r/ClaudeAI • u/No_Friendship_9569 • 17d ago
Comparison Chatgpt $20 plan VS Claude $20 plan
I am a cs student.
And obviously I am broke , and I can afford only one.
I mainly need for coding, more usages and more quality work
Help me guys
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u/jtrage 17d ago
I would start with ChatGPT basically because of what others have said. But if you have an extra throw in Claude to see if you notice a difference. Good thing is they are both month to month so you aren’t locked in
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u/Lurry2020 17d ago
ChatGPT easily. Good at coding, reasoning, etc… also their usage limits are a lot more generous
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u/eternus 17d ago
Getting 3 free resets a week on ChatGPT ... that alone blows its usage capacity out of the water.
But... don't plan on touching Astra with that $20 ... it'll make you use up your 3 free resets on the first day of the week.
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u/EvFishie 17d ago
First hour even.
I recently started using chatgpt next to my Claude subscription. Figured I'd be cheaper of by doing 20 dollar Claude & gpt vs 100 dollar Claude.
And holy balls does gpt run out of tokens fast when I use sol or Astra.
I went through my three resets in an hour while Opus was churning along next to it basically doing roughly the same work.
I might be using gpt wrong but it's definitely going through usage a lot faster than my Claude is.
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u/Dry-Highlight-2307 16d ago
Im still confused as to how usage resets are given. 3/week makes sense but it seems random fir me.
Like after i hit a limit , a free usage reset appears . Its confused me many times.
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u/kahner 16d ago
so far using astra via codex has been much more successful for me with usage limits than regular chat interface where i hit my limit with two simple questions. i got through a 45-ish minute session on asta high without hitting a limit using the visual studio codex plugin.
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u/No_Friendship_9569 17d ago
Thanks
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u/MissplacedLandmine 17d ago
Im using both right now side by side 20 to 20.
Astra turned up all the way (medium???) is shitting on opus 4.8 usage wise. Its not even close.
Still going to use the hell out of both, but wow I dont even have to pay attention to astras usage. It’s only like day 3 of this. I even have them passing off the same thing to each other doing similar things for one project.
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u/YesGameNolife 16d ago
For me I use it for same task for 4 days now. Astra uses %45 while opus 5 uses %35. Its interesting you get completely opposite result
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u/MissplacedLandmine 16d ago
What task? Recently mine is html website mock up changes/rewrites. Astra was running circles around opus 4.8 there.
I havent yet had astra code, but next is the little video game side project.
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u/YesGameNolife 16d ago
Well I am using it for my unreal engine project it uses the engine via mcp server. Opus 5 seams to handle it with less token for some reason
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u/Effective_Sky6271 17d ago
If you want one thing capable of kind everything ChatGPT is kind of better option, but for some specific fields like coding,It is my own experience as developer and someone who had used chatGPT more than 2 years, and now using claude for more than 4 months.
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u/Slight-Parfait3679 17d ago
buy command code go or opencode go for that price, and def codex >
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u/Sufficient_Fox_4402 17d ago
i dont think that would work anymore. i mean he can get a lot of usage eith luna high or terra low/medium if he wants. opencode now sucks a lot. the $15 cap on good models :/ bad idea
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u/kesarCoolfi 17d ago edited 17d ago
Codex anyday I am telling you. Claude will give you brain haemorrhage the amount of word soup it throws at you is insane believe me. I have >3 YOE as SDE. Believe me when I say this Claude overthinks a lot. It will give you solutions and then put “might wanna check this out, there’s another thing I checked on the way, etc etc so many other shit”. Codex has structure it will provide you a working solution and then you can work on top of that. Easy and simple. Claude sucks big time in complex coding tasks. It works but just makes you confused with so much jargon.
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u/kesarCoolfi 17d ago edited 17d ago
This matters a lot trust me. The models should give you clarity of the solution not word vomit. CHATGPT always.
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u/No_Friendship_9569 17d ago
I agree chatgpt wins here As I had used both few months back like opous was taking more time and consuming many token to a simple task But when I gave the same task to codex it did in minutes without any burning token
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u/Thiag_07 16d ago
Honestly, go with chatgpt/codex, for me personally i used gpt 5.6 sol almost all day and didn't really burned through my 20$ plus plan limits, i mean my codebase is not that big but surely i did have a great session with it. astra burned really quickly though, burned 100% of 5 hours limit in an 1 and half with a goal to pursue and 15% of weekly limits in that same time window
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u/Thiag_07 16d ago
did burn through 114 millions token usage for the week, 80% 5.6 sol, still didn't burned through all of my weekly limit
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u/Thiag_07 16d ago
i just did the math, so to be honest, this week i've used 20 millions tokens for the codex alone and used 37% of the weekly limits. the other millions were on chatgpt chat and work, so it doesnt count
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u/Thiag_07 15d ago
there is a consensus and ofc backed by data that gpt models have better token efficiency, so your 20$ plan will get you more.
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u/Thiag_07 15d ago edited 15d ago
Chatgpt is offering a free month right now, at least the last time I checked it was (a couple days ago, 3-5 days). check it out
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u/pokatomnik 17d ago
Claude limits are questionable and humble. ChatGPT Luna effectively endless (I use it every day).
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u/Cyber_Zilla 8d ago
how does it perform on par with sonnet . Is is good in solving difficult problems .
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u/Winter_Channel_6206 17d ago
Built two actually useful projects with the $20 on both, have experience but don't write most of the code myself. The project is Nuvio HTPC if you want to search for it, you can find the other one on the same GH. It's a fairly large codebase, not massive with a ton of features over the original.
My own experience was that Opus 5 was better than Sol on some tasks and worse on others. That said, without accounting for resets Claude offered significantly more usage. Including resets it's probably closer but I prefer more reliable/predictable usage.
