Google Antigravity Review (2026): Free Until the Quota

In one week in May 2026, Google rewrote the plans for its AI agent software, Antigravity, users said it ran dry in an hour, and Google tripled its Gemini limits twice. Despite this, it is free, and the first plan that adds quota is $20 a month. The problem is Google changes what that buys all year and does not give you the number. That’s what you sign up for if you are a paying user.

Why should you care if you are a founder who codes? What should you do if you are using Cursor or Claude Code and thinking of moving? This review of Google Antigravity has the latest on Google’s own plans, what it costs and a timeline of what has happened in 2026 so far and when your account might get suspended. And who should stay put.

Disclosure: I build Preuve AI, which sells startup-idea validation. I have no sponsorship or affiliate deal with Google, Cursor or Anthropic, and nothing here earns a commission. Preuve pays Google and Anthropic for its AI models. This review uses Google’s own pages, with links below, the vendors’ pricing pages read on October 4, 2026, the reports and threads linked below, and my own use of the Antigravity CLI for one narrow job.

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What is Google Antigravity in 2026?

Google Antigravity is Google’s agent app to write software. Since May 2026, Google wants you to use it for other knowledge work, too. It launched on November 18, 2025 (the launch thread on Hacker News reached 1,088 points) as an IDE, based on VS Code, with a separate Agent Manager. On May 19, 2026, Google launched Antigravity 2.0, which Google says is “a new, standalone desktop application” where “there is no IDE.” It runs on macOS, Linux and Windows.

In 2.0, you can use subagents, which the agent creates on its own, tasks it can do in the background, give it tasks on a timer and use projects that span multiple folders. Google has added slash commands for different tasks: /goal to do a task until it is done, /grill-me to have the agent ask you questions about the plan before it codes, /schedule to set a timer, and /browser to have the agent use the browser. Google also has a command line version, the Antigravity CLI, and since August, you can use the Remote Control page to control sessions from your browser.

2.0 downgrades the IDE, but it has not killed it off yet. Google says in its post on 2.0 that if you have installed Antigravity as an IDE, it will update to 2.0, but you can choose to keep the IDE. However, in an “upcoming release” Google plans to remove the Agent Manager from the IDE. On August 20, 2026, Google also added Antigravity extensions for VS Code, Visual Studio, JetBrains, Zed and Xcode, which you can use if you are on the free tier. If you use one of those editors, you no longer need Google’s fork of VS Code.

Is Google Antigravity free?

Yes. You can use Google Antigravity for free if you have a personal Google account. The free tier has a lot of models. Google’s pricing page says you can use Antigravity for $0, with “basic weekly rate limits”, and unlimited Tab completions and command requests. As of October 10, 2026, Google’s models page says you can use Gemini 3.8, 3.7 and 3.6 Flash, Gemini 3.1 Pro, Claude Sonnet 4.6, Claude Opus 4.6 and GPT-OSS-120b. But there is a * next to Claude 4.6 and GPT-OSS-120b, and the note says “will be removed on November 2, 2026.” From November 2, Antigravity’s free tier will only have Gemini models.

The Claude version depends on your plan. As of October 10, 2026, Google's models page lists Sonnet 5.5 and Opus 5.5 for non-trial Pro, Ultra and Enterprise. Sonnet 4.6 and Opus 4.6 are still listed for Free, Plus and Pro until November 2, alongside GPT-OSS-120b, which also remains on Ultra until that date. This is a scheduled removal, not a free upgrade to 5.5.

Google’s plans do not give you any quota numbers. It says on its plans page that the free tier gets a “meaningful quota, refreshed weekly”, and warns that the “usage limits for this service are subject to modification.” Google says its usage limits are based on “the amount of work done by the agent”, which means a simple task will use less than a difficult task.

On its FAQ, Google says Antigravity is currently available for personal Google accounts in a list of countries. It is not available if you are under 18. If you try to use a Google Workspace account for work, it may not work, so Google suggests you use an account from gmail.com.

How much does Antigravity cost past the free tier?

Plans that add quota cost $20, $100, or $200 a month as part of a broader bundle of services. Google sells access to Antigravity as part of its AI plans, which also include storage and other goodies. Antigravity itself does not have a separate cost. The $20-a-month Google AI Pro plan "provides an entry-level quota for experimentation," Google explained in its May 19, 2026, post on plans. Google also offers a $100-a-month Ultra plan and slashed the cost of its top-end Ultra plan from $250 to $200 a month in the same change. The company explained in a related post on Google AI subscriptions, published on the same day, that the $100-a-month plan came with "a 5X higher usage limit" in Antigravity than Pro.

Source: Google's Antigravity plans post (May 19, 2026), pricing and plans pages, read October 4, 2026; models and Enterprise docs, read October 10, 2026. Prices in USD per month before tax. Quotas are Google's own wording; Google publishes no token or prompt counts.

