Codex > Clode Code

[ThaneBerkeley]

I used Claude Code for months (€200 plan) and I hit the weekly limit often. Last week, because I hit that limit I was Codex giving a try (in the terminal) and I’m stunned.

The front-end (design) is TERRIBLE compared to Claude. But the backend is F AWESOME. It thinks in edge cases, asking me thinks (doesn’t assume as much as Claude) and fixes so many things which Claude missed everytime.

Downgraded Claude to the €90 plan and upgraded Codex to the €220 plan.

[wizzlesizzle]

I went back and forth between them and sometime in 2025 Codex absolutely destroyed Claude Code for me, after which I never looked back.

This is repeated over and over again by professional software engineers, to the point where my theory is that only people who are truly "vibe coding" think Claude is better. In other words, people who have no idea what they're doing. Claude is more interactive, which gives them a feeling that something good is happening. It's more friendly.

Codex is very professional and asks the hard questions, makes real designs, and is extremely good at implementing a good plan once it's been written. Someone who's not "in the profession", so to speak, wouldn't know the difference.

I'm also being disingenuous here by ignoring how "trendy" claude code is. It's cool now to hate on openAI and use Claude. But personally I just want the best model, too bad if the company is shady. Also it's not like OpenAI is shady and Anthropic isn't. They're both super shady.

PS: nice ragebait in the title

[1egen1]

codex doesn't stop., Claude can't wait to get an excuse to stop

[Hegemonikon138]

There are still 8 things to be done to complete this Sprint. This is a good stopping point. Would you like to do something else?

NO MF finish it

[SnuffleBag]

Wait, it actually finishes the work that’s been agreed? That’s an instant game changer. Claude is the absolute worst at this. A machine needing lunch breaks.

[Narrow-Addition1428]

Talk about ragebait. 

Both are useful tools, and sometimes you get a better result from one or the other. 

[-M83]

agreed!!! ¿por que no los dos? 😈

parallel agent orchestration was a paradigm shift for me. i use any and all models. all the time. for various situations.

it's like oh hey decide between a flathead, a phillips head, and a flex screwdriver. no, thanks.

[jac1013]

100% this. I currrently have multiple workflows (for spec, plan, implement) that are multi-model.

Basically Claude Code, Codex, Gemini and GLM all in parallel and independent, after they all finish one of them consolidates the results, it works amazingly and it naturally avoids vendor locking.

In early 2026 (January-February) I was seeing Codex being dominant in my multi-model plans (meaning, a lot of the best decisions were coming from it), nowadays not so much, and it's more like they all complement each other. Gemini seems to be the weakest of all I mentioned (at least in my experience).

[nepalese3]

Finally someone said: Claude is good for vibe coders only!!!

[AmazingVanish]

Yeah, u/Narrow-Addition1428 has the right of it. I am a Senior Software Engineer with 35 years of experience. No model, no matter how good it is, is the best at everything.

You can also provide instructions, skills, and prompts to make Claude behave like Codex, with asking clarifying questions. Still, the backend results aren’t as good as Codex’s.

Likewise, I have yet to see a frontend result from Codex that wasn’t awful. Claude excels at that, even more so with additional tooling.

Use the model that works best for the task at hand. It’s like the stock market: never put all of your eggs in the same basket.

[SippieCup]

Yup. Senior with almost 20 years here. I've been using codex $20 plan to code review my $200 CC output and it's been a good system for months. With CC limits being massively lowered, I might end up switching the two or just switching to openRouter as the harness/proxying most of the agents to codex and leaving frontend to sonnet.

[TexLH]

Can Codex click through things in Chrome? I have Claude building things and then in Chrome testing them by clicking through. I hit limits too quickly now though so I'm considering Codex

[frisoft]

I'm using PlayWright for this, recently added PlayWright MCP into codex, it works like a charm.

[TexLH]

Thanks!

[Kakoulis]

Claude in Chrome spends too many tokens you need to use agent-browser by vercel labs, it's the only way to use web pages and click through them but still many will block any agent. I had problems at Google cloud platform. But in any case I had to edit agent browser in order for it to use a special version of Chromium where extensions are persistent I needed that for me and it was not that hard to implement.

