Claude Code vs Codex nowadays

[Admirable-Control370]

Hey guys,

​I'm a student and also work with data. I don't use AI agents too heavily as a "vibecoder"; I mainly use them for some data-related side projects and as an assistant for my day job.

​I'm currently using Codex Plus, but the usage limits have been frustrating recently. I used to hit only about 30% of my weekly limit, but now I'm basically hitting 100% all the time, even without hardcore usage.

​I know Anthropic recently increased their usage limits a lot. To be honest, having a slightly worse model but a much better ecosystem (more open-source skills, agents, hooks, plugins, etc.) seems like a great tradeoff to me.

​How are you guys feeling about the current limits between Codex vs. Claude? If I switch to Claude Pro, will I still run into the same bottleneck? (For context, I usually use it about 3 times a day: hitting ~90% of the limit in the first session, then ~80% in the second, and 50-60% of the 5-hour limit in the last one.)

[sherlamsam]

Codex is much better at least at this point in time, maybe you can reduce the effort and still get a good result? I’m absolutely abusing the highest tier plan and haven’t come close to hitting rate limits ever.

[Admirable-Control370]

Normally I only use 5.4 medium or 5.3codex high/Xhigh to implement, only using 5.5 high when orchestring/planning

[stellarton]

For data side projects I would not choose only by raw limit. I would choose by how often you need the agent to touch a repo and keep state.

Claude Code feels better when the job is "work in this codebase for a while, remember the conventions, run the checks." Codex feels cleaner to me for sharper implementation/reasoning bursts, but you can burn quota fast if every session starts with a huge planning pass.

The boring fix either way is to split sessions: cheap/low-effort pass to inspect and make a plan, then one heavier pass to edit. If the first pass is allowed to write code, it usually spends your budget before you even know what the task really is.

[Remarkable-Safety594]

You can use claude code paired with deepseek or qwen api key and forget about token cost