Forem: Douglas Mendes

OpenCode vs Claude Code vs Copilot vs Gemini: Very Simple Review

Douglas Mendes — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 06:01:55 +0000

Quick Summary

This is my hands-on very simple comparison of Gemini CLI, Copilot CLI, Claude Code, and OpenCode after months of real usage.

This is based on my personal experience, not a benchmark.

Why I tested these tools

NGL, I am a bit of a terminal nerd (I am a Neovim user btw) and I love trying new tools that can make my development workflow faster.

When I first heard about these CLIs, I was really excited to see how they would perform in real daily work, and of course see for myself what these tools could do, instead of being an AI doomer or getting caught in AI hype.

The SUT

Tools:

Gemini CLI
Copilot CLI
Claude Code CLI
OpenCode CLI

Time spent in order of usage:

Gemini CLI: ~3 months
Copilot CLI: 1.5 months
Claude Code CLI: 1 month
OpenCode CLI: 1.5 months

What I care about

Fast (response time, and overall speed in my workflow)
Performance (CPU and memory usage, quality of the output, etc...)
Number of providers and integrations available
Simple
Reliable
Open to the community

Tool by tool

Gemini CLI

The worst CLI of all for me. To be honest, I started with Google because my company was paying for Gemini Pro, so I ended up using it for a few months, but I never really felt I could trust it for daily work. The experience felt broken, with random HTTP errors, unclear token limit feedback, and a slow and clunky UI. The worst part was waiting several seconds for the Gemini model to answer, only to discover that for some random reason it was not available, and then I had to switch to a mini or older model just to make it work.

What did not work for me:

Token limit feedback felt unclear
Random HTTP errors happened too often
Slower feel in daily usage
UI responsiveness felt rough
Some sessions started looping and output quality dropped
429 HTTP errors were so annoying

Copilot CLI

Copilot, most of the time, worked well and was a good assistant in the terminal, but it did not feel like a game changer for me. It felt more like a nice-to-have.

What did not work for me:

The monthly limits. I hit the limits multiple times and it was really frustrating, especially when you are in the middle of a workflow and suddenly cannot use the tool anymore. Compared with OpenAI and Anthropic, the limits feel more "generous" and reset every 5 hours.

Claude Code CLI

Overall the tool is good, and when you come from Copilot CLI or Gemini CLI (🪦) it feels like a big step up in capabilities and quality. But it did not fit my workflow and had too many bugs. It froze a lot and slowed down my computer by eating memory and CPU.

What worked:

PLAN mode that lets you set a plan and execute it with the assistant (I really like this approach)
Limits reset every 5 hours (sooo good)
A lot of integrations with third-party tools out of the box, such as GitHub, Slack, etc.

What did not work for me:

Felt clunky in my workflow
UI errors were annoying (elements vanishing on scroll, or not rendering properly, should we blame React for that?)
Hangs and freezes happened sometimes, especially in longer workflows
CPU and memory usage can get crazy sometimes

OpenCode

OpenCode was the latest tool I tested and it was a really pleasant surprise. It felt fast and responsive, the UI is simple and clean, and the open source and community-friendly direction is really nice. I also like that it has many integrations with other tools and services. It feels like a tool built for me.

What worked:

Speed
Simplicity
Open source and community-friendly direction
Very easy way to see sessions and share it with other users
Local model support
Crazy amount of providers that you can connect. you can easily connect your subscriptions from Z.ai, Zen.ai, OpenAI, Anthropic, GitHub Copilot, and more.

What did not work for me:

Missing plugins to show quota limits for each provider, such a boomer
Some integrations are not available out of the box compared with Claude Code.

Final take

For my workflow, OpenCode was the easy winner.
Claude Code was usable but clunky for me.
Copilot CLI was good but the monthly limits were a deal breaker for me.
Gemini CLI was the hardest to trust in daily use.

My Tech Stack in 2025

Douglas Mendes — Mon, 21 Apr 2025 21:02:14 +0000

Well, this year I decided to start writing down some of my tech experience for two reasons: first, to improve my communication skills, and second, to find out if I can create a good habit and have some fun 😊.

So, for my first post, I decided to share my tech stack for 2025, I won't dive into detailed reasons why I selected these tools, I'll just use brief descriptions, for now, and plan to create a separate posts for the relevant ones in the future. Let's dive in.

Productivity

Office: Google Workspace

Gmail is excellent for handling emails, and using Google Docs for document sharing makes it a pretty solid choice, if you ask me.

Today, many online tools provide the Google SSO, so anything related to my work can be handled in one account. Nothing against Microsoft Office 365, but honestly, when I'm using the M$ tools, I feel like my hair is turning white and I'm losing years of my youth.

Communication: Slack

The newer generation of developers often prefers to use Discord to handle team communication. I don't have a strong opinion on it, but I find Slack is superior in some keys aspects:

Thread Management
Tools and Integration
Task Board and Canvas

However, if you're on a tight budget or just starting a company, Discord can be a good solution.

BTW, I know some of you might mention "Microsoft Teams", please, let's be honest, Teams is the worst.

Project Management: Github Projects

Github projects is faster and simpler than Jira and involves less context switching if you're already working with Github to store, share, and collaborate on code projects.

Office AI: Gemini

I used to use ChatGPT for general-purpose tasks, but lately, Gemini 2.5 Pro has really impressed me. Since the company I work for pays for Gemini, it will be my choice for this year.

Launcher & Command Palette: Raycast

Raycast changed the way I work on my Mac forever. The amount of shortcuts I can use to get the job done is insane! As someone who hates using a mouse or trackpad, having everything accessible using my keyboard is awesome, from my calendar events to GitHub repos and more.

Windows Management: AeroSpace

AeroSpace is an i3-like tiling window manager for macOS. I've been testing AeroSpace for 4 months or so and have no complaints about it.

Development

I am a Software Engineering Manager, but I still code. I strongly believe that everyone in this role should too. So, the tools I will list here are pretty much what a developer would use.

Front-End: NextJS

If you're not an expert front-end developer(like me) and unsure which framework to pick, NextJS/ReactJS is a solid option. As someone who isn't strong in front-end, I rely heavily on AI assistance like Copilot or tools like Cursor to craft my code. My feeling is that the code generated by these tools for NextJS/ReactJS, is more consistent and less prone to errors compared to frameworks like Svelte/VueJS.

Back-End: NodeJS and GO

Go for personal projects which I love the simplicity and NodeJS on my work place to pay may bills and survive =) .

Data base: MongoDB

Yeap, I know it gets a lot of hate, but having used it for about 3 years, I can say it's the best database option for startups out there, fast, reliable and flexible. I'll create a post dedicated to this topic soon =).

Container: Docker

One of my best friends! Not much to say here.

PDE (Personalized Development Environment): Neovim

I'm a TUI (Terminal User Interface) guy, I love terminal apps!

That's where Neovim comes in for me. It enables you to build your own coding env piece by piece, it's like assembling an IDE with Lego blocks. It's crazy fast, and once you get past the initial learning curve of the VIM motions, your life changes forever 😂.

AI assistants: copilot & avante.nvim

These two are my go-to assistants for smart code completion and boilerplate generation.

We all know Copilot, the smart AI code completion, that helps ~80% of the time and boosts productivity.

Then there's avante.nvim which emulates the Cursor experience in Neovim. I am currently using it with Gemini 2.5 Pro, and the results are pretty good =).

Terminal: Ghostty

The best GPU-accelerated Terminal out there! it's super snappy, fast and it's built using ZIG lang.

These are not all the tools I use, but they are the ones I use the most.

Cheers!