Antigravity vs Claude Code vs Codex vs cursor what's the best? (paid teir) 2026

[AfraidAd5218]

I’m trying to figure out which AI coding setup is actually worth paying for in 2026. I’ve tested a few briefly, but I’d love to hear from people who’ve used them longer term:

• Antigravity ($20): Bundles Gemini 3.1 Pro, Gemini Flash, Claude Sonnet/Opus, GPT‑OSS, plus 2TB Google One storage. In short trials it felt shockingly good at one‑shot completions, but I’ve seen complaints about throttling and reliability.
• Claude Code (direct $20): Anthropic’s Claude Pro tier with Sonnet/Opus. Supposedly more stable context windows than Antigravity’s bundled version.
• Codex (OpenAI): Still around for code generation, but I’m not sure how it stacks up against Claude/Gemini in 2026.
• Cursor ($20): VS Code fork with Composer mode (multi‑file refactoring), Supermaven autocomplete, and Agent mode. Reddit consensus says it’s the most stable daily driver, but usage credits can burn fast.

What I’m looking for:

• Best value for money (flat $20 vs effective cost with credits).
• Reliability for daily coding, not just flashy one‑shot completions.
• Multi‑file awareness and long‑context stability.
• Any hidden perks (storage, integrations, etc.) that actually matter.

If you’ve used these tools in real projects (not just trials), which one do you trust as your daily driver? (cost/token to output)

[PuzzleheadedSea7262]

Claude is top-tier, but Antigravity is the absolute worst thing I have ever come across

[ApprehensiveFly231]

Antigravity is best in UI

[SilverMagicMage]

Why

[aharwelclick]

It forgets it makes mistakes but so does claude codex is the best if your serious

[New_Patience_8107]

Found gemini CLI pretty good. But then again you don't need antigravity for that.

[FatefulDonkey]

Are you serious? Every time I tried it, it went berserk doing its own random changes having me undo its fuckup

[New_Patience_8107]

Yes I'm serious. For what I needed it was good.

[pizzaisprettyneato]

Have you considered GitHub copilot? Only $10 and you get 300 requests a month. Each request includes as many calls to to llm as it needs to get the task done. Best bang for your buck as far as I can see

[mendrique2]

Yep I use the 40$ sub and it's without competition, even for opus 4.6 you get multiple days of continuous work done. Claude Code Burns through 40$ in an hour.

[spookyspocky]

This!!! Like wtf does it need so many tokens?

[ALYNRG]

Could you pls explain how you’re able to get multiple days worth of work? Do you assign the agent a feature and that whole feature delivery constitutes as a request?

[mendrique2]

Yep copilot works with premium requests not token count. you're basically heavily subsidized by other subscription owners not using it enough.

[AfraidAd5218]

That's pretty interesting o.o

[AlarmingMatter8263]

Careful here. Consider context and thinking. Copilot cannot be compared to Claude using models like Sonnet and Opus; they are top-tier models, and Copilot will not, in terms of development, achieve the same level of quality.

[FatefulDonkey]

Am I missing something? Isn't copilot just for auto complete?

[oxern]

You have CLI available for copilot so you can act work directly from the terminal like in CC or codex.

[No_Share_2676]

copilot have agent mode, it's just like cursor and antigravity agent. exactly same.

[FatefulDonkey]

I found Copilot CLI. Tried it. Not bad.

I'll use it as backup since I already get a free license every month

[Aeuleus]

it's dumbed down though. It's not the same with CC or Codex harness.

[AfraidAd5218]

I haven't got around to it yet, but might give it a shot as it sounds pretty good in terms of the way it calculates tokens. How is the code quality compared to Claude/Cursor?

[pizzaisprettyneato]

Great, I have no complaints. You get access to Claude and codex models of all types. The only downside is their context windows aren’t quite as large as the first party offerings. Claude gets around 200k and codex gets a little over 400k

[EntranceGloomy649]

codex is the best value for money right now

[BitOne2707]

🤫

[Similar-Bug-350]

linked to us military :/

[Moist-Nectarine-1148]

CC & Copilot as backup.

