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We were heavy users of Claude Code ($70K+ spend per year) and have almost completely switched to codex CLI. I'm doing massive lifts with it on software that wou

We were heavy users of Claude Code ($70K+ spend per year) and have almost completely switched to codex CLI. I'm doing massive lifts with it on software that would never before have been feasible for me personally, or any team I've ever run. I'll use Claude Code maybe once every two weeks as a second set of eyes to inspect code and document a bug, with mixed success. But my experience has been that initially Claude Code was amazing and a "just take my frikkin money" product. Then Codex overtook CC and is much better at longer runs on hard problems. I've seen Claude Code literally just give up on a hard problem and tell me to buy something off the shelf. Whereas Codex's ability to profoundly increase the capabilities of a software org is a secret that's slowly getting out. I don't have any relationship with any AI company, and honestly I was rooting for Anthropic, but Codex CLI is just way way better. Also Codex CLI is cheaper than Claude Code. I think Anthropic are going to have to somehow leapfrog OpenAI to regain the position they were in around June of this year. But right now they're being handed their hat.

maherbeg 1y ago
Yeah this has been my experience as well. The Claude Code UI is still so much better, and the permissioning policy system is much better. Though I'm working on closing that gap by writing a custom policy https://github.com/openai/codex/blob/main/codex-rs/execpolicy/README.md https://github.com/openai/codex/blob/main/codex-rs/execpolic... Kinda sick of Codex asking for approval to run tests for each test instance
- rtfeldman 1y ago
  You don't have to use Codex in its terminal UI - e.g. you can use it in the Zed IDE out-the-box: https://zed.dev/blog/codex-is-live-in-zed https://zed.dev/blog/codex-is-live-in-zed
  - PantaloonFlames 1y ago
    And also in emacs or neovim https://xenodium.com/introducing-acpel https://xenodium.com/introducing-acpel
- mmaunder 1y ago
  Ah the tension between cybersecurity best practices and productivity is brutal right now.
  - maherbeg 1y ago
    lol yeah, but mostly just want to allow more types of reads for getting context, and primarily for test running / linting etc. I shouldn't have to approve every invocation of `pytest` or `bazel test`.
    - fragmede 1y ago
      --dangerously-bypass-approvals-and-sandbox isn't enough for you?
      - maherbeg 1y ago
        I don't want unlimited writes. I basically want to unlock nearly everything but approve writes in some scenarios.
        fragmede 1y ago
        Where do unix permissions and a different user and extended attributes fall short for that?
durron 1y ago
Do you find this to still be true with the Sonnet 4.5 model?
- esafak 1y ago
  I don't. Sonnet is faster too.
- extr 1y ago
  IMO Sonnet 4.5 is great but it just isn’t as comprehensive of a thinker. I love Anthropic and primarily use CC day to day but for any tricky problems or “high stakes, this must not have bugs” issues, I turn to Codex. I do find if you let Codex run on it its own too long it will produce comparably sloppy or lacking-in-vision type issues that people criticize Sonnet for, however.
  - PantaloonFlames 1y ago
    That’s a curious approach. Why would you use both? Why not just use the more reliable dependable option for all purposes?
    - wrs 1y ago
      In my experience, there isn’t a model that is more dependable for all purposes. They each have some unique strengths.
    - extr 1y ago
      Sonnet 4.5/CC is faster, more direct, and is generally better at following my intent rather than the letter of my prompt. A large chunk of my tasks are not "solve this concurrency bug" or "write this entire feature" but rather "CLI ops", merging commits, running a linter, deploying a service, etc. I almost use it like it was my shell. Also while not quite as smart, it's a better pair programmer. If I'm feeling out a new feature and am not sure how exactly it should work yet, I prefer to work with Sonnet 4.5 on it. It typically gives me more practical and realistic suggestions for my codebase. I've noticed that GPT-5 can jump right into very sophisticated solutions that, while correct, are probably not appropriate. Sonnet 4.5: "Why don't we just poll at an interval with exponential backoff?" GPT-5: "The correct solution is to include the data in the event stream...let us begin by refactoring the event system to support this..." That said, if I do want to refactor the event system, I definitely want to use Codex for that.
mi_lk 1y ago
What model are you using respectively? Not sure I share your observations
- mmaunder 1y ago
  Have tried all and continue to eval regularly. I spend up to 14 hours a day. Currently recovering from a herniated disk because I spent 6 weeks sitting at a dining room table, 14 hours a day, leaning foward. Don't do that. lol. So my coverage is pretty good. I'm using GPT5-codex-high for 99% of my work. Also I have a team of 40 folks, about a third of which are software engineers and the other third are cybersecurity analysts, so I get feedback from them too and we go deep on our engineering calls re the latest learnings and capabilities.
bcrosby95 1y ago
Yeah, after correcting it several times I've gotten Claude Code to tell me it didn't have the expertise to work in one of my problem domains. It was kinda surprising but also kinda refreshing that it knew when to give up. For better or worse I haven't noticed similar things with Codex.
- mmaunder 1y ago
  I've chosen problems with non-negotiable outcomes. In other words, problem domains where you either are able to clearly accomplish the very hard thing, or not, and there's no grey area. I've purposely chosen these kinds of problems to prove what AI agents are capable of, so that there is no debate in my mind. And with Codex I've accomplished the previously impossible. Unambiguously. Codex did this. Claude gave up. It's as if there are two vendors saying they can give up incredibly superpowers for an affordable price, and only one of them actually delivers the full package. The other vendor's powers only work on Tuesdays, and when you're lucky. With that situation, in an environment as competitive as things currently stand, and given the trajectory we're on, Claude is an absolute non-starter for me. Without question.
  - corndoge 1y ago
    Can you expound a bit on the problem domains? I am curious
  - Aeolun 1y ago
    I don’t think Claude is actually incapable, you just spend a lot of time telling it to yes, please actually do the difficult thing. Do not give up halfway through. Codex says “This is a lot of work, let me plan really well.” Claude says “This is a lot of work, let me step back and do something completely different that you didn’t ask for.”
  - skybrian 1y ago
    We need product reviewers who can demonstrate things like this in public. Without details, "it works for me on my projects" only goes so far.
cesarvarela 1y ago
Can you share an example of the tasks you found Codex being much better? From my experience Claude Code is much better.
- mmaunder 1y ago
  I can not. We're all racing very hard to take full advantage of these new capabilities before they go mainstream. And to be honest, sharing problem domains that are particularly attractive would be sharing too much. Go forth and experiment. Have fun with it. You'll figure it out pretty fast. You can read my other post here about the kinds of problem spaces I'm looking at.
  - deadbabe 1y ago
    Ah, super secret problem domains that have been thoroughly represented in the LLM training data. Nice.
  - mmaunder 1y ago
    I'm seeing the downvotes. I'm sorry folks feel that way. I'm regretting my honesty. Edit: I'd like to reply to this comment in particular but can't in a threaded reply, so will do that here: "Ah, super secret problem domains that have been thoroughly represented in the LLM training data. Nice." This exhibits a fundamental misunderstanding of why coding agents powered by LLMs are such a game changer. The assumption this poster is making is that LLMs are regurgitating whole cloth after being trained on whole cloth. This is a common mistake among lay people and non-practitioners. The reality is that LLMs have gained the ability to program, by learning from the code of others. Much like a human would learn from the code of others, and then be able to create a completely novel application. The difference between a human programmer an an agentic coder is that the agent has much broader and deeper expertise across more programming languages, and understands more design patterns, more operating systems, more about programming history, etc etc and it uses all this knowledge to fulfill the task you've set it to. That's not possible for any single human. It's important for the poster to take two realities on board: Firstly, agentic coding agents are not regurgitating whole cloth from whole cloth. Instead they are weaving new creations because they have learned how to program. Secondly, agentic coding agents have broader and deeper knowledge than any human that will ever exist, and they never tire, and their mood and energy level never changes. In fact that improves on a continuous basis as the months go by and progress continues. This means we can, as individual practitioners or fast moving teams, create things that were never before possible for us without raising huge amounts of money and hiring large very expensive teams, and then having the overhead of lining everyone up behind a goal AND dealing with the human issues that arise, including communication overhead. This is a very exciting time. Especially if you're curious, energetic, and are willing to suspend disbelief to go and take a look.
