Google Antigravity is Googles new agentic development platform, and it’s in layman's terms a specialized IDE with a AI chatbot trained specifically for coding. What sets it apart is the massive flexibility in model selection. You can pivot between Gemini 3.1 Pro, Gemini 3 Flash, Claude Opus 4.6, and even GPT-OSS-120b. It positions itself as a “freer” alterative to tools like Cursor, primarily because its rate limits replenish weekly on the individual plan rather than monthly, this in turn offers a much more forgiving pace for power users.
First Impressions: Redesigning with an Agent
I first put Antigravity to the test by redesigning the front end of my CTF write-up portfolio. I wanted an aesthetic that was similar to Cyberpunk 2077, which is a style far beyond my skill set. So, I imported the project and set the agent to work as my own personal junior developer.
Using Gemini 3.1 Pro for the heavy lifting, the tool quickly installed shadcn components and overhauled the UI. While the initial red colour scheme lacked the contrast needed to distinguish elements clearly, and a few image imports broke in subsequent requests. Switching to Claude Opus for the final polish allowed me to over back to a cleaner, terminal-style green them that felt more like what I had intended.
Antigravity vs. Cursor: Why the Shift?
I prefer Antigravity over Cursor mainly because of how it handles usage ceilings. On Cursor’s individual plan, hitting your limits means you are basically stuck until the following month, which is a massive bottleneck mid-project. However, Antigravity’s weekly resets eliminate that “usage anxiety” and let you iterate aggressively. Furthermore, the ability to hump between Gemini for logic and Claude for refinement within the same agentic workflow makes it feel less like an IDE extension and more like a true mission control for your code
The Breakdown: Pros and Cons
Pros
- Weekly Rate Limit Resets: There is no more mid-month throttling. The weekly replenishment is a game-changer for high-volume developers.
- Unrivaled Model Flexibility: Natively toggling between top-tier models like Claude and Gemini within one workspace is a massive advantage for cross-verifying complex logic
- High-Speed Prototyping: It excels at "one-shotting" entire features, building the foundation of my CTF portfolio redesign in seconds.
Cons
- Resource Intensity: Running the agentic engine alongside local Chrome instances causes noticeable battery drain and occasional input lag.
- UI Stability: Being in a "rawer" state, I encountered disappearing sidebar icons and broken extension support for specific web frameworks.
- Agent Hallucinations: During the overhaul, the model occasionally created helper files that didn't exist or broke existing imports, requiring some manual cleanup.
Final Verdict
Ultimately, Google Antigravity is a glimpse into a future where the IDE acts more like an orchestration platform than a text editor. While it has some rough edges and a heavy hardware footprint, the "agent-first" workflow makes it a compelling choice for developers who want a tool that functions like a junior engineer. It has officially earned a spot in my daily development stack.
Are you sticking with Cursor's stability, or are you ready to trade some battery life for Antigravity’s weekly limits and model flexibility?
References
Visual Studio Magazine. (2025). Google’s Antigravity IDE Sparks Forking Debate -- Visual Studio Magazine. [online] Available at: https://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2025/11/21/googles-antigravity-ide-sparks-forking-debate.aspx [Accessed 16 Apr. 2026].
Google Antigravity. (2025). Google Antigravity. [online] Available at: https://antigravity.google/.
Shah, P. (2026). I tried Cursor, Claude Code, and Google Antigravity for a month and I have a clear winner for you. [online] XDA. Available at: https://www.xda-developers.com/tried-cursor-claude-code-google-antigravity-for-month/ [Accessed 16 Apr. 2026].
Cursor.com. (2022). Cursor. [online] Available at: https://cursor.com/home.