AI Agent CLI Tool Trends by npm Download Numbers
- This article was written manually.
- Data used is up to August 25, 2025.
I’m Oikon. I work as a software engineer at a foreign company.
AI agent CLI tools have been quite the topic lately.
- Claude Code
- Gemini CLI
- Codex CLI
- Cursor CLI
- Open Code
- Aider
- Cline
And so on.
Codex CLI in particular has been getting attention since GPT-5 was released in early August. I personally wanted to verify Codex CLI’s momentum with actual numbers, which led me to write this article.
This time, I’d like to create graphs based on “npm download numbers” for Claude Code, Gemini CLI, and Codex CLI, and summarize AI agent CLI tool trends.
I’ll provide more details on the following post in this article:
Investigation Method
CLI Tools Under Investigation
We’ll investigate the following 3 AI agent CLI tools provided by major model providers:
- 🟧 Claude Code
- 🟦 Gemini CLI
- 🟩 Codex CLI
(Colors are used in the graphs)
As an aside, Grok is also a major model from xAI, but no CLI tool was offered at the time of writing. While community OSS exists, no official CLI tool has been released from xAI, so it’s not included this time.
Data
This time we’ll use npm download numbers to understand usage trends for each tool.
Download numbers were obtained using npm’s Downloads API, getting daily download numbers from 2025-06-27 to 2025-08-25.
The API output returns date and download numbers in JSON format.
For example, Claude Code’s API can be accessed at the following endpoint:
Claude Code:
Similarly for Gemini CLI and Codex CLI:
Gemini CLI:
Codex CLI:
Investigation Results and Analysis
All Tools
Claude Code, Gemini CLI, and Codex CLI on the same graph.
Release order and graph ranking roughly match. While Codex CLI seems to be trending, looking at download numbers alone there’s still a big gap with Claude Code, showing the importance of getting to market early and capturing share.
Interestingly, weekday download numbers are high while weekends are low. Most people are indeed using these for work.
Let’s look at each AI agent CLI tool individually.
🟧 Claude Code
Claude Code has been the front-runner since its February release, with top download numbers among these AI agent CLI tools. Download numbers are steadily growing.
It recorded about 1.5 million/day on August 12th, likely heavily influenced by Sonnet 4’s gradual 1M context unlock and availability via Amazon Bedrock and Vertex AI. Around August 15th, there were complaints that “Claude Code has gotten dumber”, which I think may be related to the user increase.
🟦 Gemini CLI
Gemini CLI has had the second-highest download numbers after Claude Code since its late June release. However, the peak was right after release, and it’s been flat since then.
Recently, features like custom slash command support were added. Since it’s usable for free to some extent, I see it being used by CLI beginners or as a sub-tool to Claude Code.
Depending on major updates like Gemini 3.0 in the future, it could turn upward, but for now it’s neither here nor there.
🟩 Codex CLI
Codex CLI was released in mid-April but didn’t become much of a topic until August. In early August, GPT-5 was released and flat-rate Codex CLI usage was announced, so it suddenly recorded about 20,000/day.
Since then, with repeated updates and GPT-5’s performance being recognized, users have been gradually increasing. Current download numbers are trending upward.
IDE integration was added from version 0.25.0, so I think it will continue to grow its share.
Aside 1: For Those Who Want to See the Latest Graphs
By the way, you can create the same graphs I made on a site called TanStack.
Aside 2: Feature Comparison
I personally created a feature comparison table to understand which tools have which features. I created the table using my own work + DeepResearch. For reference:
Summary and Notes
This article compiled AI agent CLI tool trends as a memo.
The current landscape as I understand it:
- Claude Code has the #1 share
- Gemini CLI follows
- Codex is trending and getting attention for performance
npm download numbers are just an indicator of adoption momentum, so please take them as reference.
Personally, I mainly use Claude Code while recently using Codex CLI more often. I want to stay nimble and try various things while considering the overhead of switching AI tools.
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References