lherron 1y ago
Still a toss-up for me which one I use. For deep work Codex (codex-high) is the clear winner, but when you need to knock out something small Claude Code (sonnet) is a workhorse. Also CC tool usage is so much better! Many, many times I’ve seen Codex writing a python script to edit a file which seems to bypass the diff view so you don’t really know what’s going on.
WXLCKNO 1y ago
I agree with this and actually Claude Code agrees with it too. I've had Codex cli (gpt-5-codex high) and claude code 4.5 sonnet (and sometimes opus 4.1) do the same lengthier task with the same prompt in cloned folders about 10x now and then I ask them to review the work in the other folder and determine who did the best job. 100% of the time Codex has done a far better job according to both Codex and Claude Code when reviewing. Meeting all the requirements where Claude would leave things out, do them lazily or badly and lose track overall. Codex high just feels much smarter and more capable than Claude currently and even though it's quite a bit slower, it's work that I don't have to go over again and again to get it to the standards I want.
- pkreg01 1y ago
  I share your observations. It's strange to see Anthropic loosing so much ground so fast - they seemed to be the first to crack long-horizon agentic tasks via what I can only assume is an extremely exotic RL process. Now, I will concede that for non-coding long-horizon tasks, GPT-5 is marginally worse than Sonnet 4.5 in my own scaffolds. But GPT-5 is cheaper, and Sonnet 4.5 is about 2 months newer. However, for coding in a CLI context, GPT-5-Codex is night-and-day better. I don't know how they did it.
  - typpilol 1y ago
    Every since 4.5, I can't get Claude to do anything that takes a while 4.0 would chug a long for 40 mins. 4.5 refuses and straight up says the scope is too big sometimes. My theory is anthropic is super compute constrained and even though 4.5 is smarter, the usage limits and it's obsession with rushing to finish was put in mainly to save their servers compute.
pkreg01 1y ago
I totally agree. I remember the June magic as well - almost overnight my abilities and throughput were profoundly increased, I had many weeks of late nights in awe and wonder trying things that were beyond my ability to implement technically but within the bounds of my conceptual understanding. Initially, I found Codex CLI with GPT-5 to be a substitute for Claude Code - now GPT-5 Codex materially surpasses it in my line of work, with a huge asterisk. I work in a niche industry, and Codex has generally poor domain understanding of many of the critical attributes and concepts. Claude happens to have better background knowledge for my tasks, so I've found that Sonnet 4.5 with Claude Code generally does a better job at scaffolding any given new feature. Then, I call in Codex to implement actual functionality since Codex does not have the "You're absolutely right" and mocked/placeholder implementation issues of CC, and just generally writes clean, maintainable, well-planned code. It's the first time I've ever really felt the whole "it's as good as a senior engineer" hype - I think, in most cases, GPT5-Codex finally is as good as a senior engineer for my specific use case. I think Codex is a generally better product with better pricing, typically 40-50% cheaper for about the same level of daily usage for me compared to CC. I agree that it will take a genuinely novel and material advancement to dethrone Codex now. I think the next frontier for coding agents is speed. I would use CC over Codex if it was 2x or 3x as fast, even at the same quality level. Otherwise, Codex will remain my workhorse.
- catigula 1y ago
  >I think, in most cases, GPT5-Codex finally is as good as a senior engineer for my specific use case. This is beyond bananas to me given that I regularly see codex high and Gpt-5-high both fail to create basic react code slightly off the normal distribution.
  - pkreg01 1y ago
    Do you mind if I ask what kind of React code you're working on? I've had good success using Codex for my frontend development, especially since all of my projects consistently rely on a pretty widely used and well documented component library. I realize that makes my use case fairly narrow, so I don't think I've discovered the limits you have.
asdev 1y ago
do you use the CLI or the web UI? or both?
poorman 1y ago
Totally agree. I was just thinking that I wouldn't want this feature for Claude Code but for Codex right now it would be great! I can simply let tasks run in Codex and I know it's going to eventually do what I want. Where as with Claude Code I feel like I have to watch it like a hawk and interrupt it when it goes off the rails.
dboreham 1y ago
This is going to be situation normal for 10 years: everyone will need to keep track of "model-du-jour" as each vendor makes incremental improvements.
sabareesh 1y ago
Similar feeling. Seems it is good at certain things and if something doesnt work it want to do things simply and in turn becomes something that you didnt ask for and certain times opposite of what you wanted. On the other hand with codex certain time you feel the AGI but that is like 2 out of 10 sessions. This is primarily may be due to how complete the prompt and how well you define the problems.
mvkel 1y ago
This is why Anthropic is a zombie company. They put all of their eggs in the coding basket, with the rest of their mission couched as "effective altruism," or "safetyism," or "solving alignment," (all terms they are more loudly attempting to distance themselves from[0], because it's venture kryptonite). Meanwhile, all OpenAI had to do was point their training cannon at it for a run, and suddenly Anthropic is irrelevant. OpenAI's focus as a consumer company (and growing as a tool company) is a safe, venture-backable bet. Frontier AI doesn't feel like a zero-sum game, but for now, if you're betting on AI at all, you can really only bet on OpenAI, like Tesla being a proxy for the entire EV industry. [0] https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/53Gc35vDLK2u5nBxP/anthropic-is-not-being-consistently-candid-about-their https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/53Gc35vDLK2u5nBxP/...
- F7F7F7 1y ago
  For non-vibe coding purposes I've found that my $200 Claude (Claude Code) account regularly outperformed my $200 ChatGPT (Codex) account. This was after 2 months of heavily testing both mostly in Terminal TUI/CLI form and most recently with the latest VSCode/Cursor incarnations. Even with the additional Sora usage and other bells & whistles that ChatGPT @ $200 provides, Claude provides more value for my use cases. Claude Code is just a lot more comfortable being in your workflow and being a companion or going full 'agent(s)' and running for 30 minutes on one ticket. It's also a lot happier playing with Agents from other APIs. There's nothing wrong with Anthropic wanting to completely own that segment and not have aspirations of world domination like OpenAI. I don't see how that's a negative. If anything, the more ChatGPT becomes a 'everything app' the less likely I am to hold on to my $20 account after cancelling the $200 account. I'm finding the more it knows about me the more creeped out and "I didn't ask for this" I become.
  - fragmede 1y ago
    Especially now that sama wants us to sext with ChatGPT
  - mvkel 1y ago
    > There's nothing wrong with Anthropic wanting to completely own that segment and not have aspirations of world domination It's very clear by their actions (not words) that they are shooting for the moon in order to survive. There is no path to sustainability as a collection of dev tools.
jswny 1y ago
I find Codex CLI to be very good too, but it’s missing tons of features that I use in Claude Code daily that keep me from switching full time. - Good bash command permission system - Rollbacks coupled with conversation and code - Easy switching between approval modes (Claude had a keybind that makes this easy) - Ability to send messages while it’s working (Codex just queues them up for after it’s done, Claude injects them into the current task) - Codex is very frustrating when I have to keep allowing it to run the same commands over and over, Claude this works well when I approve it to run a command for the session - Agents (these are very useful for controlling context) - A real plan mode (crucial) - Skills (these are basically just lazy loaded context and are amazing) - The sandboxing in codex is so confusing, commands fail all the time because they try to log to some system directory or use internet access which is blocked by default and hard to figure out - Codex prefers python snippets to bash commands which is very hard to permission and audit When Codex gets to feature parity, I’ll seriously look at switching, but until then it’s just a really good model wrapped in an okay harness
- deleted 1y ago
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- libraryofbabel 1y ago
  I don't think anyone can reasonably argue against Claude Code being the most full-featured and pleasant to use of the CLI coding agent tools. Maybe some people like the Codex user experience for idiosyncratic reasons, but it (like Gemini CLI) still feels to me rather thrown together - a Claude Clone with a lot of rough edges. But these CLI tools are still fairly thin wrappers around an LLM. Remember: they're "just an LLM in a while loop with access to tool calls." (I exaggerate, and I love Claude Code's more advanced features like "skills" as much as anyone, but at the core, that's what they are.) The real issue at stake is what is the better LLM behind the agent: is GPT-5 or Sonnet 4.5 better at coding. On that I think opinion is split. Incidentally, you can run Claude Code with GPT-5 if you want a fair(er) comparison. You need a proxy like LiteLLM and you will have to use the OpenAI api and pay per-token, but it's not hard to do and quite interesting. I haven't used it enough to make a good comparison, however.
