The best alternatives to Jules
Jules might not be the right fit: the price, a missing feature or a payment model you don't like. These are the closest alternatives in our catalog, ordered by rating, with the full review of each one.
Why look for a Jules alternative
Jules is still the cheapest way to try an agent that works on its own, with 15 free tasks a day and three in parallel. The official changelog has not moved since 9 March 2026, nearly five months now, it is still labelled a public beta, and paid plans can only be bought with a personal Gmail account.
What its own users repeat in the August 8, 2026 sweep:
- The official changelog has not moved since 9 March 2026, almost five months of silence in a product competing with tools that ship every week (strong theme)
- Paid plans can only be bought with a personal Gmail account, so a Workspace or company account leaves you on the free one whether you like it or not (strong theme)
- Google still labels it a public beta and warns that only English is officially supported and that capacity is not guaranteed (present theme)
- Its public documentation makes it impossible to know which model powers the free plan today, because three live official surfaces declare three different models (present theme)
- The Jules site publishes no prices, only task quotas, and to find the cost you have to go to the Google AI subscriptions page, where no figure appears either (present theme)
Best alternatives to Jules
OpenAI's coding agent, included with ChatGPT: local in your terminal or in the cloud.
Cognition's autonomous engineer, now across four surfaces: Desktop (the former Windsurf), Cloud, CLI and Review.
Google's terminal agent, open source with a generous free tier.
What the internet says about each alternative
OpenAI Codex 4/5 · Free + from $8
The official pricing page confirms today the same figures as always: Free at $0, Go at $8. Release pace was high this week: version 0.147.0 on 7 August adds Cursor skill imports and an Agent Plugins catalogue, plus redacting secrets and tokens from the on-screen history, and 0.146.1 on 5 August applies stricter automatic reviews for cyber-capable models. Neither fixes what the sensitive-files exclusion request is asking for, which remains administratively closed since June with a duplicate request still open. July's case of a private repository pushed without permission to OpenAI infrastructure remains the only documented one, with no second occurrence this week.
Where it wins: Entry stays cheap, confirmed today on the official site: a Free plan at $0 a month and a Go at $8 with Codex access, without having to go through the $20 Plus tier Where it slips: The issue asking to exclude sensitive files was closed administratively on 29 June 2026 without the repository showing any new feature or changelog entry to back it up, and a duplicate request remains open asking for the same thing. The on-screen secret redaction that shipped on 7 August hides the display, it does not stop the model from reading the file
Devin 3.5/5 · Free + from $20
A quiet week for anything that can be scored. The price stays exactly the same, confirmed today on devin.ai/pricing: Free $0, Pro $20 a month, Max $200 a month, Teams $80 a month plus $40 per seat. Cognition kept announcing corporate moves, the TierZero acquisition on 20 July and FedRAMP High certification on the 13th, but neither has yet turned into a feature, price or integration a buyer would notice today in the Devin they use: TierZero is still at the "bring its capabilities in" stage and FedRAMP is regulatory compliance, not product. With no dated fact to move an axis, the picture stays as it was.
Where it wins: It works asynchronously on long repetitive tasks, which is where teams with migration backlogs say they gain time Where it slips: Cost per unit of work is the central complaint: consumption spikes on long projects and the allowance runs out sooner than expected
Gemini CLI 3.3/5 · Free
Nothing structural has changed: the 18 June 2026 cutoff still stands, with no requests served to the free plan nor to Google AI Pro and Ultra, replaced by Antigravity CLI. The repository is not abandoned, it still ships nightly builds nearly daily and keeps its Apache 2.0 licence. What this sweep adds is that Google's own pages do not even agree with each other: the quota documentation states 250 daily requests for the free API key, while the repository README and the geminicli.com homepage still advertise the 60 requests per minute and 1,000 per day plan that is no longer served to individual accounts, six weeks after the shutdown.
Where it wins: The code stays open under Apache 2.0 and the repository ships nightly builds nearly daily, with no archive or read-only notice Where it slips: The free path for individual developers is gone: since 18 June 2026 it serves no requests for the free plan nor for Google AI Pro and Ultra
Comparison table
| Tool | Price | Free trial | Platforms | Rating | Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jules | Free | No | Web | VisitJules (opens in a new tab) | |
| OpenAI Codex | Free + from $8 | No | Web, macOS, Windows | VisitOpenAI Codex (opens in a new tab) | |
| Devin | Free + from $20 | No | Web | VisitDevin (opens in a new tab) | |
| Gemini CLI | Free | No | macOS, Windows | VisitGemini CLI (opens in a new tab) |
Still unsure? Read the full review of Jules?