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Free AI Coding Agents in 2026: What $0 Actually Gets You

Free AI Coding Agents in 2026: What $0 Actually Gets You

Copilot Free, Cursor Free, Codex Free and Antigravity compared on what each official page actually publishes, plus the end of Gemini Code Assist's free tier.

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Free AI Coding Agents in 2026: What $0 Actually Gets You

Copilot, Cursor and Codex describe their free tiers mainly as an “allowance” or “limited”, and only Copilot adds a hard number (2,000 completions per month). Antigravity is the exception: it says “unlimited” for Tab and Command, with basic weekly rate limits. One free option is gone: Gemini Code Assist for individuals stopped serving requests on June 18, 2026. This guide is built from official pricing and docs pages. Where a cap is not published, it says so; where it draws a reading the page does not state outright, it says that too.

The four tools still offering a $0 tier, per their official pages, are GitHub Copilot Free, Cursor Free, ChatGPT Codex Free, and Google Antigravity Individual. Gemini Code Assist’s free individual tier gets its own section below.

Short version: only Copilot Free publishes a hard number (2,000 code completions per month). Antigravity publishes “unlimited” Tab completions and Command requests, but its weekly quota is not quantified. Cursor Free and Codex Free publish only “limited” descriptors.

GitHub Copilot Free: the one with a published number

GitHub’s plans page lists Copilot Free with an “allowance of GitHub AI Credits,” agents marked “Limited,” and models set to “Auto model selection only.” The same page states Copilot Free is limited to 2,000 code completions per month. The exact monthly AI-credit figure is not published.

GitHub’s models and pricing reference states that 1 AI credit = $0.01 USD and that usage beyond an included allowance is billed in credits. Copilot Student is also free for verified students, but the plans page says it excludes third-party agents. Third-party agent access on Copilot Free is not stated.

Paid tiers on the same plans page: Pro at $10/month, Pro+ at $39/month, Max at $100/month, Business at $19/user/month, and Enterprise at $39/user/month.

Cursor Free: “limited” is the whole published spec

The Cursor pricing page lists Free at $0/month with “Limited agent requests” and “Limited Chat requests.” No numeric cap is published. The feature matrix marks Free as having Agent access, but not cloud agents, and third-party models at API list price are not included.

Paid tiers: Plus at $8/month, Premium at $30/month (4x Plus), Super at $100/month (15x), and Ultra at $200/month (50x). The Plus card bundles Grok models and states that only Grok models are available on that plan. That is a Plus-plan detail, not a general Cursor limit. Third-party model usage is billed separately on the Premium, Super and Ultra plans.

ChatGPT Codex Free: included, but no numeric cap

The Codex pricing page says Codex is included in ChatGPT Free, Go, Plus, Pro, Business, and Enterprise. The Free tier is described as “Test Codex Capabilities,” “Limited access to flagship model GPT-5.6,” and “Limited messages and uploads.” No numeric cap is published for Free.

The usage table on that page (for example, GPT-5.6 Luna at 250–2,000) covers Plus, Standard Business, and API key use. It does not apply to Free. The page notes that weekly limits may also apply.

Paid tiers: Go at $8/month, Plus at $20/month, and Pro from $100/month.

Google Antigravity Individual: unlimited on two counts, weekly quota unquantified

The Antigravity pricing page lists the Individual plan at $0/month, with access to a variety of agent models, unlimited Tab completions, unlimited Command requests, and basic weekly rate limits.

The plans doc says every plan gets unlimited Tab completions; the unlimited Command requests line comes from the pricing page only. For users not on Google AI Pro or Ultra, the doc describes “a meaningful quota, refreshed weekly,” plus a weekly rate limit, and gives no number for that quota. For Google AI Pro users it describes “a high, generous quota, refreshed every five hours until the weekly limit is reached.” The doc lists access to third-party models under Google AI Ultra. Which of those third-party models the Free tier gets is covered by the models page below, not the plans doc.

The models page, in its “Free & Google AI Plus” column, lists Gemini 3.8 Flash. It also lists three models as available on Free and slated for removal on November 2, 2026: GPT-OSS-120b, Claude Sonnet 4.6 (thinking), and Claude Opus 4.6 (thinking). Claude Sonnet 5.5 and Opus 5.5 (thinking) are listed for Google AI Pro on non-trial subscriptions, not for Free.