Business access needs a separate check. Google's Enterprise docs list Claude Sonnet 5.5 and Opus 5.5 with administrator opt-in and token-based billing, as of October 10, 2026. This covers Antigravity 2.0, the CLI and supported IDE extensions. The standalone Antigravity IDE is not supported for Enterprise; legacy Gemini Code Assist extensions remain Gemini-only.

For personal Google AI plans, two things to be aware of. First, Google's plans post explains that Gemini Flash and Gemini Pro now share one pool, "drawn down according to API pricing", a way of saying that because Gemini Flash is cheaper than Gemini Pro, you can stretch the budget further by using the former model. On the other hand, models from other AI companies, such as Anthropic's Claude and the open-source GPT-OSS, use a different rate limit, which is fixed and separate. That's because of "capacity limitations", Google says. If you check how much of your quota you have left, you'll see two meters, one for each type of model. Each meter has a weekly bar and a five-hour bar.

Second, Google now only uses AI credits to pay for overages. If you go over your quota, you can, if you have the right setting enabled, draw on AI credits to pay for the overages at "standard Gemini Enterprise consumption pricing". If you have the AI Credit Overages setting disabled, you'll just have to wait. Google does not let you bring your own key for extra rate limits, but the CLI can run on a Gemini API key.

Why do Antigravity quotas run out? The 2026 timeline

Antigravity quotas run out because Google has set quotas, based on how much capacity it has available, and changed them several times since the service launched. Usually, the changes were in response to demand outstripping Google's available compute. In its post on the plans, Google wrote: "the unprecedented demand for Antigravity and Gemini means we must balance our enthusiasm with real-world compute constraints."

Source: The Register (February 23 and March 12, 2026), Techzine, Google's plans post (May 19, 2026), 9to5Google (May 21, 2026), the Google AI Developers Forum thread (June 7 and 8, 2026), Hacker News and Google's models page, read October 4, 2026. The source column says which are news reports, user reports and Google's own pages.

It's hard to tell whether it's a bug or a cap, because Google has not published its meter.

How much Claude time do users actually get?

Getting the newer Claude models does not mean getting much time with them. In early October 2026, an AI Ultra subscriber on r/AntigravityGoogle reported roughly four hours of Opus 5.5 use across a week, on Medium thinking. They praised the results, but did not specify which Ultra tier they had. Another user on r/google_antigravity said a Sonnet 5.5 Medium code check exhausted the five-hour allowance in about two minutes. Their plan was not stated.

These are individual reports, not fixed limits or controlled benchmarks. Google's plans page says usage depends on the work the agent does. For a founder who wants Claude all day, the small third-party allowance users describe is worth checking on your own tasks before paying for an upgrade. These reports do not measure usage on the separately billed Enterprise route.

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Can Google suspend your account for using Antigravity?

Yes, if you use someone else's software to access it. Google's Antigravity Terms, read October 4, 2026, say using third-party tools to access the service "(e.g. using OpenClaw with Antigravity OAuth) is a breach" that "may be grounds for suspension or termination of your Antigravity and/or Gemini CLI accounts." The Antigravity FAQ states that users can't sign in to Claude Code, OpenClaw, or OpenCode using their Antigravity login.

Google has done this in the past. In February 2026, The Register reported that Google had suspended Antigravity access for customers, including those paying $250 a month for the Ultra plan, often without warning. Varun Mohan called it "malicious usage" that "tremendously degraded the quality of service," and said Google was only suspending Antigravity, not other Google services. He also said Google would reinstate the service for people who were unaware of the rules. Users responded that they had paid for the quota and had not exceeded it.

In September the fear moved to people’s Gmail. A Hacker News thread on the Terms got 338 points. Varun Mohan, quoted there, said “the account in question is the Antigravity account” and that Google would make the wording clearer. The Terms I read on October 4 name “your Antigravity and/or Gemini CLI accounts.” One commenter said they had been locked out for what appeared to be a violation even though they didn’t use OpenClaw, but they got their account back a couple days later after filing an appeal form. I think that is fair: the rule is written down, and Google offers a paid API key for other tools.

Use the official interfaces (app, CLI, editor extensions) if you want to log in with your Google account, and buy an API key for everything else. And if you’re worried about losing access to your Google account, run your agent on a different Google account from the one with your email. Also, if you’re scripting the Antigravity CLI, Google has docs for running it in headless mode, which is how I use it.

Is Antigravity better than Cursor or Claude Code?

