Google AntigravityvsTheia IDE
Generated from the two spec rows. Green marks the better value where a spec has a clear direction. Everything else is just different.
Google Antigravity
Google · AI-native IDE
#68MCP
Panel
6.03 spec wins
- Reliability
- 5.3
- Usefulness
- 6.7
- Cost
- 6.2
- Longevity
- 5.8
“Google's own IDE ships Claude and gpt-oss next to Gemini, the most honest model review Google has ever published.”
Theia IDE
Eclipse Foundation · AI-native IDE
#10OSSMCP
Panel
7.33 spec wins
- Reliability
- 6.7
- Usefulness
- 6.3
- Cost
- 8.5
- Longevity
- 7.5
“It includes a PR Reviewer agent inside the editor, so you can now be rejected before you have even pushed.”
Spec by spec
| Spec | Google Antigravity | Theia IDE |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | ||
| Category | AI-native IDE | AI-native IDE |
| Runs | local | local, cloud |
| Platforms | macos, linux, windows | macos, linux, windows, web |
| Context window | not documented | not documented |
| Protocols | ||
| MCP client | Yes | Yes |
| MCP server | No | No |
| Capabilities | ||
| Runs terminal commands | Yes | Yes |
| Multi-file edits | Yes | Yes |
| Git operations | Yes | YesThrough the GitHub and PR Reviewer chat agents and the IDE's built-in Git support. |
| Browser control | YesA first-party browser subagent drives Chrome from a separate profile with allowlist/denylist controls (https://antigravity.google/docs/ide/browser/); IDE-side only, not in the agy CLI. | No |
| Sandboxed execution | YesOS-level isolation rather than containers: "no virtual machines or Docker images to manage" - Linux uses kernel namespaces to isolate the filesystem, hide host processes and cut networking; macOS uses sandbox-exec with Seatbelt (SBPL) profiles. | No |
| Multi-agent orchestration | Yes | YesTheia ships several named chat agents plus an Orchestrator agent that routes a request to the right one. |
| Headless / CI mode | Yes | No |
| Models | ||
| Backbone | Gemini 3.1 Pro, Gemini 3.8 Flash, Claude Sonnet 4.6, Claude Opus 4.6, gpt-oss-120b | any |
| Bring your own model | YesSetting `modelProvider: "gemini"` in ~/.gemini/antigravity-cli/settings.json plus a GEMINI_API_KEY runs the CLI on your own key and billing instead of a signed-in Google account, and a model selector picks between Gemini, Claude and gpt-oss models in the IDE. | Yes |
| Local models | YesGOOGLE_GEMINI_BASE_URL sends model requests to any Gemini-compatible endpoint, so a self-hosted shim works as a mechanism; no Ollama or LM Studio integration is documented. | YesOllama, llamafile and any OpenAI-compatible endpoint such as vLLM are documented LLM providers. |
| Cost | ||
| Pricing model | mixed | byok |
| Starts at | $20/mo | $0/mo |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Bring your own key | Yes | Yes |
| Openness | ||
| Open source | No | Yes |
| License | proprietary | EPL-2.0 |
| GitHub stars | 2,446 | 21,709 |
Which one would each critic pick
| Critic | Google Antigravity | Theia IDE | Pick |
|---|---|---|---|
| El Juez | — | — | not enough reviews |
| El Amigo | 7.0 | 7.0 | no preference |
| El Crítico | 6.3 | 6.8 | Theia IDE — It runs VS Code extensions from Open VSX rather than the Microsoft marketplace, so an extension your team depends on may simply not be there. |
| El Profesor | 6.3 | 7.5 | Theia IDE — An Orchestrator agent routes a request to a specialised one, which is explicit dispatch rather than a single prompt pretending to be several. |
| La Inversora | 7.3 | 7.0 | Google Antigravity — Google is bundling the IDE into Google AI Pro and Ultra subscriptions, distribution no startup on this board can match and a roadmap no buyer controls. |
| La Jefa | 5.3 | 6.8 | Theia IDE — Zero licence cost across sixty desks and a desktop install on each of them, with no console, no central policy and nothing that runs in a pipeline. |
| El Hacker | 4.0 | 8.5 | Theia IDE — EPL-2.0, every prompt template is editable by me, and Ollama or llamafile are documented providers, so the whole editor runs with nothing leaving the machine. |
Picks are derived from each critic's own scores. Humans vote on matchups on the duels page.