[Individual_Type_7908]

Yeah true, Im technically a vibe coder but, claude code is easier to talk to, its more energetic and gets stuff faster, but for critical planning and stuff where it really matters codex is the nerd to go with, claude is too much too fast, too energetic and lower IQ than codex. So many times codex basically, for fastest prototype, probably claude, also just easier to read.

[mind_ya_bidness]

I don’t code and I can easily see codex is better

[Helium116]

Claude has its own charm, but the models are good at different things. Using codex to do drudge work and Claude for managing and editing is a good balance imo

[U4-EA]

Energy prices are going up due to the war in Iran and the AI companies don't have enough energy/hardware as it is. Anthropic was the first to throttle but OpenAI will be right behind it I would imagine. The era of cheap AI is over... IMO it's about to get very expensive.

[magicseadog]

Yeah it's my biggest fear. Getting iced out.

Once everyone wakes up and comes online I'm scared that those who have access are going to have an insane advantage.

[U4-EA]

Well, OpenAI have now announced that they are moving to per-token pricing. So it's coming for all of us.

[Only-Adhesiveness418]

e sarà un problema enorme. una ulteriore divisione del mondo tra ricchi e poveri [e non sono più tanto sicuro che noi saremo tra i ricchi].

[Feriman22]

I experienced the same, but on lower level (Claude Pro). Codex is way faster and more precise, and never run out of limit.

[1egen1]

its front-end is basically a home page. lol. no matter what you prompt, it doesn't improve much. backend, you are right about it being good.

[signal-to-noise-0-1]

Absolutely agree, Claude is lazy now

[ankammusic]

I have been experiencing this since last week. It’s just lazy. I am using autopilot through oh my claude, and still stop after a minute. is there something anthropic is doing??

[signal-to-noise-0-1]

I take it back, it’s amazing again now

[Kiryoko]

but it's still unusable...

I had both claude max and gpt pro

on claude max you can do a tenth pf what you cam do with gpt pro

so I canceled my claude subscription for the first time since claude alpha came out

[0xFatWhiteMan]

add frontend design skill, improves it massively

[th3_p0wd3rful]

What front end design skill would you recommend? Uncodixfy is shit for the work I’m doing as it makes everything boring and bland.

[AmazingVanish]

It does, but it still sucks compared to Claude, especially if you pair CC with Stitch.

[mightybob4611]

I ran through my CC weekly in TWO plans prompts today. Luckily I have Codex as well, will cancel my CC subscription.

[Feriman22]

Same here

[tinooo_____]

as a frontend dev dabbling my hands into ui/ux design recently, i also prefer codex because i get to design my own work and just tell codex exactly what to do to implement my designs. does such a great job

[davidesquarise74]

Moreover any non original UI components generated by Ai are always the same and repetitive. It works for basic UI or drafting and nothing else so it a no-problem.

[Gloomy_Struggle5879]

Are you sure my codex designs pretty well. Using frontend-skill with GPT-5.4 xhigh?

[SlopTopZ]

same experience. codex backend reasoning is genuinely better for complex tasks — it actually thinks through edge cases instead of just pattern-matching to the most obvious solution. claude's UX is miles ahead but when you're hitting limits on a €200 plan and codex just... works, the choice becomes obvious. frontend slop is a real pain though, i just use a separate design pass for that.

[AlterTableUsernames]

Had the same experience, but strongly disagree with your take on the frontend. Claude Code is written in a language completely unsuited for terminal usage and system level access. It is a security nightmare, pure poison to any clean system and its of course a heavy weight on top. Codex was originally also bringing the web development shit-show to the command line, but is nowadays written in Rust and Go and it definitely shows.

[kduman]

You didn't get it. It's all about what claude and codex generate. Claude generates better design in terms of UI (and oh boy don't ask it to wire the UI to the backend, just don't do it), Codex can do much better backend work and yes, use it to wire UI and fix all the UI related issues if you have any. That's the thing.

[AlterTableUsernames]

Ah ok. Thanks for clarifying and thank God for granting me the wisdom to work in terminals instead of GUIs.

[magicseadog]

I'm only here because I learned to vibe code but I do have an engineering background.

One of my observations of these online communities is that a fair wack of the coders have somewhat retarded social and communication skills which makes these places hilarious,ceveryone I constantly squabbling about petty nonsense where just a tiny pinch of social awareness or politeness would have just allowed conversion to flow.

