inside the editor you already use, extensions are the easiest swap. Cline (Apache-2.0) and Kilo Code (MIT) are both free open-source extensions where you only pay your model provider for inference, though Kilo also sells a Kilo Pass starting at $19 a month. GitHub Copilot Pro costs $10 a month and gives you $15 of GitHub AI Credits ($10 base plus $5 flex) for models such as Claude Sonnet 5.5, GPT-6.1 Terra, Grok 4.7 and Kimi K3, while Claude Opus 5.5, Fable 5.1, GPT-6 Astra, GPT-6.1 Sol and Gemini 4 Argon need Copilot Pro+ at $39 a month.

You can also switch to a full editor with an agent built in. Cursor (now sold inside The X Subscription) has a Plus tier at $8 a month that runs only Cursor's own models, led by Grok 4.7, with no support for your own API keys, so getting Claude, GPT and Gemini models means paying $30 a month for Premium and buying them at API list price from prepaid credit. If you're looking for a Cursor alternative, Zed is open source (GPL and Apache-2.0), free for personal use with your own API keys or external agents like Codex CLI, and has a $10 a month Pro plan that includes $5 of tokens before billing API list price plus 10%. Devin Desktop, the closed-source editor that windsurf.com/pricing now redirects to at devin.ai/pricing, has a $0 Free tier, Pro at $20 a month and Max at $200 a month, running Cognition's SWE-2 model alongside models from the major providers.

What happened to Gemini CLI and Roo Code

Gemini CLI is still around under the Apache-2.0 license, but it now serves enterprise Gemini Code Assist users on Google Cloud, plus legacy paid Gemini API and Vertex AI keys. According to its README, free individual access and Google AI Pro and Ultra moved to Antigravity CLI on June 18, 2026, and Gemini CLI is not tuned for Gemini 4 models.

The Roo Code extension was shut down on May 15. Its README now points users to the ZooCode fork and to Cline.

Which alternative to pick

• If you already pay for ChatGPT, use Codex CLI since it's included in ChatGPT Plus at $20 a month and gives you GPT-6 Astra, GPT-6.1 Sol and GPT-6.1 Terra in the terminal.
• If you want a free open source Claude Code alternative that runs any model, pick OpenCode for the terminal, or install Cline or Kilo Code inside VS Code and bring your own keys.
• If you want Gemini models with a free tier, install Antigravity CLI for the $0 Individual plan with weekly rate limits or pair it with Google AI Pro ($19.99 a month) for Gemini 4 Argon.
• If you want access to many models for one low price, GitHub Copilot Pro at $10 a month includes $15 of credits for Claude Sonnet 5.5, Grok 4.7, Kimi K3 and more, and Pro+ at $39 a month adds Claude Opus 5.5, GPT-6 Astra and Gemini 4 Argon.
• If you want to run Kimi K3 in the terminal, install Kimi Code CLI with a Kimi Code plan or a Moonshot API key ($3 input and $15 output per 1M tokens).

Keep your Claude plan in another agent

Switching coding agents doesn't mean you have to cancel your Claude subscription or start paying per token. Plan2API turns a Claude Pro or Max plan, a ChatGPT plan, Google AI Pro or Ultra, and Kimi Code into one OpenAI-compatible endpoint at https://api.plan2api.com/v1 with a single p2a_ key. You can add that URL as a custom provider in OpenCode (through @ai-sdk/openai-compatible) or drop it straight into Cline and Kilo Code, then switch between claude/, openai/, gemini/ and kimi/ model prefixes without leaving your agent.

Plan2API Free costs $0 with no card needed and covers 1 connected subscription and 50 chat requests a day. Plan2API Pro is $12 a month (or $99 a year) for 3 connected subscriptions and no daily request cap. Codex CLI is the one exception here: custom providers in current Codex releases must expose the OpenAI Responses API, and Plan2API serves POST /v1/chat/completions rather than /v1/responses.