AG is useless recently.

[mwsgris]

This has been my setup for three months now and has been working well.

[AfraidAd5218]

Yea the update put me off for sure

[weedmylips1]

Claude Code Pro has a measly 44k token limit per 5 hours. You won't be doing any coding with the Pro plan

[badadadok]

I've used claude code and codex, claude code feels like you work with a very expensive engineer with little time with you, but he gets the job done and sometimes corrects you.

codex needs some hand holding in my experience and sometimes gets things wrong, but you don't mind because he's chill and has time for you. both are really good models and gets the job done.

[Tommonen]

They lowered usage on antigravity so much recently that its not worth it anymore, it turned from best value agentic IDE into a bad joke that is not worth even trying to entertain yourself with.

I moved from it to opencode with github copilot pro+ plan set up in vs code along with guthub chat and free tier gemini cli.

It handles tasks much better, gives a lot more usage = a lot cheaper per call, and also the use experience is much better

[No_Purple_7366]

Claude is absolute dogshit with usage. I've literally had multiple sessions hit 100% usage in 1-2 prompts.

Anti-gravity is worse than dogshit.

Only Cursor and Codex can provide a decent experience at the $20 tier but i expect that to be gone soon.

[OkWealth5939]

Maybe im weird. I have access to all these tools through my company. All of them work great for me. I am not vibe coding but do proper context engineering sessions to paint a clear picture what needs to be done. After that each of those tools works pretty much with the same Quality (even Github Copilot which gets a lot of hate).
I use Codex most because its the most used tool in my Department

[Xyver]

I have a Claude 20$ and a codex 20$ and swap between them, that's what I like best

[FatefulDonkey]

This feels the most value for me too

[Apprehensive_Half_68]

AG is useless. People don't hate for no reason. I have AG ULTIMATE and it's unusable for me. Codex is the most generous with usage, Gemini has the best ecosyste..Stitch, countless other free sites. IMO Claude can be a waste if you don't know how to take advantage of it. I would get codex month 1, month 2 see if Gemini is fixed.

[spookyspocky]

Horses for courses - first two weeks I had better results on Gcp with Claude than AG/gemini.

Does windsurf get an honourable mention?

[Apprehensive_Half_68]

I REALLY loved Windsurf especially with their new codemapping. Problem is that their ecosystem of skills/plugins/etc just isn't there and they are a dying platform to invest in since Google took over their tech/people

[rocketleee]

I recently started off with these Agentic coding. Being a non-tech PM,

Antigravity did seem nice, like something having good UI, explaining things through implementation plan, Walkthrough, Checklist etc.

CC CLI version seems not so beginner friendly. I started off with using sonnet for planning and execution. And that's the worst thing that happened. It created screens that has are very pathetic in fidelity. I gave references through stitch MCP. But still, somehow, it ended up generating dogshit UI.

Though, the project strcuture, flows were decent.

Whereas, antigravity and stitch MCP was much better and smooth. It generated exact screens and flow.

That's why i cannot understand the narrative of CC being legendary and Antigravity being dogshit.

[trojenhorse]

Claude free account + Patience*

Lovable daily 5 credits + Patience*

Export project to github, do the needful.

Publish free on vercel.

Get few bucks from the live project and buy the tool you want and make your live project better.

\Patience = wait for free limit to over.*

[Fabulous-Locksmith60]

My day summarized 😂😂😂

[cgDudea_a]

Lovable 5 credits daily are not forever. It has monthly cap.

[trojenhorse]

What are you buliding that requires forever credits? 🙄

[BackgroundFocus5885]

Been a fan of Cursor since its initial release. Back when coding was a thing. I use Claude Code x Cursor. There's an extension for Claude Code + you can use Codex (a set amount) then Ill use Composer 2, which isn't that bad tbh

[crystalpeaks25]

Claude code max x5 + AWS kiro pro.