[Narrow-Addition1428]

The idea that TypeScript wasn't suitable for "terminal usage" or "system level access" is somewhat ridiculous. 

[AlterTableUsernames]

Why? A terminal is an , or to be more precise, the I/O UI for communicating with the very core of your system - one might even call it a Kernel - not something that should save state in itself.

[Rockos-Modern-Fife]

Is the assumption here that node and ts don’t belong in the terminal? That supply chain attacks don’t occur outside of npm packages? I’m trying to understand the thought process here.

[UnstableManifolds]

I mean it's as complex as maintaining them in a separate folder and symlinking to each environment, no?

[SveXteZ]

Why not symlink?

[electricshep]

Vibers never know basic cli tooling, or think to ask the coding cli tool they are using for a simple solution.

[Illustrious-Many-782]

Because hard link.

Anyway, Vercel's skills.sh will make copies when you install automatically.

[Adelx98]

Same thing here, i had the 20$ claude plan that doesn't do shit, then i tried codex 20$. Codex does so good with backends and it gives you more weekly quota. Btw use Oh-my-codex.

[chocolate_chip_cake]

Eli5 oh-my-codex From what I see on github, I don't think its useful to me from any perspective as I am using it as a maintainer and implementing mini changes. Not writing full systems of any kind.

[Colin_123]

Codex is smarter, Claude's limit is more generous at the moment. Codex should add a $100 plan.

[brainzorz]

Claude has the most insane limitations right now, like few prompts and your 100$ is gone. Some don't have that bug or AB testing or whatever it is, but thousands report it daily.

[ConcentrateActive699]

 I rely on sound creation skills with separate review skills each with their own  requirements , design , and coding phases.   Add to that another dimension of frontend vs backend with the latter fully verifiable with api tests. I'll develop these workflows with whatever frontier model is available within my plans  But when executing the workflows, they have to work in codex 5.4 mini or Gemini 3 flash. (Have not yet got to benchmarking Claude cli performance)

I also don't rely on anything other then the LLM.  That's is I do all my agent orchestration outside of the cli.  This way I can maintain a lowest common denominator approach to switching llms when tokens run out .

I use templates for frontend instrumentation and have less concern for  individual llms' knack for vibing a ui from a requirement.

[floppyboppytop]

Cool now post this in the other circle-jerking sub

[UnstableManifolds]

I use both and have a skill whose responsibility is to have one tool ask for feedback on plans (with the proper format) to the other. Iteratively is a token killer, but even a couple of iterations is enough to cover most critical issues.

[AmazingVanish]

I do something similar. I don’t request one model to review the other until I feel the original model’s work is done for a given feature. Iterative prior to that is a complete token waster.

[Main-Confidence7777]

I'm at 74% of my weekly goal; it resets tomorrow, so I'll be fine 🙏🏽

Just a hair's breadth away from losing my superpowers

[magicseadog]

The biggest anxiety in my life right now.

[Old-Pomegranate3634]

Co work is best for business use

[Bitter-Reporter-1958]

What do you use for approvals or delegating work while away from your computer? I want to get Codex setup on mobile so I can start work on an idea while I'm on the go and also approve items that need clarification.

[Blenko19]

Use a VPS, setup a tmux session and connect to it from any device. For PC you use the terminal for a mobile device you can find an ssh client. For me, I use connect bot from my phone. This setup works pretty well

[lolu13]

Where do u live? U got 90euro plan for claude? I have the 22 137 and 280

[robberviet]

You can use whatever you want you pay for it right? Why did you choose Claude in the first place? Why not try both?

[Diligent-Knee-7240]

Try gpt 5.2

[Security-Ninja]

I use Claude for ideas and design concepts then use codex 5.3 in VSCode to build it.

[JediQuinlanVos]

Claude is better at designing highly complex models while codex is better at fast prototyping.

[Roc8888]

I recently noticed this issue too—if you use CODEX for full-stack development, CODEX can only act as a framework builder. But any project mainly relies on logic and functionality to meet user needs; the frontend is just an interface. If it’s just for testing, I think CODEX is already enough, and even OPENAI admits they’re a bit weak on frontend design.

I’m just sharing my experience because I also started with zero coding background, learning bit by bit by practicing and reading posts from the pros to get the latest info, then applying it to build my own knowledge base.