  - 1y ago
kelvinjps10 1y ago
I did the opposite I switched to Claude code once the released the new model last week of the one before, I tried using codex, but there was issues with the terminal and prompting (multiple characters getting deleted) I found Claude code to have more features and less bugs, like the edit on vim for the prompt being really useful and find it better to iterate. Also I like more its tool usage and the use of the shell. Sometimes codex prefer to use python instead of doing the equivalent shell command. Maybe it's like the other people say here, that codex it's better for long running tasks, I prefer to give Claude small tasks and I'm usually satisfied with the result and I like to work alongside the agent
purnesh 1y ago
My experience is similar, but for me, Claude Code is still better when designing or developing a frontend page from scratch. I have seen that Codex follows instructions a bit too literally, and the result can feel a little cold. CC on the other hand feels more creative and has mostly given better UI. Of course, once the page is ready, I switch to Codex to build further.
catigula 1y ago
This is such an interesting perspective because I feel codex is hugely impressive but falls apart on any even remotely difficult task and is too autonomous and not eager enough. Claude feels like a better fit for an experienced engineer. He's a positive, eager little fellow.
p337 1y ago
On the topic of comparing OpenAI models with Anthropocene models, I have a hybrid approach that seems really nice. I set up an MCP tool to use gpt-5 with high reasoning with Claude Code (like tools with "personas" like architect, security reviewer, etc), and I feel that it SIGNIFICANTLY amplifies the performance of Claude alone. I don't see other people using LLMs as tools in these environments, and it's making me wonder if I'm either missing something or somehow ahead of the curve. Basically instead of "do x (with details)" I say "ask the architect tool for how you should implement X" and it gets into this back and forth that's more productive because it's forcing some "introspection" on the plan.
- jrk 1y ago
  This is an established, though advanced, idea. Sourcegraph Amp (https://sourcegraph.com/amp https://sourcegraph.com/amp) has had this exact feature built in for quite a while: "ask the oracle" triggered an O1 Pro sub-agent (now, I believe, GPT-5 High), and searching can be delegated to cheaper, faster, longer-context sub-agents based on Gemini 2.5 Flash.
CompoundEyes 1y ago
Claude Code is still good but I don’t TRUST it. With Claude Code and Sonnet I’m expecting failure. I can get things done but there’s an administrative overhead of futzing around with markdown files, defensive commit hooks and unit tests to keep it on rails while managing the context panic. Codex CLI with gpt-5-codex high reasoning is next gen. I’m sure Sonnet 5 will match it soon. At that point I think a lot of the workflows people use in Claude Code will be obsolete and the sycophancy will disappear.
nadermx 1y ago
I'm just happy alternatives exist.
slaymaker1907 1y ago
I haven’t used Codex a lot, but GPT-5 is just a bit smarter in agent mode than Claude 4.5. The most challenging thing I’ve used it for is for code review and GPT-5 somewhat regularly found intricate bugs that Claude missed. However, Claude seemed to be better at following directions exactly vs GPT-5 which requires a lot more precision.
swah 1y ago
I haven't been able to get anything done with Codex. Claude Code is fast and "gets it". Also does better at running and testing its own stuff. Its very odd because I was hoping they were very on par.
- acangiano 1y ago
  I use both but I agree that they are generally not on par. I find Claude Code does a better job and doesn't overengineer as much. Where sometime Codex does better is in debugging a tough bug that stumps Claude Code. Codex is also more likely to get lazy and claiming to have finished a large task, when it reality it just wrote some placeholder lines. Claude has never done that. They might be on par soon, however, and I think Anthropic is playing a dangerous game with their limit enforcement on people who are on subscriptions.
- jacurtis 1y ago
  The last time I used them both side by side was a month ago, so unless its significantly improved in the past month, I am genuinely surprised that someone is making the argument that Codex is competitive with ClaudeCode, let alone it somehow being superior. ClaudeCode is used by me almost daily, and it continues to blow me away. I don't use Codex often because every time I have used it, the output is next to worthless and generally invalid. Even if it does get me what I eventually want, it will take much more prompting for me to get the functioning result. ClaudeCode on the other hand gets me good code from the initial prompt. I'm continually surprised at exactly how little prompting it requires. I have given it challenges with very vague prompts where it really exceeds my expectations.
  - clarkmoreno 1y ago
    OpenAI astroturfing is a real thing. It's all over Twitter. Unsurprising but still wild to see it here on HN.
  - barneybooroo 1y ago
    I think the enthusiasm for Codex coincided with the extended period of degraded quality CC was experiencing around a couple of months ago? During that time I cancelled my Claude sub and tried out Codex, which by comparison was feeling significantly better. I haven't tried them out side by side since Claude has been de-borked but even if Codex is objectively poorer I could believe that flattering comparison has stuck for people who switched?
citizenpaul 1y ago
Does no one use Blocks Goose CLI anymore? I went to a hackathon in SF at the beginning of the year and it seemed like 90% of the groups used Goose to do something in their Agent project. I get that the CLI agent scene has exploded since then I just wonder what what is so much better in the competition?
blueside 1y ago
As we all know here, if the the title of this post was about Codex on the web, the top comment would have been about using Claude instead. YMMV, but this definitely doesn't track with everything I've been seeing and hearing, which is that Codex is inferior to Claude on almost every measure.
- dakom 1y ago
  fwiw I'm happy to see this - been trying to tackle a hairy problem (rendering bugs) and both models fail, but: 1. Codex takes longer to fail and with less helpful feedback, but tends to at least not produce as many compiler errors 2. Claude fails faster and with more interesting back-and-forth, though tends to fail a bit harder Neither of them are fixing the problems I want them to fix, so I prefer the faster iteration and back-and-forth so I can guide it better So it's a bit surprising to me when so many people are pickign a "clear winner" that I prefer less atm
bad_haircut72 1y ago
Im not saying this is a paid endorsement but the internet is dead and I wonder what openAI would pay, if they could, to get such a glowing review as top comment on HN
- a_victorp 1y ago
  This is an underrated comment
- visiondude 1y ago
  I completely agree with this. The amount of unprompted “I used to love Claude Code but now…” content that follows the exact same pattern feels really off. All of these people post without any prompts for comparison, and OP even refused to share specifics so we have to take his claim as ‘trust me bro’
  - loveparade 1y ago
    It doesn't feel off to me because that's the exact experience I've had as well. So it's unsurprising to me that many other people share that experience. I'm sure there is a bunch of paid promotion going on for all kinds of stuff on HN (especially what gets onto the front page), but I don't think this is one of those cases.
    - hattmall 1y ago
      I'm not saying it is, but if ANYTHING was the exact combination of prerequisites to be considered paid promotion on HN, this is the type of comment it would be.
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
      - hluska 1y ago
        So, let’s see if I get this straight. A highly identifiable person whose company sells a security product is the ideal shill? That doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. On the other hand, someone with a different opinion makes complete sense.
didibus 1y ago
Interesting, I find codex CLI is really bad, like the worst coding agent I've tried. Fails to escalate permissions, gets derailed, loves changing too many things everywhere. GPT5 is good, but codex is not.
hn_saver 1y ago
How did you spend $70k per year for a tool that's not a single year old?
- TkTech 1y ago
  API pricing rates probably. If I take a look at my current usage since it came out, it'd be about $12000 CAD if paid at API rates. Ridiculously easy to rack up absurd bills via the API, and I'm mostly just using it for code review. Someone using it heavily could easily, easily get way over 70k.
  - tstrimple 1y ago
    Also the statement was "We". It's not a single user's billable usage and we have zero details as to how many people made up "We". So any analysis into the cost or value are meaningless.
- koakuma-chan 1y ago
  Why did they not buy a subscription? It would be a flat fee.
  - NiloCK 1y ago
    At that spend, no subscription is available to serve that much traffic - they are all rate limited. I understand the 70K spend as a corporate expense, not an individual... right?
    - koakuma-chan 1y ago
      I haven't checked but it would make sense if each developer had their own rate limit.
tstrimple 1y ago
