Claude Code vs Antigravity: Anthropic's and Google's coding agents compared

What is the difference between Claude Code and Antigravity?

Claude Code is Anthropic's agentic coding tool for Claude models; Antigravity is Google's agentic development platform, built around Gemini models. Both read your code, edit files, run commands, plan work, and support rules, Agent Skills, subagents, hooks and MCP servers. The main differences are the models, how you pay, and how each product is packaged.

Claude Code is one engine that runs in your terminal, IDE, a desktop app and the browser. Antigravity is a family of surfaces: a desktop app for managing agents, the agy CLI, extensions for five IDEs, its own Antigravity IDE and a Python SDK. Antigravity has a $0 plan; Claude Code needs a paid Claude plan or API access.

Everything below comes from the official docs and pricing pages as of 24 October 2026.

How does Claude Code work?

Claude Code is "an agentic coding tool that reads your codebase, edits files, runs commands, and integrates with your development tools." You install it and run claude in a project:

# macOS, Linux, WSL
curl -fsSL https://claude.ai/install.sh | bash

cd your-project
claude

The same engine runs in the terminal, VS Code, JetBrains IDEs, a desktop app and the web, and the docs say your CLAUDE.md files, settings and MCP servers "work across all of them." For scripts and CI, claude -p "query" runs one task and exits.

Claude Code uses Claude models. In its model configuration docs, the opus, sonnet and haiku aliases resolve to Opus 5.5, Sonnet 5.5 and Haiku 5.5 on the Anthropic API, and fable resolves to Fable 5.1 for your hardest, longest tasks.

Permission modes control how much runs without asking: Manual (default), acceptEdits, plan, auto, dontAsk and bypassPermissions. Claude Code also saves a checkpoint before each prompt, and /rewind takes your files back.

How does Antigravity work?

Google's Antigravity overview says it "delivers native agentic assistance across purpose-built product surfaces, with dynamic reasoning controls, multi-agent orchestration, and enterprise-grade security." Its surfaces:

• Antigravity App: "A standalone desktop application for launching, orchestrating, and inspecting autonomous agent teams with visual diff and plan inspection." It runs on macOS, Windows and Linux.
• Antigravity CLI (agy): "A keyboard-first terminal client that runs Antigravity workflows in local shells, remote cloud environments, and SSH sessions."
• IDE extensions for VS Code, JetBrains IDEs, Visual Studio, Zed and Xcode, plus the standalone Antigravity IDE. Every plan includes unlimited Tab completions.
• Antigravity SDK, a Python SDK for building your own agents.

# macOS, Linux
curl -fsSL https://antigravity.google/cli/install.sh | bash
agy --version

# headless: one prompt, then exit
agy -p "summarize what changed in the last commit" --output-format json

A distinctive idea in Antigravity is artifacts: structured deliverables such as implementation plans, code diffs, architecture diagrams, images and browser recordings. You review them at milestones and leave feedback before the agent changes files.

For safety, Antigravity uses Deny, Ask and Allow rules on top of presets. The Default preset runs terminal commands in a sandbox limited to your workspace and temp directories with no network access, and asks before running anything outside it. The CLI has default, accept-edits, auto (preview) and plan modes, and Shift+Tab cycles between them.

How do Claude Code and Antigravity compare side by side?

Which models and plans does each one need?

Claude Code. Claude's pricing page says "Claude Code is included in all paid plans." As of October 2026:

• Pro: $20 a month billed monthly, or $17 a month billed annually.
• Max: from $100 a month, with 5x or 20x Pro usage.
• Team: Standard seats at $25 a month billed monthly ($20 annually), Premium seats at $125 ($100 annually).
• The Free plan does not include Claude Code.

You can also pay per token with a Claude Console account, or run it through Amazon Bedrock, Google Cloud's Agent Platform or Microsoft Foundry. See the Claude Code pricing guide for more.

Antigravity. The pricing page offers a $0 plan for individuals with "Basic weekly rate limits," unlimited Tab completions and unlimited Command requests. Google AI Pro and Ultra add higher limits and a flexible AI credit pool. On Google's plans page, as of October 2026 (US prices), Pro is $19.99 a month and Ultra starts at $99.99 a month. Gemini Enterprise Standard and Plus seats start at $30 a month.

Model access depends on the plan. Antigravity's models page lists:

• Free and Google AI Plus: Gemini 3.8 Flash, Claude Sonnet 4.6 and Opus 4.6, and GPT-OSS-120b. The page says the last three "Will be removed on November 2, 2026."
• Google AI Pro: adds Gemini 4 Argon, and Claude Sonnet 5.5 and Opus 5.5 for non-trial subscriptions.
• Google AI Ultra and Enterprise: Gemini 4 Argon and the Claude 5.5 models, with more Gemini options on Enterprise.

One caution: the plans page lists "Access to third-party models" as an Ultra benefit, so check your plan in the app before you rely on Claude models there.

How do they handle rules, skills and MCP?

This is where you can save the most duplicated work.

Instructions. Antigravity's rules docs say it loads AGENTS.md or GEMINI.md from each directory as it walks up from the file it is editing, plus .agents/rules/*.md. Claude Code reads CLAUDE.md, and its memory docs say it can read AGENTS.md in place of CLAUDE.md. So one AGENTS.md serves both. If you keep a CLAUDE.md, start it with @AGENTS.md to import the shared file. The CLAUDE.md vs AGENTS.md guide covers the setup.

Skills. Both use SKILL.md folders. Antigravity's skills docs call skills "an open standard," and Claude Code's say its skills "follow the Agent Skills open standard." The folders differ: Claude Code reads .claude/skills/, and Antigravity defaults to .agents/skills/. Keep one copy and symlink or copy it into the other folder. Claude Code adds its own frontmatter fields that Antigravity may ignore; the Claude Code skills guide lists them.

MCP and plugins. Both are MCP clients. Antigravity keeps servers in mcp_config.json files, and its plugins bundle skills, agents, rules, MCP servers and hooks. Claude Code plugins bundle similar pieces. Neither format installs directly in the other tool.

Which should you pick?

Pick based on your models, your budget and how you like to work.

Claude Code tends to fit when:

• You want Anthropic's newest Claude models, including Fable 5.1, as the core of your workflow.
• You already pay for a Claude plan, or want per-token billing through the Console or a cloud provider.
• You live in the terminal and want the same setup in VS Code, JetBrains, the desktop app and the browser.
• You want fine-grained permission modes for CI, from dontAsk to auto.

Antigravity tends to fit when:

• You want to start at $0, or you already pay for Google AI Pro or Ultra.
• You want Gemini 4 Argon and Gemini 3.8 Flash, with some Claude models depending on your plan.
• You prefer reviewing plans, diffs and browser recordings as artifacts in a desktop app.
• You want Tab autocomplete, or extensions for Visual Studio, Zed or Xcode.

Many teams will try both. Keep shared instructions in AGENTS.md and skills in one folder you copy or link, and switching costs little. For a model-level view, see Claude vs Gemini for coding. For the older Google terminal agent, see Gemini CLI vs Claude Code.

Keep your prompts and skills portable

The instructions you build up outlast any one agent. Kipt keeps your prompts and Agent Skills as Markdown in a private GitHub repo you own, and installs every skill into Claude Code or Codex with one npx skills add command. If you have a prompt you keep pasting into an agent, the free SKILL.md generator turns it into a skill folder you can drop into .claude/skills/ or .agents/skills/.