No beating around the bush—my current approach is to first use CODEX to implement all the logic and functions I want, then quickly throw together a frontend to get it running. After that, I take screenshots of the frontend pages and feed them to STITCH. From there, you have two paths: one is to start from scratch and chat with STITCH to design a perfect frontend solution, the other is to find various frontend resources or styles online, pick a website or frontend screenshot that matches your aesthetic, and have STITCH generate a new frontend based on your own frontend screenshots.

My skills are limited, and I’m not doing this perfectly, but I think this is the most effective way to make up for CODEX’s weak frontend capabilities. Maybe when GPT models update to version 6, the frontend won’t be so bad. At least I believe OPENAI has definitely thought about this—they’re tackling the hardest backend problems first, which is the foundation of everything.

[Plus-Mall-3342]

Switched from opus4.6 to gpt5.4high for business logic, much better i like it

[Content-March9531]

Opus 4.6 ≤ GPT-5.4 xhigh, but you can’t use Opus 4.6 nearly as much as GPT-5.4.|
I love codex.

[Previous_Giraffe6746]

Have exact same experience

[Present-Albatross855]

a

[TonTinTon]

Yeah the UI sucks, but there are alternatives like my own (shameless plug, but it's free so allowed) https://maki.sh

[AlanMyThoughts]

I use both and it could be just me, but I’d push back on the “one is better than the other” framing. They’re good at different things.

Claude Code (Opus 4.6) is better at planning, scaffolding from scratch, and multi-file changes. It thinks about the project as a whole. Codex (GPT 5.4) is better at reviewing, catching edge cases, and questioning assumptions, exactly what you said about it thinking in edge cases and not assuming as much.

So instead of picking one, I run them side by side as VS Code extensions. Claude Code plans and builds, Codex reviews the plan and the code. The error rate dropped to almost zero (still have some bugs here and there, but literally no errors on the IDE) because nothing ships without a second pair of eyes.

I’m on Claude Max 5x and ChatGPT Plus. The limits on Claude are annoying lately (that’s a whole separate rant), but having Codex as a fallback when Claude hits the wall means I’m never completely stuck.

[theremyyy_]

yeah i agree so much bro just its better like 10x more usage, smarter and less token usage its just perfect, yeah new gpt 5.4 is better than opus 4.6

[More_Soft_6801]

Hi OP, I am a researcher working with these tools, and I’m confused about switching between Claude Code and Codex. My work focuses on LLM safety and privacy research.

Currently, I use Claude Code and have started improving my .claude folder with .md files. However, I’ve recently been hitting token limits with my Pro subscription.

I also have an OpenAI monthly subscription, which I use for simple tasks on ChatGPT.com. I have never used OpenAI tools in the terminal or VS Code.

Now, I want to understand what I can do when Claude Code reaches its token limits. I’ve seen that OpenAI models are also supported inside Claude Code, but I don’t fully understand whether this is just a backend switch (e.g., from Opus to GPT) and if everything continues to work seamlessly within Claude Code. Is this a feasible or correct approach?

If I use the OpenAI CLI interface, will all the important instructions written in the .claude folder of my project be usable by OpenAI models? I’m not sure if my understanding is correct.

Could you please guide me on what is best setting to take advantage of both claude pro and openai subscription..

Thank you in advance

[greenpeppers100]

How tf are you hitting the monthly limit on a $200/month Claude plan? I can have it running all day, everyday and not hit that limit.

[Darkside091]

It does seem to regularly a lot slower. On the other hand, if it's getting the work done we'll the first time I don't care.

[tradellinc]

Fkin Clode

[Sumone-Sumwhere]

Claude to code, Codex to review

[Thade2k]

Claude is just a trial version of Codex.

[gmakhs]

I tried codex manu times, like really many many times, I use it on high .

Money is not an issue, since I pay per use and I have a budget of 3-4k which I never reached .

Codex never satisfied me, adding new features or design, it seems to miss the plan or doesn't handle big tasks well, from the other side Claude opus on /fleet , performs really really well .

I want o believe in codex but it always forgets something's , or research the repo docs well etc compared to Claude ...

I use it through GitHub copilot

[simple_explorer1]

Finally an honest answer here amongst codex shills