> I've seen Claude Code literally just give up on a hard problem and tell me to buy something off the shelf I've been seeing more of this lately despite initial excellent results. Not sure what's going on, but the value is certainly dropping for me. I'll have to check out codex. CLI integration is critical for me at this point. For me it is the only thing that actually helps realize the benefits of LLM models we have today. My last NixOS install was completely managed by Claude Code and it worked very well. This was the result of my latest frustrations: https://i.imgur.com/C4nykhA.png https://i.imgur.com/C4nykhA.png Though I know the statement it made isn't "true". I've had much better luck pursuing other implementation paths with CC in the same space. I could have prompted around this and should have reset the context much earlier but I was drunk "coding" at that point and drove it into a corner.
tonyhart7 1y ago
is is that better tho???? I thought claude code is still better in tool calling and something like that
013 1y ago
What are the usage limits for Codex compared to Claude Code?
spoiler 1y ago
My experience is that if I know what I want, CC will produce better code, given I specify it correctly. The planning mode is great for this too, as we can "brainstorm" and what I have seen help a lot is if I ask questions about why it did a certain way. Often it'll figure out on its own why that's wrong, but sometimes it requires a bit of course correction. On the other hand, last time I tried GPT-5 from Cursor, it was so disappointing. It kept getting confused while we were iterating on a plan, and I had to explain to it multiple times that it's thinking about the problem the same way. After a while I gave up, opened a new chat and gave it my own summary of the conversation (with the wrong parts removed) and then it worked fine. Maybe my initial prompt was vague, but it continually seemed to forget course corrections in that chat. I mostly tend to use them more to save me from typing, rather than asking it to design things. Occasionally we do a more open ended discussion, but those have great variance. It seems to do better with such discussions online than within the coding tool (I've bounced maths/implementation ideas off of while writing shaders on a personal project)
- baq 1y ago
  gpt-5-high is amazing, but so slow I'll revert to sonnet when I know what I need done on a low level. when making boilerplatish changes in the product in areas I'm not familiar with (it's a large codebase) gpt-5-high is a monster.
Rebuff5007 1y ago
> We were heavy users of Claude Code ($70K+ spend per year) Claude code has only been generally available since May last year (a year and half ago)... I'm surprised by the process that you are implying; within a year and a half, you both spent 70k on claude code, and knew enough about it and its competition to switch away from it? I dont think I'd be able to due diligence even if LLM evaluation was my fulltime job. Let alone the fact that the capabilities of each provider are changing dramatically every few weeks.
latexr 1y ago
Feels like with every announcement there’s the same comment: “this LLM tool I’m using now is the real deal, the thing I was using previously and spending stupid amounts of money on looked good but failed at XYZ, this new thing is where it’s at”. Rinse and repeat. Which means it wasn’t true any of the previous times, so why would it be true this time? It feels like an endless loop of the “friendship ended” meme with AI companies. https://knowyourmeme.com/editorials/guides/what-is-the-friendship-ended-with-mudasir-meme-and-why-did-the-friendship-end-the-viral-meme-explained https://knowyourmeme.com/editorials/guides/what-is-the-frien... It’s much more likely commenters are still in the honeymoon hype phase and (again) haven’t found the problems because they’re hyper focused on what the new thing is good at that the previous one wasn’t, ignoring the other flaws. I see that a lot with human relationships as well, where people latch on to new partners because they obviously don’t have the big problem that was a strain on the previous relationship. But eventually something else arises. Rinse and repeat.
- raducu 1y ago
  > “this LLM tool I’m using now is the real deal". GPT-5 is not the final deal, but it's incredibly good as is at coding. Anecdotal, but it's something completely else in terms of capabilities, ignore it at your own peril, but I think it will profoundly change software development.
  - hitarpetar 1y ago
    oh it's anecdata? then I don't care. show me evidence please
  - latexr 1y ago
    > ignore it at your own peril I’m not arguing for ignoring it, my point is different. > but I think it will profoundly change software development. The point is that this is said every time, together with “the previous thing to which the exact same praise was given, wasn’t it”. So it’s several rounds of “yes yes, the previous time the criticisms were right, but this time it’s different, trust me”. So everyone else is justified in being skeptical. No one wants AI to have the problems it has (technical, ethical, and others). If they didn’t it would be better for everyone. Criticism is a way of surfacing issues so they can be fixed. And sure, I’ll grant that some people want to bash the other side more than they want to arrive at the truth, but those exist in all sides of the argument (probably in roughly equal measure?). So to have a productive conversation we need to go in with the mindset of “we’re on the same side in the goal of not having this suck”.
pythonbase 1y ago
What is your general use case with Claude Code / Codex? $70K/year is a significant spend.
jakenuts 1y ago
Same!
virtualritz 1y ago
When you say Claude Code, what model do you refer to? CC with Opus still outperforms Codex (gpt-5-codex) for me for anything I do (Rust, computer graphics-related). However, Anthropic restricted Opus use for Max plan users 10 days or so ago severly (12-fold from 40h/week down to 5h week) [1]. Sonnet is a vastly inferioir model for my use cases (but still frequently writes better Rust code than Codex). So now I use Codex for planning and Sonnet for writing the code. However, I usually need about 3--5 loops with Codex reviewing, Sonnet fixing, rinse & repeat. Before I could use one-shot Opus and review myself directly, and do one polish run following my review (also via Opus). That was possible from June--mid October but no more. [1] https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/8449 https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/8449
- deaux 1y ago
  Agreed that Opus is stronger than Sonnet 4.5 and GPT-5 High. It's the bitter pill - bigger, more expensive models are just "smarter", even if it doesn't always show in synthetic benchmarks. Similar with o1-pro (now almost a year old, an eternity in this space) vs GPT-5 high. There's also GPT-5 Pro now, which comes at an API cost of $120/M output, and is also noticeably smarter, just like Opus. They all like to push synthetic benchmarks for marketing, but to me there's zero doubt that both Anthropic and OpenAI are well aware that they're not representative of logical thinking and creativity.
pinkbanana21 1y ago
I found using z.ai a performant and cheap alternative for some tasks: https://z.ai/subscribe?ic=VWKNBI8LR8 https://z.ai/subscribe?ic=VWKNBI8LR8 Costs are 6x cheaper and it's way faster and good at test writing and tool calling. It some times can be a bit messy though so use Gemini or Claude or codex for that hard problems....
dudeinhawaii 1y ago
In agreement. Large caveats that can explain differing opinions (that I've experienced) are: * Is really only magic on Linux or WSL. Mediocre on Windows * Is quite mediocre at UI code but exceptional at backend, engineering, ops, etc. (I use Claude to spruce up everything user facing -- Codex _can_ mirror designs already in place fairly well). * Exceptional at certain languages, OK at others. * GPT-5 and GPT-5-Codex are not the same. Both are models used by the Codex CLI and the GPT-5-Codex model is recent and fantastically good. * Codex CLI is not "conversational" in the way that Claude is. You kind of interact with it differently. I often wonder about the impact of different prompting styles. I think the WOW moment for me is that I am no longer returning to code to find tangled messes, duplicate silo'd versions of the same solution (in a different project in the same codebase), or strangely novice style coding and error handling. As a developer for 20yrs+, using Codex running the GPT-5-Codex model has felt like working with a peer or near-peer for the first time ever. I've been able to move beyond smaller efforts and also make quite a lot of progress that didn't have to be undone/redone. I've used it for a solid month making phenomenal progress and able to offload as-if I had another developer. Honestly, my biggest concern is that OpenAI is teasing this capable model and then pulls the rug in a month with an "update". As for the topic at hand, I think Claude Code has without a doubt the best "harness" and interface. It's faster, painless, and has a very clean and readable way of laying out findings when troubleshooting. If there were a cheap and usable version of Opus... perhaps that would keep Claude Code on the cutting edge.
TechDebtDevin 1y ago
Why waste so much time making your devs dumb. Just code brother, this is the dumbest tech in software right now wasting peoples brains away.
unsupp0rted 1y ago
This was my experience too until a couple weeks ago, when Codex suddenly got dumbed down. Initially, I had great success with codex medium- I could refactor with confidence, code generally ran on the first or second try, etc. Then when that suddenly dumbed down to Claude Sonnet 3.5 quality I moved to GPT5 High to get back what had been lost. That was okay for a few days. Now GPT5 High has dropped to Claude Sonnet 3.5 quality. There's nothing left to fallback to.

