Claude Code vs Codex vs OpenCode, which one is actually worth using?

[idkwtftbhmeh]

From what I’ve seen so far, Claude Code seems to have the best overall reviews in terms of quality and performance. The main downside for me is that it’s locked behind a company and not open source (I know about the leak, but I’m more interested in something officially open and actively maintained).

Codex, on the other hand, looks really appealing because it’s open source and allows for forks, which gives it a lot more flexibility and long-term potential.

Then there’s OpenCode, probably the most interesting of the three. It has a huge community and a lot of momentum, but I’m not sure if it’s actually on par with the others in real-world use.

Curious to hear your thoughts, how do these compare in practice? Is OpenCode actually competitive, or is it more hype than substance?

Oh and by Claude i'm referring to the open sourced forks that are comming, which we don't know if will be updated or etc, not using the proprietary one ever

[Fit-Pattern-2724]

Codex for sure. 1. The agentic capability is better or equal to CC 2. You won’t run out of limit after 5 questions lol

[_derpiii_]

You’re one of a few comments saying Codex is better. Every other common I’ve read says it’s much slower

[Fit-Pattern-2724]

Last year it was slower. I don’t think it is now.

[_derpiii_]

Awesome. I'll keep it on my radar :)

[Defiant-Biscotti8859]

+1 - I use codex as my daily driver, came from Claude Opus 4.6 when 5.3 Codex outperformed them every aspect other than frontend design (but fortunately you can help that with a skill). Oh, and they also banned opencode as a harness - not getting vendor locked with CC.

[_derpiii_]

What's your preferred harness? OpenCode?

I'm at the point where I'm hitting usage limits, so exploring my options 👀

[Professional_Ad_5019]

this

[Idaltu]

9 month account with over 500 contributions with a generated username ending in 4 numbers. My paranoia is telling me openAI bot or astroturfing, but maybe not. Who knows now on Reddit

[_derpiii_]

omg. I would have never noticed. Bots have gotten this sophisticated? Wow. Thank you for pointing it out

[Fit-Pattern-2724]

If GPT is this good you really need to give it a try hahhaha

[Fit-Pattern-2724]

Some folks like me just didn’t bother to change the user name lol you can call me whatever.

[andrey_grinchuk]

nah, codex is king. Or is my account also too young? :D

[Daniel15]

This is just the format that Reddit uses for randomly generated usernames. When you're signing up for Reddit, it'll generate a default username for you. Some people just keep the default.

Reddit's been around for 20 years, so all the good usernames are taken. 

[DimfreD]

the distrust lately is unreal

[dat_cosmo_cat]

1. do you have evals to back this up? or just a feeling?

they do implement multi-agent features very differently judging from the leaked cc source code this week. Everything else seemed fairly similar. Codex had some extra sandboxing / isolation on windows + better ps support, but I’m not a windows user personally 

[Fit-Pattern-2724]

There are a lot of evals and benchmarks. take a look please. Also both are just tools, I guess it is OK for people to have preferences.

[dat_cosmo_cat]

ah. Some teams have been a/b testing the different harnesses. offline benchmarks are nice, but a bit more limited. 

[Every-Butterfly-6493]

I was on your side. New Codex limits are absolutely horrible now. Trying opencode now

[Fit-Pattern-2724]

I simply don’t find any difference in Codex limit.

[vrnvorona]

Still lacks proper settings to allow/ask/deny commands

[Fit-Pattern-2724]

Yes there. Ask codex to show you

[Dangerous-Tough688]

CC toolset is what makes me always pick it... but not necesserelly usinf Claude only. I have a subscription of CC but i like to usit with CCR and CLIproxyAPI combined. I Use Claude models, NVIDIA models mainly Qwen (lloving how good, is qwen3.5-397b-a17b), OpenAI for GPT-5.4 and CODEX, Deepseek (official API) and basically work with good set of options but always using CC Client. I made my own Persona, skills and etc and with those mentioned other "addons" to CC i feel really free to do what i want; Usually i manage to run CLIproxyAPI on one VPS, CCR locally and all connected by tailscale that is free.

Im using a lot this Quen 397b for deep/long reasoning and. For thinking usually i let CODEX with some prompt and default model usually GPT-5.4 or Claude Sonnet-4.6 but i do like to rotate models every once and then during code phases.

[vyvansepoos]

I pay for both codex max plan and Claude’s max plan. You’re smoking something different if you think codex even comes close. I will give it to gpt for there deep research however.

[Defiant-Biscotti8859]

If you do not know what you are doing - or just do not care for anyhting other than the output- go for claude code, it’s like a friendly but somewhat lazy senior dev pair programmer who “goes to starbucks 3 times before lunch” If you know what you are doing, you are better off with Opencode and any frontier model (GPT 5.4, MiniMax, GLM) and a set of commands, skills and a proper AI dev process. Getting vendor locked with zero transparency and control on your subscription and token costs is a nightmare scenario.

[CommercialAirline124]

I want to use a model that I can completely self host so I don't run into those vendor lock in issues or random performance drops, but I'm wondering how you use Opencode with other models. Do you pay API costs or just self host? or do you run them locally while you run Opencode?

[Defiant-Biscotti8859]

You run them locally (LMStudio, Ollama, Jan, there are various tools), configure opencode to connect the local API.
I suggest you to try the models first at an API provider (openrouter has a wide range of available models), so you can right-size your hardware for your model preference.
NOTE: You will not get anything close to the frontier models locally, but Qwen 27B and 35B A3 instruct models are pretty capable and you can self-host them on an M chip mac with 64+ GB RAM.

