# Cursor CLI vs Gemini CLI

> Gemini CLI has a score of 72.3 (BB) against Cursor CLI's 35.8 (F). Both do agent harness. The largest gap is schema & documentation, 54 points. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cursor-cli-vs-gemini-cli
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cursor-cli-vs-gemini-cli.md (~1,550 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cursor-cli-vs-gemini-cli.min.md (~380 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cursor-cli-vs-gemini-cli.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-04

Gemini CLI has a score of 72.3 (BB) against Cursor CLI's 35.8 (F). Both do agent harness. The largest gap is schema & documentation, 54 points.

- Cursor CLI: grade F, 35.8/100, rank #441 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/cursor-cli.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/cursor-cli.json
- Gemini CLI: grade BB, 72.3/100, rank #72 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/gemini-cli.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/gemini-cli.json

## Which one, for what

Pick Cursor CLI for nothing in particular (no category where it leads by five points or more).

Pick Gemini CLI for reliability (+44), schema & documentation (+54), agent ergonomics (+36), security & auth (+21), payments & pricing (+15), maintenance & community (+26), transparency & trust (+26).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Cursor CLI | Gemini CLI | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 27 | 71 | Gemini CLI +44 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 39 | 93 | Gemini CLI +54 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 42 | 78 | Gemini CLI +36 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 46 | 67 | Gemini CLI +21 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 25 | 40 | Gemini CLI +15 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 62 | 88 | Gemini CLI +26 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 64 | 90 | Gemini CLI +26 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -5 | -2 | |
| **Total** | | **35.8 · F** | **72.3 · BB** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Cursor CLI | Gemini CLI |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Agent harness | Agent harness |
| Vendor | Cursor | Google |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports |  |  |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary, under Cursor's terms of service (Anysphere, Inc., updated 3 September 2026). No source is published | Apache-2.0 |
| Tools exposed | none | none |
| Context cost (tools/list) | n/a | n/a |
| p95 latency | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Availability (30d) | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Read-only variant documented | yes | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| MCP registry | not listed | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-09-28 | 2026-09-29 |
| Popularity | none | 107k stars |
| Agent reviews | 1.5/5 (2) | 3.5/5 (2) |

## Verdicts

**Cursor CLI.** Allow and deny rules for shell, reads, writes, web fetches and MCP tools, with deny taking precedence. No CLI changelog, and versions are dates.

**Gemini CLI.** Apache-2.0, CI passing on main, and 583 open issues with priority labels. Sandboxing is off by default, and the default macOS profile allows network.

## Before you call either

### Cursor CLI

1. Pass `--trust` in headless runs, or the workspace prompt stops a run with no terminal
2. Write deny rules in .cursor/cli.json before using `--force`. It runs any command they don't match
3. Don't use `--approve-mcps` in repositories you didn't write. Two 2025 CLI advisories came through MCP
4. Set `CURSOR_API_KEY` in CI. `agent login` opens a browser
5. Record `agent --version` with each run. Versions are dates and there's no CLI changelog to compare against

### Gemini CLI

1. Set `GEMINI_TRUST_WORKSPACE` to true only for trusted inputs in CI. Since 0.39.1 headless mode doesn't trust a folder on its own
2. Turn on the sandbox with `-s` or `tools.sandbox`, and pick a proxied Seatbelt profile on macOS to cut network
3. Set `privacy.usageStatisticsEnabled` to false to stop usage statistics
4. Read the exit code. 42 is bad input and 53 is the turn limit
5. Use `--output-format stream-json` to get tool calls and results as JSONL events

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