maherbeg 1y ago

Yeah this has been my experience as well. The Claude Code UI is still so much better, and the permissioning policy system is much better. Though I'm working on closing that gap by writing a custom policy https://github.com/openai/codex/blob/main/codex-rs/execpolicy/README.md https://github.com/openai/codex/blob/main/codex-rs/execpolic... Kinda sick of Codex asking for approval to run tests for each test instance

rtfeldman 1y ago
You don't have to use Codex in its terminal UI - e.g. you can use it in the Zed IDE out-the-box: https://zed.dev/blog/codex-is-live-in-zed https://zed.dev/blog/codex-is-live-in-zed
- PantaloonFlames 1y ago
  And also in emacs or neovim https://xenodium.com/introducing-acpel https://xenodium.com/introducing-acpel
mmaunder 1y ago
Ah the tension between cybersecurity best practices and productivity is brutal right now.
- maherbeg 1y ago
  lol yeah, but mostly just want to allow more types of reads for getting context, and primarily for test running / linting etc. I shouldn't have to approve every invocation of `pytest` or `bazel test`.
  - fragmede 1y ago
    --dangerously-bypass-approvals-and-sandbox isn't enough for you?
    - maherbeg 1y ago
      I don't want unlimited writes. I basically want to unlock nearly everything but approve writes in some scenarios.
      - fragmede 1y ago
        Where do unix permissions and a different user and extended attributes fall short for that?

durron 1y ago

Do you find this to still be true with the Sonnet 4.5 model?

esafak 1y ago
I don't. Sonnet is faster too.
extr 1y ago
IMO Sonnet 4.5 is great but it just isn’t as comprehensive of a thinker. I love Anthropic and primarily use CC day to day but for any tricky problems or “high stakes, this must not have bugs” issues, I turn to Codex. I do find if you let Codex run on it its own too long it will produce comparably sloppy or lacking-in-vision type issues that people criticize Sonnet for, however.
- PantaloonFlames 1y ago
  That’s a curious approach. Why would you use both? Why not just use the more reliable dependable option for all purposes?
  - wrs 1y ago
    In my experience, there isn’t a model that is more dependable for all purposes. They each have some unique strengths.
  - extr 1y ago
    Sonnet 4.5/CC is faster, more direct, and is generally better at following my intent rather than the letter of my prompt. A large chunk of my tasks are not "solve this concurrency bug" or "write this entire feature" but rather "CLI ops", merging commits, running a linter, deploying a service, etc. I almost use it like it was my shell. Also while not quite as smart, it's a better pair programmer. If I'm feeling out a new feature and am not sure how exactly it should work yet, I prefer to work with Sonnet 4.5 on it. It typically gives me more practical and realistic suggestions for my codebase. I've noticed that GPT-5 can jump right into very sophisticated solutions that, while correct, are probably not appropriate. Sonnet 4.5: "Why don't we just poll at an interval with exponential backoff?" GPT-5: "The correct solution is to include the data in the event stream...let us begin by refactoring the event system to support this..." That said, if I do want to refactor the event system, I definitely want to use Codex for that.

mi_lk 1y ago

What model are you using respectively? Not sure I share your observations

mmaunder 1y ago
Have tried all and continue to eval regularly. I spend up to 14 hours a day. Currently recovering from a herniated disk because I spent 6 weeks sitting at a dining room table, 14 hours a day, leaning foward. Don't do that. lol. So my coverage is pretty good. I'm using GPT5-codex-high for 99% of my work. Also I have a team of 40 folks, about a third of which are software engineers and the other third are cybersecurity analysts, so I get feedback from them too and we go deep on our engineering calls re the latest learnings and capabilities.

bcrosby95 1y ago

Yeah, after correcting it several times I've gotten Claude Code to tell me it didn't have the expertise to work in one of my problem domains. It was kinda surprising but also kinda refreshing that it knew when to give up. For better or worse I haven't noticed similar things with Codex.

mmaunder 1y ago
I've chosen problems with non-negotiable outcomes. In other words, problem domains where you either are able to clearly accomplish the very hard thing, or not, and there's no grey area. I've purposely chosen these kinds of problems to prove what AI agents are capable of, so that there is no debate in my mind. And with Codex I've accomplished the previously impossible. Unambiguously. Codex did this. Claude gave up. It's as if there are two vendors saying they can give up incredibly superpowers for an affordable price, and only one of them actually delivers the full package. The other vendor's powers only work on Tuesdays, and when you're lucky. With that situation, in an environment as competitive as things currently stand, and given the trajectory we're on, Claude is an absolute non-starter for me. Without question.
- corndoge 1y ago
  Can you expound a bit on the problem domains? I am curious
- Aeolun 1y ago
  I don’t think Claude is actually incapable, you just spend a lot of time telling it to yes, please actually do the difficult thing. Do not give up halfway through. Codex says “This is a lot of work, let me plan really well.” Claude says “This is a lot of work, let me step back and do something completely different that you didn’t ask for.”
- skybrian 1y ago
  We need product reviewers who can demonstrate things like this in public. Without details, "it works for me on my projects" only goes so far.

cesarvarela 1y ago

Can you share an example of the tasks you found Codex being much better? From my experience Claude Code is much better.

mmaunder 1y ago
I can not. We're all racing very hard to take full advantage of these new capabilities before they go mainstream. And to be honest, sharing problem domains that are particularly attractive would be sharing too much. Go forth and experiment. Have fun with it. You'll figure it out pretty fast. You can read my other post here about the kinds of problem spaces I'm looking at.
- deadbabe 1y ago
  Ah, super secret problem domains that have been thoroughly represented in the LLM training data. Nice.
- mmaunder 1y ago
  I'm seeing the downvotes. I'm sorry folks feel that way. I'm regretting my honesty. Edit: I'd like to reply to this comment in particular but can't in a threaded reply, so will do that here: "Ah, super secret problem domains that have been thoroughly represented in the LLM training data. Nice." This exhibits a fundamental misunderstanding of why coding agents powered by LLMs are such a game changer. The assumption this poster is making is that LLMs are regurgitating whole cloth after being trained on whole cloth. This is a common mistake among lay people and non-practitioners. The reality is that LLMs have gained the ability to program, by learning from the code of others. Much like a human would learn from the code of others, and then be able to create a completely novel application. The difference between a human programmer an an agentic coder is that the agent has much broader and deeper expertise across more programming languages, and understands more design patterns, more operating systems, more about programming history, etc etc and it uses all this knowledge to fulfill the task you've set it to. That's not possible for any single human. It's important for the poster to take two realities on board: Firstly, agentic coding agents are not regurgitating whole cloth from whole cloth. Instead they are weaving new creations because they have learned how to program. Secondly, agentic coding agents have broader and deeper knowledge than any human that will ever exist, and they never tire, and their mood and energy level never changes. In fact that improves on a continuous basis as the months go by and progress continues. This means we can, as individual practitioners or fast moving teams, create things that were never before possible for us without raising huge amounts of money and hiring large very expensive teams, and then having the overhead of lining everyone up behind a goal AND dealing with the human issues that arise, including communication overhead. This is a very exciting time. Especially if you're curious, energetic, and are willing to suspend disbelief to go and take a look.

lherron 1y ago

Still a toss-up for me which one I use. For deep work Codex (codex-high) is the clear winner, but when you need to knock out something small Claude Code (sonnet) is a workhorse. Also CC tool usage is so much better! Many, many times I’ve seen Codex writing a python script to edit a file which seems to bypass the diff view so you don’t really know what’s going on.

