Last time I tested Codex on a cheap plan, it barely lasted an hour? I think this was for the $20 plan. I was afraid to try the more expensive plan after that. Not sure, I might just outright rip my Claude Code bandaid if the current usage quotas do die off after the 17th or whatever date they said they would "return on".

You wouldn't be leaving Claude Code, just trying something new. If you don't like it just resume using Claude.

If you can afford to test it seriously, running both in parallel, it's worth a test to see which you prefer. If you can't, don't bother. You're not likely missing anything since they are close to personal preference with most people I know who have meaningfully tried both preferring Claude

A few less obvious niceties of Codex:

- built-in image generation using your subscription, which can be super handy

- can actually edit Google Docs and Google Sheets (Claude can only create new or sometimes append)

- I get a surprising amount of mileage out of the $20 plan

They both have their places for sure.

They blocked Claude from being used in a different harness as well squeezed the usage like crazy. Switched to Codex and haven't cared since.

Between the two the biggest difference by far is ... getting your harness / AGENTS.md / skills / tools set up right.

Don't know about consensus, but I personally still find Opus to be better for sniffing codebase intent and checking things as a whole, while Codex seems more detail-oriented for individual files.

Claude Code is not the model, it's the harness. You can use any model you want with Claude Code to varying degrees of success. I use Qwen3.6-27b daily with Claude Code as an example.

Not sure there's going to be a consensus, but I can tell you that when i have codex review claude-written code, it finds important gaps and fixes. The reverse is also true. Both are powerful, but even better when used in combination

The answer is it depends. Claude's generally better at frontend and debugging tasks, while Codex is stronger at backend features and exploratory work. They have very different coding styles and thus very different strengths.

It's trivial to try another agent. You can spend $20 for a monthly subscription and ask it to import all your settings from Claude Code.

For me the biggest shift was using Deepseek through an American provider with reasonix as the harness, making cache hits at a rate of practically free.

Try OpenCode and you can point it at either model

There was just a study showing that when presented blindly no one could tell the difference yet users were avid they could

Have been long time clauder but honestly codex feels much more liberating. Something you can't buy..

I wish they open source their desktop app and built-in skills one day. That would be a final blow for me.

like others said in the thread: much less drama and i'll add much less attitude from the company and the models, overall i'm having much calmer experience with codex, hope it stays that way

I use both especially for checking each others work. Pretty happy with results

Codex UI is way way way better than Claude Code

- codex UI is much more responsive

- i get feedback about the progress easily

- the tool calls and results are very legible, I can click them and see the progress

- no one talks about this but the tool call and response notification are handled much more elegantly in Codex. In Claude Code, it is handled in a clunky way using loops which always causes some delay

- you can steer the conversation midway in Codex

- /side is underrated (/btw is the equivalent and is much worse in Claude Code)

- I have to admit subagents are handled better in Claude Code

With the exception of Fable which is going away anyway, Codex is better especially after the last couple Opus releases. It’s also no longer slower than Claude.

You get much more generous usage from the 20x plan.

And you get far better uptime.

If benchmarks and early tester impressions are accurate, you also get access to Fable level capability at greater speed and lower cost (included in subscription).

They are both excellent but excel in different areas. Fable is super super proactive and great for doing a LOT of work with a single prompt, also for creative work.

Codex is more details focused, often catches wonky bugs and correctness issues that Fable misses, feels more terse and less "friendly", more like a stern senior engineer versus a friendly talkative engineer (Claude). Codex is also better if you're already an engineer, Claude is better for non-engineers. I.e. Codex works better if you know exactly what you want and know the right way of explaining it.

just try it you will back to codex because gpt is trash, I ask for refund under 7 hours

I use Claude for planning, writing CRs, and code review.

Codex writes all of the code, no exceptions.

Works great, especially when you ask Claude to break up large CRs into roughly 10 minutes of Codex work each.

In my projects, Claude writes and Codex reviews, and I've had a lot of code I've been very happy with out of that, although as of today, Grok _also_ reviews, and finds interesting new stuff.

> I'm hesitant to leave Claude Code behind for something new.

Codex and Claude Code are not mutually exclusive, you can use both.

I use both constantly for different things. You don't need to be a one-model Andy

Claude Code is a massively bloated agent harness.

Try Pi: https://pi.dev/

It honestly baffles me how people can ask a question like this and get such a wide spectrum of answers in response. It's all so much based on vibes and anecdotal evidence. I've not really noticed much of a difference in capability since Opus 4.6 and I've used a ton of different models. They all work pretty damn well for me.

I've subscribed to ChatGPT/Codex for over a year and tried a Claude sub twice 1 month each, with a gap of several months in between.

I tried them both side by side, mostly for reviewing existing Godot/GDScript code, or sometimes generating Swift Mac apps, including converting ancient relics I wrote eons ago in Visual Basic on Windows

Codex was consistently better than Claude: https://i.imgur.com/jYawPDY.png

Besides the useless "This is good" findings while reviewing and the excessive "oops you're right" backtracking, Claude's atrocious UX and borderline "spyware" make me never want to try an Anthropic product again for a long long while.

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Literally every top model is identical and anyone saying otherwise is engaging in astrology.

The codex software is garbage compared to Claude, but open source is the future, so you should at least switch.

It's not clear replies to this thread aren't openAI employees or incentivized influencers, but every benchmark has gpt-5.5 underperforming opus 4.8, sometimes by as much as 10%.

Can they all be wrong/paid-off?