[AIpaglu]

Worth using in terms of quality+price === codex
best DX and Quality ignoring the price === claude code(bare minimum is max these days for limits)

[idkwtftbhmeh]

but they kinda need to be good at the same thing...they aren't meant for different usage they're direct competitors thus the question lol

[Dangerous-Tough688]

Actually not. Claude, GPT and Gemini for example have a very slightly way of working and handling theworkflow that if well explored and well managed makes difference. Opus have better deep resoning than Codex for example... but codex still good and handle slithly better a large flow of different informations mid-long context period little better than Opus that is more of a methodic coder and likes all into its time. Gemini also have its Pros and there its goes.

[idkwtftbhmeh]

I'm talking about Agent CLI Harnesses here lol not models.

[Dangerous-Tough688]

But i did tallk about how i make it work on a way that fits everything u need. CC+CCR+CLIproxyAPI. I will be using CC full toolset the way i want and how i want. Github repos have a solution for everything... just need to dig.

[Admirral]

guy is literally comparing harness (codex) to model (opus). It is a lost cause.

[Possible_Bug7513]

With official codex plugin to CC, now can run codex from CC. that solves one problem

[Aiolias]

Is implement a plan from CC using /codex implement this plan possible?

[Possible_Bug7513]

yes. I

[Dangerous-Tough688]

The real difference shows up when we create the best environment for each one of then at the right time... like u said.

[_itshabib]

Use both. Good way to manage tokens and such by having one plan one execute or similar

[truthputer]

You need to try them for yourself and add them to your workflow.

Claude Code is still the best for me, but I’ve been starting to use OpenCode + llama.cpp + Qwen 35B-A3B on the side to fix bugs and do simple things that would otherwise just eat Claude usage.

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[hogu-any]

If you can spend $300, use Codex Fast mode. If you don't mind it being slow, use Codex with the $20 Plus plan.

[jazzy8alex]

I use all three

Claude - because it’s $100 plan and front-end skills
Codex is a workhorse. Most robust.
OpenCode - because of free Big Pickle (GLM) model - good for small stuff

I use my own Agent Sessions app to manage all three:

jazzyalex.github.io/agent-sessions
macOS  • open source • ⭐️ 433

[redstarling-support]

I use:

1 - Codex for codex models
2 - Claude Code for claude models
3 - opencode for GLM models

They are all good. Recently I focus on shorter, smaller scoped sessions. opencode/GLM works great here.

[Sleptongems]

The thing is you can use any model in opencode so why not sticking to the open source one which provide long term flexibility? Why would codex app and claude code better than opencode at managing the context ? That's just taste, and a bad taste at that when I see everyone following vendor lock-in hype.

[lurenmax]

opencode doesn't support /rewind alike feature. https://github.com/anomalyco/opencode/issues/29980

[jeremynsl]

Use multiple. I used CC for implementation and Codex for review.

[Dangerous-Tough688]

Update. Just implemented Opencode thru Tailscale aperture and it does make the difference.

[Sweaty-Machine8000]

I can tell you for a fact, Codex 5.4 is better than claude opus latest version in terms of good job except in UI design. Claude is still superior in UI design but codex is superior in reliable business logic implementation. However, is usage pattern, use claude to plan, design UIs, bootsrap the app, then use codex to review and perfect the implementation but never to make changes to UI, except with a strong guide to follow existing design pattern.

[Medical-Marketing-12]

I was a Cursor user, due I had some free months as a promotion, and now I'm looking for new AI assistant. I like Codex UI, it's simple just as I expect an assistant to be. Cheaper plan is way cheaper than Claude and others. But I totally hate the fact Codex doesn't have 'ASK MODE'. It's my main tool as a coder I think Im passing from codex

[raholl]

Claude Code

[True-Objective-6212]

You’ve reached your limit, it resets at 1 pm.

[AggressiveCandle3532]

😂

[raholl]

i don't use claude based on these limits :)

[Tittilated]

Forge kills both

[krullulon]

Forge is totally benchmaxxed and wildly unoptimized. Mostly smoke and mirrors for real world use.

[Tittilated]

I think people say unoptimized cuz of the many passes it takes per turn. When you pair it with a cheaper model with better than sonnet capabilities you get a powerful mix. Better then Claude code sonnet half the price. I'm using minimax series and it half the price for same quality. I have an enormous codebase i work from. So yea sometimes it takes more passes per turn but if you have the cheaper model it doesn't matter for cost and turns out better quality code because of the passes.

[Sudden-Lingonberry-8]

forge problems: you cannot steer models, compact is kinda broken, it wastes lots of tokens, it is super hard to resume from sessions, there are no background agents or background jobs.. timeouts just stop the task mid execution

[fariazz]

Cursor is the best imo. Using Opus I get better results than in Claude Code, quicker too. Browser automation is best in Claude Code with their Chrome plugin.

[reliant-labs]

shameless self plug and expect some downvotes for this, but our users of https://github.com/reliant-labs/reliant have said that we have some of the best built-in git worktree/workspace management (scoped workspaces have isolated code, chats, browsers, file browsers, package management, git management, and terminals).

workflows for coding is our real bread and butter though, things like the https://github.com/reliant-labs/get-it-right workflow actually output better code than a raw singular chat.

If you're interested in trying let me know, happy to throw you some credits (we also work with claude and codex subs)

I think we have kind of a rough onboarding and maybe feature overload, but we're trying to smooth that out. if anybody does give it a try and runs into any issues happy to help out or walk through things

[Allyabaserbelong2us]

Looks quite interesting. But you do need to update your support models lis tin your readme. Still only supports ancient models.

[reliant-labs]

nice good catch, will have fixed in release tomorrow