no. CC is not just a cli. Its cli + their pro/max plan.

gemini cli is very expensive.

Isn't Gemini CLI 1000 requests/day free?

https://blog.google/technology/developers/introducing-gemini...

It's false advertising - 1000 model requests, not 1000 Gemini 2.5 Pro requests. It drops to Flash after 3-5 requests and Flash is useless.

Flash is very very good (better than 4.1 at faster speeds). Just not anywhere near 2.5 pro.

Theoretically, practically it is riddled with rate limiting issues

https://github.com/google-gemini/gemini-cli/issues/1502

We are working to resolve this. It's still in preview but expect to see healthy Gemini 2.5 Pro allocations for subscription customers in the near future.

Wait a minute, have you often run out of the gemini cli free daily quota? Their free quota is very generous because they are trying to get market/mind share.

it switches to flash almost immediately like in 10-15 mins . flash sucks.

And even switching is not smooth either. for me when the switch happens it just get stuck sitting there so i have to restart cli.

OK, thanks, I understand now what is happening. I use gemini-cli for one specific task at a time and sometimes just one 5 to 10 minute session a day. If I use long work sessions then I will add my API key and pay.

They do have a subscription: it's $22/month, but the whole pricing and instructions is very confusing, it took me 15 min to figure it all out.