Best AI Coding Agent in your command line program without breaking a bank

TLDR - Rovo dev CLi by Atlassian. Why?

• Based on Claude Code

• Uses Claude Sonnet 4. Update: they also just started giving a choice between Sonnet and GPT-5

• 20 Million tokens per 24 hours in free usage

That’s the post.

You wanted more?

I will give 2nd place to Claude Code. In terms of actual usability of the code being generated and overall usability of the CLi, Claude would rank first. But as the posts’s title it’s also about not breaking your bank;-)

And claude is pricey for a serious usage($20 mo account won’t cut it). And API method will eat your tokens like my hungry cousin at a wedding.

What about Gemini CLI / OpenAI Codex / Qwen CLI

My personal experience so far has not been great. Yours might vary. You should try it out all and choose the one that works for your use case.