I have a claude max subscription and a gemini pro sub and I exclusively use them on the cli. When I run out of claude max each week I switch over to gemini and the results have been pretty impressive -- I did not want to like it but credit where credit is due to google.

Like the OP others I didn't use the API for gemini and it was not obvious how to do that -- that said it's not cost effective to develop without a Sub vs on API pay-as-you-go, so i do no know why you would? Sure you need API for any applications with built-in LLM features, but not for developing in the LLM assisted CLI tools.

I think the issue with cli tools for many is you need to be competent with cli like a an actual nix user not Mac first user etc. Personally I have over 30 years of daily shell use and a sysadmin and developer. I started with korn and csh and then every one you can think of since.

For me any sort of a GUI slows me down so much it's not feasible. To say nothing of the physical aliments associated with excessive mousing.

Having put approaching thousands of hours working with LLM coding tools so far, for me claude-code is the best, gemini is very close and might have a better interface, and codex is unusable and fights me the whole time.

> it's not cost effective to develop without a Sub vs on API pay-as-you-go, so i do no know why you would

My spend is lower, so I conclude otherwise

> I think the issue with cli tools for many is...

Came from that world, vim, nvim, my dev box is remote, homelab

The issue is not that it is a CLI, it's that you are trying to develop software through the limited portal of a CLI. How do you look at multiple files at the same time? How do you scroll through that file

1. You cannot through a tool like gemini-cli

2. You are using another tool to look at files / diffs

3. You aren't looking at the code and vibe coding your way to future regret

> or me any sort of a GUI slows me down so much it's not feasible.

vim is a "gui" (tui), vs code has keyboard shortcuts, associating GUI with mouse work

> Having put approaching thousands of hours working with LLM coding tools so far, for me claude-code is the best, gemini is very close and might have a better interface, and codex is unusable and fights me the whole time.

Anecdotal "vibe" opinions are not useful. We need to do some real evals because people are telling stories like they do about their stock wins, i.e. they don't tell you about the losses.

Thousands of hours sounds like your into the vibe coding / churning / outsourcing paradigm. There are better ways to leverage these tools. Also, if you have 1000+ hours of LLM time, how have you not gone below the prepackaged experience Big AI is selling you?