Google Antigravity 2.0: We Ran It for Real Work. Here's the Verdict.

Between January and March 2026, Google quietly reduced Antigravity’s free-tier quota from 300 million to 9 million input tokens: a 96% cut that effectively killed the free tier overnight. The Register documented the protests; what surprised us was that the Pro tier ($20/month) didn’t escape the damage: subscribers hit 7-day account lockouts after just 20 minutes of real coding work, and Google’s I/O 2026 response was a new $100 plan that doesn’t address the core opacity.

We spent the last week on Antigravity 2.0 to find out if the new desktop app and CLI tooling justified staying. Spoiler: we’re recommending Cursor instead.

What Antigravity 2.0 Actually Changed

Google announced Antigravity 2.0 at I/O on May 19, shipping a new desktop application for multi-agent orchestration and a CLI tool that migrates developers away from the older Gemini CLI. The new Gemini 3.5 Flash model runs at 289 tokens per second—faster than older Gemini 3.1 Pro.

The pricing ladder now spans Free, Pro ($20/mo), AI Ultra ($100/mo), and AI Premium ($200/mo). On paper, this looks like reasonable positioning. In practice, the quota enforcement breaks that promise.

The Quota Problem Nobody Talks About

Before January 2026, a Gemini Pro subscriber could run 300+ million input tokens per week. XDA documented what happened after: the system shifted to a weekly refresh with a “compute effort” ceiling so opaque that developers report hitting lockouts without understanding why.

We tested a straightforward workload: refactor a 600-line TypeScript file, build a small Astro component, run a multi-turn debug session. After 18 minutes of active use, our Pro account locked for 7 days. Vibecoding’s breakdown notes that Google still won’t publish the credit-to-token conversion rate, so you genuinely cannot plan around these limits.

The Pro tier is, in effect, a demo. The AI Ultra tier ($100/mo) unlocks 5x higher limits, but that’s an $1,200-per-year commitment for a tool that should compete with $20-per-month alternatives.

What We Tested

We ran Antigravity 2.0 on three tasks: a TypeScript refactor (medium complexity), a fresh Astro component build, and a debugging session across a multi-file Node.js project. The desktop app interface is clean, multi-agent orchestration is a nice differentiator, and the new CLI is genuinely useful for developers who live in the terminal.

None of that matters when you hit the 7-day lockout after 18 minutes.

We didn’t test the Ultra or Premium tiers. At $100-per-month, an indie developer is not going to pay five times Cursor’s price for an equivalent feature set. If you’re building an enterprise workflow, Google’s pricing may make sense; we can’t recommend what we haven’t tested at scale.

Antigravity vs Cursor vs Windsurf: The $20 Reality

At $20/month, Cursor Pro gives you predictable, unlimited access. Our Cursor 3 review covers background agent features; it’s a straightforward value play. Windsurf 2.0 adds background agents and a different UX, and the direct comparison between Cursor and Windsurf is worth reading if you’re torn between them.

Antigravity wins on architectural elegance and multi-agent orchestration. Cursor wins on predictability. Windsurf wins on background agents. Antigravity loses on every metric that matters for the $20 tier: you don’t know your quota ceiling, you don’t know when you’ll hit a lockout, and $100-per-month is a cliff, not a ladder.

The CLI Angle: Where Antigravity Actually Wins

The one legitimately interesting move in 2.0 is replacing Gemini CLI with a native Antigravity CLI. Check our comparison of Gemini CLI against Amp and Claude Code’s terminal agent if terminal-based agent workflows are your thing. The new CLI is faster, less clunky, and actually usable for rapid prototyping. The quota disaster is real. The tool itself is solid. Those two things are both true.

Verdict: Skip Pro, Wait for Clarity

We’re not recommending Antigravity Pro in 2026. Not because the tool is bad, but because Google hasn’t solved the opacity problem. When you can’t predict your lockouts, a $20-per-month subscription is a gamble, not a commitment.

If your $20 is going toward AI tooling, spend it on Cursor Pro for code work (predictable, unlimited). If you’re in content or SEO, SEMrush’s AI Visibility toolkit is designed for teams managing AI-generated content at scale. We’ve covered the Antigravity credit math in detail if you want to understand what you’re actually paying for.

Google built something technically impressive. They just haven’t built something we can recommend until the quota system becomes honest.

—We cry about AI tools so you don’t have to.