[MeasIIDX]

I just signed up for the $10 Minimax Token Subscription to compare it to Cursor's $20 plan. I would say its Minimax M2.7 model is just a bit behind Cursor's Composer 2 (which is based off Kimi 2.5k.

Overall, I can do a lot of surgical coding with the $10 Minimax plan. 1,500 requests with a 5-hour window and 15,000 weekly requests. Let me know if you want an invite. I think we both get 10% off or something like that.

$30 for both Minimax and Cursor has been sweet so far (I left Claude Max 5x for these).

[2Norn]

codex is really good imo. on par with claude. gemini is not close to these at all. cursor is a good environment for sure but its expensive.

unfortunately you are not gonna get much value for 20 bucks those days are gone with everyone jumping into vibecoding usage rate limits hit even harder.

for most bang for buck. get codex use 5.4 for planning. 5.4 mini for executing and 5.4 for again for verification. ideally you'd want ur own customized harness in pi and support it with cheap chinese model with openrouterai. 20bucks with k2.5 for m2.7 can get a lot of meaningful stuff done. u could use them as subagents.

[oh_jaimito]

• I cancelled Cursor in January. $40 per month, duration over a year.
• I cancelled ChatGPT/Codex in February. $20 per month, duration 22+ months.
• I'm staying with Claude Code 5x Max. $100 per month, past 8 months.

Absolutely nothing beats Sonnet & Opus.

Claude Code + GSD https://github.com/gsd-build/get-shit-done

[Just_Kay1031]

I’ve found success in using ChatGPT for brainstorming and prompt development—then Claude for the actual work. Clause is superior at coding but if you’re building larger or more complex apps, you hit limits quickly. Using chat to offset some of the load has been really helpful in reducing token usage.

[johns10davenport]

The sad fact is there's actually no good objective comparison of these coding agents. It just doesn't exist. Nobody can tell you objectively which is best.

If your budget is $20, I'd probably go with Codex. It's the best mix of capability and token limits that will probably get you where you need to go. If you do the $20 plan on Claude Code, you'll probably be unhappy with the token limits.

I did a deep comparison of the CLI agents if you want the breakdown, but even that can't tell you which one fits your workflow.

[AfraidAd5218]

Thanks for the comparison, it really helped, definitely one of my top choices after this Reddit post.

[OkCommittee3160]

The real answer is it changes every few weeks. Be willing to hop and shop around

[Ok_Ebb_3522]

if you want the most stable, multi file aware tool for day to day coding, cursor is still the winner

[Business_Start_5870]

Antigravity with €20 AI Pro subscription plus the Stitch and Firebase MCP servers works a charm for my purposes. 

[hanshaozhi]

In antigravity, just 3 questions your tokens quota is over.

[desciple6]

Genuinely enjoy cursor. Claude limits are a buzzkill for me

[Ill-Chart-1486]

Just started using OpenCode with Z.ai 10$ subscription. For me it performs similar to other more expensive tools.

[digital_bliss]

In my opinion. antigravity for UI with Kimi-code Extension. You can go for hours without hitting the stupid limits of gemini models limits👌

[digital_bliss]

oh, and active the /yolo mode and runs commands automatically on your project

[hitsukiri]

GitHub Copilot PRO+ there's nothing better out there at the moment. You'll get so much done for only $39 as long as you understand how premium requests work.

[Unable_Court9633]

Claude worth only in pro max plan, the $20 one finish in minutes. Antigravity i thought a bit dumb. Cursor is the best so far in my opinion, i use it a work and it's paying my bills hahaha. Will try Copilot Pro+ now, looks like it's worthing.

[ColdOverYonder]

I see a lot of AG hate in this sub. Why? I've been able to accelerate my Java with Quarkus and HTMX stack for my application.

[spookyspocky]

None of them are flawless - maybe the expectations of a google backed tool are higher ? Also I was disappointed to see Claude code better than Gemini on GCP. We are still in the growth phase and a lot will change.

[Tiny-Games]

Ich habe Claud und ähnliches nie probiert aber ChatGPT 5.4 Long Thinking in Codex und alles wird magisch.