Google Antigravity isn’t better than Cursor or Anthropic Claude Code across the board, but it is a good option if you want a cheap way to run lots of Gemini agents. Cursor and Anthropic meter their agent use more predictably, but none of them tell you how many prompts you get. Cursor’s models and pricing page says model choice “affects how quickly your included usage is consumed” and Anthropic’s Pro plan help page says the number of messages “will vary”. (Also, according to Anthropic’s pricing page, Claude Code is not available on their free plan.)

Source: Google's Antigravity pricing, plans, models pages and Terms; Cursor's pricing and models pages; Anthropic's Claude pricing page and Pro plan help article, all read October 4, 2026. Prices in USD per month before tax.

Cursor at least estimates your real spend. If you run their agent every day, they say you’ll “typically” spend $60-$100 a month total, and power users running several agents “often $200+.” Google instead sizes Ultra as 5x or 20x Pro, but it never says how much Pro is.

What does Antigravity do well?

From what users say, Antigravity is fast and it’s cheap if you want to run hard on Gemini. On the r/AntigravityGoogle subreddit, a long-time user who runs Flash models almost exclusively wrote “I need speed and fast iterations.” Another uses 2.0 “as a daily driver harness at work” on a company Ultra account and “can use it all day without issue.” On the r/google_antigravity subreddit, multiple commenters said they use Flash for coding and Claude for review/planning.

"The cli is their best offering. Their GUI is slop, and their IDE is dead in a ditch with no way to update itself." (r/AntigravityGoogle, read October 4, 2026)

I use the Antigravity CLI for a narrow purpose at Preuve: a quick first pass on Preuve’s product videos before they go out. I render a video and feed it to Gemini 3.8 Flash through the CLI, and it tells me what’s wrong. I tested both routes on 7 test renders, two runs each, through the CLI (Sep 26, 2026) and through the Gemini API. The API caught all 12 planted defects; the CLI caught 10 of them. The API costs me about 9 cents and takes about 40 seconds a run on a 42-second video; the CLI is free but takes about 100 seconds. Part of the reason it’s less accurate is that the CLI only sees the video at low resolution, and my script sends it a slowed-down copy. I’ll keep using the CLI version for early drafts, but for final renders, I’ll pay for the API.

Antigravity’s weaknesses are pretty consistent. The “bait and switch” thread (771 points, May 21, 2026) starts with an Ultra user’s post, which says 2.0 auto-updated and replaced the IDE with “a single conversational prompt box” and that getting the IDE back took a full purge and lost the chat history.

On the r/google_antigravity thread mentioned above, one commenter says their team can “blow the lid off our usage limits in mere minutes some days” and that the team “has built habits around Claude code” because of it.

When should you stay on Cursor or Claude Code?

If you are wondering which builder to use, check out my comparison of the best AI app builders in 2026 (no-code). For the costs of each coding model per task, see my AI coding models statistics.

Why check demand before Antigravity writes the code?

Most new features in Antigravity 2.0 are focused on improving autonomous capabilities (running /goal to let the agent work until a task is completed, scheduling tasks, etc). However, even when using /grill-me to ask for “specific details of the plan”, Antigravity won’t ask you about the most important detail: who is going to pay for this, and how much? And as noted in Google’s Terms of Service, you are “solely responsible” for “determining whether the use an AI Agent is fit for its use case.”

As one user mentioned on r/google_antigravity, if you ask Antigravity to “make me an app that makes money”, you will get garbage. You need to tell the agent exactly what to do. The problem is that if you don’t validate your idea first, you risk coding the wrong thing. A cheap, fast agent fed an idea nobody asked for ships the wrong product faster. Read more on why startups fail.

Worked example: three months of agents before the first customer

If you still want to code your app, here is what a few of the plans cost at list price over 3 months of building a subscription app:

Source: Google's plans post (May 19, 2026), Cursor's pricing page and Anthropic's Claude pricing page, read October 4, 2026. Three months is the monthly list price times 3, in USD before tax, with no overage or credits.

Depending on the plan you choose, that is between $0 and $300 on the plans in this table, but you will also invest months of your life into building it. And according to the Preuve benchmark study (3rd edition, July 2026, 6,000+ analyses), only 17.5% of ideas score 70 or more. The top risk is an idea still too early stage to judge (36.9%), followed by issues with the go-to-market strategy (25.7%).

“An app for freelancers” is a typical example of an idea that is too early stage, as it doesn’t specify who exactly is going to buy the app and for how much. While Antigravity (or Cursor or Claude Code) will be happy to build it for you, none of them will tell you that nobody is waiting for it.

To avoid building something nobody wants, validate your idea first using Preuve’s free Reality Check. In less than a minute, it scans 60+ live data sources to analyze the demand, the market and the competitors, and a full report takes about ten minutes. You will still need to talk to your potential buyers yourself (see my guides on what to do before you vibecode and how to validate a business idea), but once you are done, you can pick the AI agent you prefer and start building.