Google AntigravityvsTrae
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
6.01 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.”
Trae
ByteDance · AI-native IDE
#79MCP
Panel
5.91 spec wins
- Reliability
- 5.3
- Usefulness
- 6.2
- Cost
- 6.5
- Longevity
- 5.5
“The $3 Lite plan is the cheapest seat on this board, courtesy of a parent company that never needed you to pay for anything.”
Spec by spec
| Spec | Google Antigravity | Trae |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | ||
| Category | AI-native IDE | AI-native IDE |
| Runs | local | local, cloud |
| Platforms | macos, linux, windows | macos, linux, windows |
| 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 | Yes |
| 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. | YesAI can drive TraeCode's built-in browser tab - opening pages, clicking, filling forms and validating rendering - or an external Chrome instance, once enabled under Settings > Browser (https://docs.trae.ai/ide/browser-use). The built-in Chat agent cannot control the browser. |
| 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. | YesAgent commands run in a restricted, isolated environment with per-project filesystem and network policy in ~/.trae/sandbox.json; Linux isolation is implemented via bubblewrap, and allowlisted command prefixes deliberately bypass the sandbox. |
| Multi-agent orchestration | Yes | Yes |
| Headless / CI mode | Yes | NoConfirmed false: Trae ships only the desktop IDE; no CLI, print/exec mode or CI runner appears anywhere in the documentation index. |
| Models | ||
| Backbone | Gemini 3.1 Pro, Gemini 3.8 Flash, Claude Sonnet 4.6, Claude Opus 4.6, gpt-oss-120b | Gemini, GPT, DeepSeek |
| 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. | YesThe custom-model flow accepts an arbitrary API format, request URL and key, so any self-hosted OpenAI- or Anthropic-compatible endpoint works alongside the preset providers. |
| Cost | ||
| Pricing model | mixed | mixed |
| Starts at | $20/mo | $3/mo |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Bring your own key | Yes | Yes |
| Openness | ||
| Open source | No | No |
| License | proprietary | proprietary |
| GitHub stars | 2,446 | n/a |
Which one would each critic pick
| Critic | Google Antigravity | Trae | Pick |
|---|---|---|---|
| El Juez | — | — | not enough reviews |
| El Amigo | 7.0 | 6.8 | Google Antigravity — Pick Antigravity if you want several agents running at once with a browser checking their work; pick Cursor if you want one agent that edits well and stays out of the way. |
| El Crítico | 6.3 | 5.8 | Google Antigravity — Agents drive your editor, terminal and a live Chrome with no container between them and your machine; the only isolation on offer is a git worktree. |
| El Profesor | 6.3 | 5.5 | Google Antigravity — No benchmark is published; the design bet is verification by artifact, with plans, walkthroughs and screenshots the human reviews instead of raw tool logs. |
| La Inversora | 7.3 | 5.8 | 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 | 5.5 | Trae — Enterprise means contacting BytePlus, the pricing page lists no SSO or audit log, and the security questionnaire's first question is where the prompts go; not yet. |
| El Hacker | 4.0 | 6.0 | Trae — Closed source, but any compatible endpoint with my own key, local models, an mcpServers config and subagents; more knobs than I expected from a ByteDance IDE. |
Picks are derived from each critic's own scores. Humans vote on matchups on the duels page.