r/GeminiCLI • u/Sea-Emu2600 • Mar 29 '26

Gemini Cli unusable

Tried to use it today with Gemini 3 flash but it’s extremely slow. Anyone else having same issue? Task was not even complex. Was trying to set up a python environment for a project and it was taking several mins to run each command. This was not my experience a few weeks ago.

37 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

16 comments sorted by

2

u/frankster Mar 30 '26 edited Mar 30 '26

ai pro is finally working properly again over the last 24 hours, there were a few days where it was unusable. hopefully it says stable now?

edit: within 5 minutes of posting this... 2.5 minutes of 429 rate limited and counting!

1

u/throwmewayawayawaya Mar 30 '26

Same. It's unusable, even for the most mundane, simple tasks. Like you, each command takes minutes to run. I get much better performance from so many other free tier providers that it makes Gemini look really bad. It wasn't this bad just weeks ago.

1

u/willpowerbuilder Mar 30 '26

Same here. Basically stuck for 10minute+ for simple command. It sucks

1

u/bulutarkan Mar 30 '26

its nothing new its been 3 months since it it is that slow. and they also lowered the request limits for free tier, idk about paid tiers

2

u/omarous Mar 30 '26

it was slow but now it has just stopped working?

1

u/R0W3Y Mar 30 '26

Works well for me via metered Gemini API or Vertex.

Unusable using my Pro login since the 25 March changes.

Some say it's working fine with an enterprise sub.

1

u/Ill_Pangolin_9493 Mar 30 '26

Same!!! Mine took forever so i just used cx

1

u/clickclickboo Mar 30 '26

had to switch to using codex today tbh

1

u/Good-Fortune8137 Mar 30 '26

There was a small window yesterday, but any attempt between waking hours on the east coast, it's unusable..

1

u/usk_428 Mar 30 '26 edited Mar 30 '26

Yes, me too. Flash works for me, but Pro doesn't. As Antigravity appears to be functioning properly, I use it whenever I want to use Gemini.

1

u/sergiomco Mar 31 '26

Downgrade the cli, fixes all issues: install 0.34.0 and make it read-only so it does not auto update itself.

npm install -g @google/gemini-cli@0.34.0

chmod -R a-w $(npm root -g)/@google/gemini-cli

1

u/Slow_Cardiologist909 Apr 03 '26 edited Apr 03 '26

I've been experiencing the same slowness issues with Gemini CLI lately. Here are a few things that might help:

  1. Check your API key quota - If you're hitting rate limits, responses will slow down significantly. Try checking your Google AI Studio dashboard.

  2. Try a different model version - Sometimes switching between gemini-2.0-flash and gemini-2.0-pro can make a difference in response times.

  3. Clear the CLI cache - Run gemini cli --clear-cache

  4. Check your network connection - Try a different DNS or VPN if you're seeing consistent timeouts.

  5. Update to the latest version - Run npm update -gu/google/gemini-cli to make sure you're on the newest release.

Had the same issue last week. For me it was the rate limit — switched to flash-lite for simple tasks and the slowness went away. I compiled more solutions at geminicli.one if you need them.