What changed: Gemini Code Assist’s free individual tier is gone

Google’s deprecation notice says that starting June 18, 2026, Gemini Code Assist IDE extensions stopped serving requests for the Gemini Code Assist for individuals, Google AI Pro, and Google AI Ultra tiers. The same applies to Gemini CLI usage. Login with Google no longer works for those IDE extensions or the CLI on those tiers.

Users on those tiers can migrate to the Antigravity family of products. Google’s Gemini CLI to Antigravity CLI announcement gives the same June 18 date. Standard and Enterprise subscriptions follow a separate deprecation schedule. For a $0 stack, the free individual Gemini option no longer works, and the migration target is Antigravity.

Side-by-side: the $0 comparison table

Tool Free allowance (as published) Model access at $0 Third-party / agent access at $0 Unpublished limits Source
GitHub Copilot Free 2,000 code completions/month; AI-credit allowance, exact figure not published Auto model selection only Agents “Limited”; third-party agent access on Free not stated Exact AI-credit allowance, agent limits Copilot plans
Cursor Free “Limited agent requests,” “Limited Chat requests”; numeric caps not published Not itemized on the Free card Cloud agents not included; third-party models not at $0 All numeric caps Cursor pricing
ChatGPT Codex Free “Limited messages and uploads”; numeric caps not published (the usage table is for Plus and Business) Limited access to flagship GPT-5.6 Third-party model access not stated All numeric caps Codex pricing
Google Antigravity (Individual) Unlimited Tab completions and Command requests; “a meaningful quota, refreshed weekly” (no number) Gemini 3.8 Flash (plus the removal-dated models in the next column) Claude Sonnet 4.6, Opus 4.6 (thinking) and GPT-OSS-120b on Free until November 2, 2026; Claude 5.5 models need non-trial Pro or a higher plan (models page) Weekly quota and rate-limit figures Antigravity pricing, plans, models

How to choose at $0

  • You want a published number for completions: Copilot Free is the only one with a published figure (2,000 per month).
  • You want unlimited Tab and Command, and can accept an unquantified weekly quota: Antigravity Individual.
  • You want to try Codex capabilities at no cost: Codex Free, knowing the Free-tier caps are undisclosed.
  • You want to try agent requests: Cursor Free or Copilot Free. Both label agents “Limited” and neither publishes a number.

FAQ

Is there still a free Gemini Code Assist plan for individuals? No. Google’s deprecation notice says that from June 18, 2026, the IDE extensions stopped serving requests for the individuals, Google AI Pro and Google AI Ultra tiers, and Gemini CLI usage is covered the same way. Google points users to the Antigravity family of products.

How many code completions does Copilot Free include? The Copilot plans page says Copilot Free is limited to 2,000 completions per month. Its AI-credit allowance for agent use is not given as a number.

Does Cursor Free publish usage numbers? No. The Cursor pricing page describes Free as “Limited agent requests” and “Limited Chat requests” and gives no figure.

Is Codex included in the free ChatGPT plan? Yes. The Codex pricing page says Codex is included in ChatGPT Free, Go, Plus, Pro, Business and Enterprise. Free is described as “Limited messages and uploads,” and the usage table on that page lists Plus, Standard Business and API key use, not Free.

Which Antigravity models are available on the free plan? Per the models page, Free includes Gemini 3.8 Flash, plus Claude Sonnet 4.6 (thinking), Claude Opus 4.6 (thinking) and GPT-OSS-120b, which are marked for removal on November 2, 2026.

The Bottom Line

No free AI coding agent in this comparison documents its limits in full. Copilot Free publishes one hard number (2,000 completions per month), Antigravity Individual publishes “unlimited” Tab and Command but no weekly quota, and Cursor Free and Codex Free publish only “limited” descriptors.

For a bootstrapper, Copilot Free is the choice with a verifiable completions limit, and Antigravity is the one with the broadest unlimited language. One caution on Antigravity: its Free model lineup changes on November 2, 2026, when GPT-OSS-120b and the Claude 4.6 models are slated for removal. Students should check Copilot Student’s exclusions. Anyone still on the old Gemini Code Assist individual tier needs to migrate, because that tier stopped serving requests on June 18, 2026.

How This Guide Was Built