WXLCKNO 1y ago

I agree with this and actually Claude Code agrees with it too. I've had Codex cli (gpt-5-codex high) and claude code 4.5 sonnet (and sometimes opus 4.1) do the same lengthier task with the same prompt in cloned folders about 10x now and then I ask them to review the work in the other folder and determine who did the best job. 100% of the time Codex has done a far better job according to both Codex and Claude Code when reviewing. Meeting all the requirements where Claude would leave things out, do them lazily or badly and lose track overall. Codex high just feels much smarter and more capable than Claude currently and even though it's quite a bit slower, it's work that I don't have to go over again and again to get it to the standards I want.

pkreg01 1y ago
I share your observations. It's strange to see Anthropic loosing so much ground so fast - they seemed to be the first to crack long-horizon agentic tasks via what I can only assume is an extremely exotic RL process. Now, I will concede that for non-coding long-horizon tasks, GPT-5 is marginally worse than Sonnet 4.5 in my own scaffolds. But GPT-5 is cheaper, and Sonnet 4.5 is about 2 months newer. However, for coding in a CLI context, GPT-5-Codex is night-and-day better. I don't know how they did it.
- typpilol 1y ago
  Every since 4.5, I can't get Claude to do anything that takes a while 4.0 would chug a long for 40 mins. 4.5 refuses and straight up says the scope is too big sometimes. My theory is anthropic is super compute constrained and even though 4.5 is smarter, the usage limits and it's obsession with rushing to finish was put in mainly to save their servers compute.

pkreg01 1y ago

I totally agree. I remember the June magic as well - almost overnight my abilities and throughput were profoundly increased, I had many weeks of late nights in awe and wonder trying things that were beyond my ability to implement technically but within the bounds of my conceptual understanding. Initially, I found Codex CLI with GPT-5 to be a substitute for Claude Code - now GPT-5 Codex materially surpasses it in my line of work, with a huge asterisk. I work in a niche industry, and Codex has generally poor domain understanding of many of the critical attributes and concepts. Claude happens to have better background knowledge for my tasks, so I've found that Sonnet 4.5 with Claude Code generally does a better job at scaffolding any given new feature. Then, I call in Codex to implement actual functionality since Codex does not have the "You're absolutely right" and mocked/placeholder implementation issues of CC, and just generally writes clean, maintainable, well-planned code. It's the first time I've ever really felt the whole "it's as good as a senior engineer" hype - I think, in most cases, GPT5-Codex finally is as good as a senior engineer for my specific use case. I think Codex is a generally better product with better pricing, typically 40-50% cheaper for about the same level of daily usage for me compared to CC. I agree that it will take a genuinely novel and material advancement to dethrone Codex now. I think the next frontier for coding agents is speed. I would use CC over Codex if it was 2x or 3x as fast, even at the same quality level. Otherwise, Codex will remain my workhorse.

catigula 1y ago
>I think, in most cases, GPT5-Codex finally is as good as a senior engineer for my specific use case. This is beyond bananas to me given that I regularly see codex high and Gpt-5-high both fail to create basic react code slightly off the normal distribution.
- pkreg01 1y ago
  Do you mind if I ask what kind of React code you're working on? I've had good success using Codex for my frontend development, especially since all of my projects consistently rely on a pretty widely used and well documented component library. I realize that makes my use case fairly narrow, so I don't think I've discovered the limits you have.

asdev 1y ago

do you use the CLI or the web UI? or both?

poorman 1y ago

Totally agree. I was just thinking that I wouldn't want this feature for Claude Code but for Codex right now it would be great! I can simply let tasks run in Codex and I know it's going to eventually do what I want. Where as with Claude Code I feel like I have to watch it like a hawk and interrupt it when it goes off the rails.

dboreham 1y ago

This is going to be situation normal for 10 years: everyone will need to keep track of "model-du-jour" as each vendor makes incremental improvements.

sabareesh 1y ago

Similar feeling. Seems it is good at certain things and if something doesnt work it want to do things simply and in turn becomes something that you didnt ask for and certain times opposite of what you wanted. On the other hand with codex certain time you feel the AGI but that is like 2 out of 10 sessions. This is primarily may be due to how complete the prompt and how well you define the problems.

mvkel 1y ago

This is why Anthropic is a zombie company. They put all of their eggs in the coding basket, with the rest of their mission couched as "effective altruism," or "safetyism," or "solving alignment," (all terms they are more loudly attempting to distance themselves from[0], because it's venture kryptonite). Meanwhile, all OpenAI had to do was point their training cannon at it for a run, and suddenly Anthropic is irrelevant. OpenAI's focus as a consumer company (and growing as a tool company) is a safe, venture-backable bet. Frontier AI doesn't feel like a zero-sum game, but for now, if you're betting on AI at all, you can really only bet on OpenAI, like Tesla being a proxy for the entire EV industry. [0] https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/53Gc35vDLK2u5nBxP/anthropic-is-not-being-consistently-candid-about-their https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/53Gc35vDLK2u5nBxP/...

F7F7F7 1y ago
For non-vibe coding purposes I've found that my $200 Claude (Claude Code) account regularly outperformed my $200 ChatGPT (Codex) account. This was after 2 months of heavily testing both mostly in Terminal TUI/CLI form and most recently with the latest VSCode/Cursor incarnations. Even with the additional Sora usage and other bells & whistles that ChatGPT @ $200 provides, Claude provides more value for my use cases. Claude Code is just a lot more comfortable being in your workflow and being a companion or going full 'agent(s)' and running for 30 minutes on one ticket. It's also a lot happier playing with Agents from other APIs. There's nothing wrong with Anthropic wanting to completely own that segment and not have aspirations of world domination like OpenAI. I don't see how that's a negative. If anything, the more ChatGPT becomes a 'everything app' the less likely I am to hold on to my $20 account after cancelling the $200 account. I'm finding the more it knows about me the more creeped out and "I didn't ask for this" I become.
- fragmede 1y ago
  Especially now that sama wants us to sext with ChatGPT
- mvkel 1y ago
  > There's nothing wrong with Anthropic wanting to completely own that segment and not have aspirations of world domination It's very clear by their actions (not words) that they are shooting for the moon in order to survive. There is no path to sustainability as a collection of dev tools.

jswny 1y ago

I find Codex CLI to be very good too, but it’s missing tons of features that I use in Claude Code daily that keep me from switching full time. - Good bash command permission system - Rollbacks coupled with conversation and code - Easy switching between approval modes (Claude had a keybind that makes this easy) - Ability to send messages while it’s working (Codex just queues them up for after it’s done, Claude injects them into the current task) - Codex is very frustrating when I have to keep allowing it to run the same commands over and over, Claude this works well when I approve it to run a command for the session - Agents (these are very useful for controlling context) - A real plan mode (crucial) - Skills (these are basically just lazy loaded context and are amazing) - The sandboxing in codex is so confusing, commands fail all the time because they try to log to some system directory or use internet access which is blocked by default and hard to figure out - Codex prefers python snippets to bash commands which is very hard to permission and audit When Codex gets to feature parity, I’ll seriously look at switching, but until then it’s just a really good model wrapped in an okay harness

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libraryofbabel 1y ago
I don't think anyone can reasonably argue against Claude Code being the most full-featured and pleasant to use of the CLI coding agent tools. Maybe some people like the Codex user experience for idiosyncratic reasons, but it (like Gemini CLI) still feels to me rather thrown together - a Claude Clone with a lot of rough edges. But these CLI tools are still fairly thin wrappers around an LLM. Remember: they're "just an LLM in a while loop with access to tool calls." (I exaggerate, and I love Claude Code's more advanced features like "skills" as much as anyone, but at the core, that's what they are.) The real issue at stake is what is the better LLM behind the agent: is GPT-5 or Sonnet 4.5 better at coding. On that I think opinion is split. Incidentally, you can run Claude Code with GPT-5 if you want a fair(er) comparison. You need a proxy like LiteLLM and you will have to use the OpenAI api and pay per-token, but it's not hard to do and quite interesting. I haven't used it enough to make a good comparison, however.
- 1y ago

kelvinjps10 1y ago

I did the opposite I switched to Claude code once the released the new model last week of the one before, I tried using codex, but there was issues with the terminal and prompting (multiple characters getting deleted) I found Claude code to have more features and less bugs, like the edit on vim for the prompt being really useful and find it better to iterate. Also I like more its tool usage and the use of the shell. Sometimes codex prefer to use python instead of doing the equivalent shell command. Maybe it's like the other people say here, that codex it's better for long running tasks, I prefer to give Claude small tasks and I'm usually satisfied with the result and I like to work alongside the agent

purnesh 1y ago

My experience is similar, but for me, Claude Code is still better when designing or developing a frontend page from scratch. I have seen that Codex follows instructions a bit too literally, and the result can feel a little cold. CC on the other hand feels more creative and has mostly given better UI. Of course, once the page is ready, I switch to Codex to build further.

catigula 1y ago

This is such an interesting perspective because I feel codex is hugely impressive but falls apart on any even remotely difficult task and is too autonomous and not eager enough. Claude feels like a better fit for an experienced engineer. He's a positive, eager little fellow.

p337 1y ago

On the topic of comparing OpenAI models with Anthropocene models, I have a hybrid approach that seems really nice. I set up an MCP tool to use gpt-5 with high reasoning with Claude Code (like tools with "personas" like architect, security reviewer, etc), and I feel that it SIGNIFICANTLY amplifies the performance of Claude alone. I don't see other people using LLMs as tools in these environments, and it's making me wonder if I'm either missing something or somehow ahead of the curve. Basically instead of "do x (with details)" I say "ask the architect tool for how you should implement X" and it gets into this back and forth that's more productive because it's forcing some "introspection" on the plan.

jrk 1y ago
This is an established, though advanced, idea. Sourcegraph Amp (https://sourcegraph.com/amp https://sourcegraph.com/amp) has had this exact feature built in for quite a while: "ask the oracle" triggered an O1 Pro sub-agent (now, I believe, GPT-5 High), and searching can be delegated to cheaper, faster, longer-context sub-agents based on Gemini 2.5 Flash.

CompoundEyes 1y ago

Claude Code is still good but I don’t TRUST it. With Claude Code and Sonnet I’m expecting failure. I can get things done but there’s an administrative overhead of futzing around with markdown files, defensive commit hooks and unit tests to keep it on rails while managing the context panic. Codex CLI with gpt-5-codex high reasoning is next gen. I’m sure Sonnet 5 will match it soon. At that point I think a lot of the workflows people use in Claude Code will be obsolete and the sycophancy will disappear.

nadermx 1y ago

I'm just happy alternatives exist.

slaymaker1907 1y ago

I haven’t used Codex a lot, but GPT-5 is just a bit smarter in agent mode than Claude 4.5. The most challenging thing I’ve used it for is for code review and GPT-5 somewhat regularly found intricate bugs that Claude missed. However, Claude seemed to be better at following directions exactly vs GPT-5 which requires a lot more precision.

swah 1y ago

I haven't been able to get anything done with Codex. Claude Code is fast and "gets it". Also does better at running and testing its own stuff. Its very odd because I was hoping they were very on par.

acangiano 1y ago
I use both but I agree that they are generally not on par. I find Claude Code does a better job and doesn't overengineer as much. Where sometime Codex does better is in debugging a tough bug that stumps Claude Code. Codex is also more likely to get lazy and claiming to have finished a large task, when it reality it just wrote some placeholder lines. Claude has never done that. They might be on par soon, however, and I think Anthropic is playing a dangerous game with their limit enforcement on people who are on subscriptions.
jacurtis 1y ago
The last time I used them both side by side was a month ago, so unless its significantly improved in the past month, I am genuinely surprised that someone is making the argument that Codex is competitive with ClaudeCode, let alone it somehow being superior. ClaudeCode is used by me almost daily, and it continues to blow me away. I don't use Codex often because every time I have used it, the output is next to worthless and generally invalid. Even if it does get me what I eventually want, it will take much more prompting for me to get the functioning result. ClaudeCode on the other hand gets me good code from the initial prompt. I'm continually surprised at exactly how little prompting it requires. I have given it challenges with very vague prompts where it really exceeds my expectations.
- clarkmoreno 1y ago
  OpenAI astroturfing is a real thing. It's all over Twitter. Unsurprising but still wild to see it here on HN.
- barneybooroo 1y ago
  I think the enthusiasm for Codex coincided with the extended period of degraded quality CC was experiencing around a couple of months ago? During that time I cancelled my Claude sub and tried out Codex, which by comparison was feeling significantly better. I haven't tried them out side by side since Claude has been de-borked but even if Codex is objectively poorer I could believe that flattering comparison has stuck for people who switched?

citizenpaul 1y ago

Does no one use Blocks Goose CLI anymore? I went to a hackathon in SF at the beginning of the year and it seemed like 90% of the groups used Goose to do something in their Agent project. I get that the CLI agent scene has exploded since then I just wonder what what is so much better in the competition?

blueside 1y ago

As we all know here, if the the title of this post was about Codex on the web, the top comment would have been about using Claude instead. YMMV, but this definitely doesn't track with everything I've been seeing and hearing, which is that Codex is inferior to Claude on almost every measure.

dakom 1y ago
fwiw I'm happy to see this - been trying to tackle a hairy problem (rendering bugs) and both models fail, but: 1. Codex takes longer to fail and with less helpful feedback, but tends to at least not produce as many compiler errors 2. Claude fails faster and with more interesting back-and-forth, though tends to fail a bit harder Neither of them are fixing the problems I want them to fix, so I prefer the faster iteration and back-and-forth so I can guide it better So it's a bit surprising to me when so many people are pickign a "clear winner" that I prefer less atm

bad_haircut72 1y ago

Im not saying this is a paid endorsement but the internet is dead and I wonder what openAI would pay, if they could, to get such a glowing review as top comment on HN

a_victorp 1y ago
This is an underrated comment
visiondude 1y ago
I completely agree with this. The amount of unprompted “I used to love Claude Code but now…” content that follows the exact same pattern feels really off. All of these people post without any prompts for comparison, and OP even refused to share specifics so we have to take his claim as ‘trust me bro’
- loveparade 1y ago
  It doesn't feel off to me because that's the exact experience I've had as well. So it's unsurprising to me that many other people share that experience. I'm sure there is a bunch of paid promotion going on for all kinds of stuff on HN (especially what gets onto the front page), but I don't think this is one of those cases.
  - hattmall 1y ago
    I'm not saying it is, but if ANYTHING was the exact combination of prerequisites to be considered paid promotion on HN, this is the type of comment it would be.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - hluska 1y ago
      So, let’s see if I get this straight. A highly identifiable person whose company sells a security product is the ideal shill? That doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. On the other hand, someone with a different opinion makes complete sense.

didibus 1y ago

Interesting, I find codex CLI is really bad, like the worst coding agent I've tried. Fails to escalate permissions, gets derailed, loves changing too many things everywhere. GPT5 is good, but codex is not.

hn_saver 1y ago

How did you spend $70k per year for a tool that's not a single year old?

TkTech 1y ago
API pricing rates probably. If I take a look at my current usage since it came out, it'd be about $12000 CAD if paid at API rates. Ridiculously easy to rack up absurd bills via the API, and I'm mostly just using it for code review. Someone using it heavily could easily, easily get way over 70k.
- tstrimple 1y ago
  Also the statement was "We". It's not a single user's billable usage and we have zero details as to how many people made up "We". So any analysis into the cost or value are meaningless.
koakuma-chan 1y ago
Why did they not buy a subscription? It would be a flat fee.
- NiloCK 1y ago
  At that spend, no subscription is available to serve that much traffic - they are all rate limited. I understand the 70K spend as a corporate expense, not an individual... right?
  - koakuma-chan 1y ago
    I haven't checked but it would make sense if each developer had their own rate limit.

tstrimple 1y ago

> I've seen Claude Code literally just give up on a hard problem and tell me to buy something off the shelf I've been seeing more of this lately despite initial excellent results. Not sure what's going on, but the value is certainly dropping for me. I'll have to check out codex. CLI integration is critical for me at this point. For me it is the only thing that actually helps realize the benefits of LLM models we have today. My last NixOS install was completely managed by Claude Code and it worked very well. This was the result of my latest frustrations: https://i.imgur.com/C4nykhA.png https://i.imgur.com/C4nykhA.png Though I know the statement it made isn't "true". I've had much better luck pursuing other implementation paths with CC in the same space. I could have prompted around this and should have reset the context much earlier but I was drunk "coding" at that point and drove it into a corner.

tonyhart7 1y ago

is is that better tho???? I thought claude code is still better in tool calling and something like that

013 1y ago

What are the usage limits for Codex compared to Claude Code?

spoiler 1y ago

My experience is that if I know what I want, CC will produce better code, given I specify it correctly. The planning mode is great for this too, as we can "brainstorm" and what I have seen help a lot is if I ask questions about why it did a certain way. Often it'll figure out on its own why that's wrong, but sometimes it requires a bit of course correction. On the other hand, last time I tried GPT-5 from Cursor, it was so disappointing. It kept getting confused while we were iterating on a plan, and I had to explain to it multiple times that it's thinking about the problem the same way. After a while I gave up, opened a new chat and gave it my own summary of the conversation (with the wrong parts removed) and then it worked fine. Maybe my initial prompt was vague, but it continually seemed to forget course corrections in that chat. I mostly tend to use them more to save me from typing, rather than asking it to design things. Occasionally we do a more open ended discussion, but those have great variance. It seems to do better with such discussions online than within the coding tool (I've bounced maths/implementation ideas off of while writing shaders on a personal project)

baq 1y ago
gpt-5-high is amazing, but so slow I'll revert to sonnet when I know what I need done on a low level. when making boilerplatish changes in the product in areas I'm not familiar with (it's a large codebase) gpt-5-high is a monster.

Rebuff5007 1y ago

> We were heavy users of Claude Code ($70K+ spend per year) Claude code has only been generally available since May last year (a year and half ago)... I'm surprised by the process that you are implying; within a year and a half, you both spent 70k on claude code, and knew enough about it and its competition to switch away from it? I dont think I'd be able to due diligence even if LLM evaluation was my fulltime job. Let alone the fact that the capabilities of each provider are changing dramatically every few weeks.

latexr 1y ago

Feels like with every announcement there’s the same comment: “this LLM tool I’m using now is the real deal, the thing I was using previously and spending stupid amounts of money on looked good but failed at XYZ, this new thing is where it’s at”. Rinse and repeat. Which means it wasn’t true any of the previous times, so why would it be true this time? It feels like an endless loop of the “friendship ended” meme with AI companies. https://knowyourmeme.com/editorials/guides/what-is-the-friendship-ended-with-mudasir-meme-and-why-did-the-friendship-end-the-viral-meme-explained https://knowyourmeme.com/editorials/guides/what-is-the-frien... It’s much more likely commenters are still in the honeymoon hype phase and (again) haven’t found the problems because they’re hyper focused on what the new thing is good at that the previous one wasn’t, ignoring the other flaws. I see that a lot with human relationships as well, where people latch on to new partners because they obviously don’t have the big problem that was a strain on the previous relationship. But eventually something else arises. Rinse and repeat.

raducu 1y ago
> “this LLM tool I’m using now is the real deal". GPT-5 is not the final deal, but it's incredibly good as is at coding. Anecdotal, but it's something completely else in terms of capabilities, ignore it at your own peril, but I think it will profoundly change software development.
- hitarpetar 1y ago
  oh it's anecdata? then I don't care. show me evidence please
- latexr 1y ago
  > ignore it at your own peril I’m not arguing for ignoring it, my point is different. > but I think it will profoundly change software development. The point is that this is said every time, together with “the previous thing to which the exact same praise was given, wasn’t it”. So it’s several rounds of “yes yes, the previous time the criticisms were right, but this time it’s different, trust me”. So everyone else is justified in being skeptical. No one wants AI to have the problems it has (technical, ethical, and others). If they didn’t it would be better for everyone. Criticism is a way of surfacing issues so they can be fixed. And sure, I’ll grant that some people want to bash the other side more than they want to arrive at the truth, but those exist in all sides of the argument (probably in roughly equal measure?). So to have a productive conversation we need to go in with the mindset of “we’re on the same side in the goal of not having this suck”.

pythonbase 1y ago

What is your general use case with Claude Code / Codex? $70K/year is a significant spend.

jakenuts 1y ago

Same!

virtualritz 1y ago

When you say Claude Code, what model do you refer to? CC with Opus still outperforms Codex (gpt-5-codex) for me for anything I do (Rust, computer graphics-related). However, Anthropic restricted Opus use for Max plan users 10 days or so ago severly (12-fold from 40h/week down to 5h week) [1]. Sonnet is a vastly inferioir model for my use cases (but still frequently writes better Rust code than Codex). So now I use Codex for planning and Sonnet for writing the code. However, I usually need about 3--5 loops with Codex reviewing, Sonnet fixing, rinse & repeat. Before I could use one-shot Opus and review myself directly, and do one polish run following my review (also via Opus). That was possible from June--mid October but no more. [1] https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/8449 https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/8449

deaux 1y ago
Agreed that Opus is stronger than Sonnet 4.5 and GPT-5 High. It's the bitter pill - bigger, more expensive models are just "smarter", even if it doesn't always show in synthetic benchmarks. Similar with o1-pro (now almost a year old, an eternity in this space) vs GPT-5 high. There's also GPT-5 Pro now, which comes at an API cost of $120/M output, and is also noticeably smarter, just like Opus. They all like to push synthetic benchmarks for marketing, but to me there's zero doubt that both Anthropic and OpenAI are well aware that they're not representative of logical thinking and creativity.

pinkbanana21 1y ago

I found using z.ai a performant and cheap alternative for some tasks: https://z.ai/subscribe?ic=VWKNBI8LR8 https://z.ai/subscribe?ic=VWKNBI8LR8 Costs are 6x cheaper and it's way faster and good at test writing and tool calling. It some times can be a bit messy though so use Gemini or Claude or codex for that hard problems....

dudeinhawaii 1y ago

In agreement. Large caveats that can explain differing opinions (that I've experienced) are: * Is really only magic on Linux or WSL. Mediocre on Windows * Is quite mediocre at UI code but exceptional at backend, engineering, ops, etc. (I use Claude to spruce up everything user facing -- Codex _can_ mirror designs already in place fairly well). * Exceptional at certain languages, OK at others. * GPT-5 and GPT-5-Codex are not the same. Both are models used by the Codex CLI and the GPT-5-Codex model is recent and fantastically good. * Codex CLI is not "conversational" in the way that Claude is. You kind of interact with it differently. I often wonder about the impact of different prompting styles. I think the WOW moment for me is that I am no longer returning to code to find tangled messes, duplicate silo'd versions of the same solution (in a different project in the same codebase), or strangely novice style coding and error handling. As a developer for 20yrs+, using Codex running the GPT-5-Codex model has felt like working with a peer or near-peer for the first time ever. I've been able to move beyond smaller efforts and also make quite a lot of progress that didn't have to be undone/redone. I've used it for a solid month making phenomenal progress and able to offload as-if I had another developer. Honestly, my biggest concern is that OpenAI is teasing this capable model and then pulls the rug in a month with an "update". As for the topic at hand, I think Claude Code has without a doubt the best "harness" and interface. It's faster, painless, and has a very clean and readable way of laying out findings when troubleshooting. If there were a cheap and usable version of Opus... perhaps that would keep Claude Code on the cutting edge.

TechDebtDevin 1y ago

Why waste so much time making your devs dumb. Just code brother, this is the dumbest tech in software right now wasting peoples brains away.

unsupp0rted 1y ago

This was my experience too until a couple weeks ago, when Codex suddenly got dumbed down. Initially, I had great success with codex medium- I could refactor with confidence, code generally ran on the first or second try, etc. Then when that suddenly dumbed down to Claude Sonnet 3.5 quality I moved to GPT5 High to get back what had been lost. That was okay for a few days. Now GPT5 High has dropped to Claude Sonnet 3.5 quality. There's nothing left to fallback to.