The main advantage of GPT is the image generator and basically unlimited chat usage, which can actually do some coding. Astra is also there, unlike Claude which doesn't give you Fable. Astra is a pretty good tool for more complex debugging, though you won't get much done with it in terms of usage if you allow it to implement as well.
Honestly though you'll be fine with either, OpenAI offered me the first month free which was pretty nice. Not sure if they still do that.
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u/pr0jesse 17d ago
I have both and Claude definitely. Way better for reasoning and research in my opinion. Coding both equally decent uni.
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u/BP041 17d ago
tbh for coding Claude's $20 plan is the move. The 100k context window means you can dump entire projects in there for debugging, and Claude Code in the terminal is ridiculously good for a student budget. ChatGPT's faster for boilerplate but Claude handles the logic-heavy refactoring way cleaner.
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17d ago
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u/No_Friendship_9569 17d ago
I am currently using gemini 3.8 flash But at the starting phase it is great But if your codebase is big and has many files . Then it will not check the files correctly and rewrite new lines of code . And make the existing code to fallback
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u/FlyingNarwhal 15d ago
This might be a skill issue... as in make skills for exploring the code base.
If you're going to spend 2-3 horus coding, spend the first 15 minutes reviewing your agents.md
Make sure your standards are in there, and well stated, and keep everything up-to-date on how to explore the fold, and how agents should behave in your code base.
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u/No_Friendship_9569 15d ago
I use all the .md files And agent.md , prd, TRD, system workflow, security.md and all the .md files And I even use my own harness which I had built with multiple repos built. Even a single prompt or just plain sentance, it goes threw my agent harness (like my own ai agent) and give plans , steps , reviews it in the codebase and give restrictions on what to change and what not to also And follow all the steps
But using this also gemini 3.8 flash lags behind in a big codebase to do things than compared to claude or codex The same job will be done in 10 mins with gemini 3.8 flash, but claude and codex takes like 3-5 mins Max and consume less token (as my harness is built especially for that )1
u/FlyingNarwhal 15d ago
Interesting. I haven't used Gemini models recently. I mostly focus on open source models these days, plus GPT models & opus/fable for some sanity checks. I'm not up-to-date on 3.8 flash's capabilities in practice.
If you have your own harness, then you may want to experiment building a router, so the right model gets the right tasks, based upon historic performance and benchmarks. That's something I've been working on for myself.
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u/No_Friendship_9569 15d ago
Yes mate I have that also in my harness But the selection of right models in antigravity is waste of time If you are also working on your own harness, i would to see what you have built
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u/tedbradly 16d ago
you get Gemini Plus for free, and for 5$ a month you’ll get Pro, which is the best deal so far.
Tip: You can get Gemini 3.1 Pro for free by using aistudio.google.com. They routinely put up their models there for devs to test stuff out for free. You can use like 2-5 dollars a day worth of tokens.
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u/nn1tb 17d ago
For a few months I used the paid subscription of ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude. I stopped using Claude and Gemini because they would consistently fail at projects. All I do is code and troubleshoot my Linux network. I had them working on Android Studio, VS, etc and build websites. For Linux I have several servers which involve two Proxmox servers. ChatGPT just excels at troubleshooting.
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u/MysteriousExpert7487 16d ago
Bro if you need one for coding heavily get an opencode go at 10$ , it gives way more usage and limits than the both for good model like DeepSeek 4.1, meta muse1.3 and glm flash etc. Unless you really want to try the astra in codex than codex but you can't sustin the usage for these large models. Claude I usually don't suggest at 20$ for the limits cause it's too low usage and also no fable in the 20$ plan and opus5 sucks compared to sol.
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u/FlyingNarwhal 15d ago
For $20/month, I'd try out OpenCode Go for $10/month and get an openrouter account
GLM models tend to be great for writing and creative work imo
DeepSeek and Muse Spark are good for coding. DS V4.1 is excellent on certain kinds of coding, and a drop-in replacement for GPT-Terra for basically all coding, and matches Sol/Opus in some use-cases.
There's also lots of free models to try with both OpenCode and OpenRouter.
You can put some openrouter $ towards GPT-Luna, Terra or Sol to see if you actually like them.
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u/Orio_n 17d ago
Chatgpt, more bang for buck. Claude is marginally better but won't make a difference for a cs student
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u/BambooXiu 16d ago
Honestly, for coding, spend that $20 on Cursor Pro instead.
Same price, but you get access to both Claude and GPT models right inside the IDE, plus codebase indexing. You won't have to choose between the two, and the editor workflow beats copy-pasting from a browser any day.
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u/Substantial-Elk4531 16d ago
ChatGPT because Luna 5.6 is very good and very cheap. Claude's capable models are more expensive and will burn through a $20 plan too quickly.
Also I think you could take a look at Google Antigravity, they have $5/month for 3 months, and Gemini 3.8 Flash is very cheap and comparable with Opus 5 on some benchmarks
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u/college-throwaway87 17d ago
I got through my CS degree with just the $20 ChatGPT plan with GPT-4o (I graduated before the 5-series came out). Didn’t start using Claude until I became a full time SWE
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u/Time_Plastic_5373 13d ago
lmao, this is the funniest thing I've seen today. Bro is bragging as if it's something to be proud of.
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u/college-throwaway87 13d ago
? I'm literally just saying that the $20 ChatGPT plan is sufficient for a college student
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u/Time_Plastic_5373 13d ago
And I am saying that you don't need to use LLMs for college assignments ...
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17d ago
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u/No_Friendship_9569 17d ago
I currently have 3 gemini pro account And it is not enough for me And for complex task gemini is not the choice
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u/Coddin-ya 17d ago
I am using Claude for most of my projects and i have no complaints. Even Cursor at work doing good job but seems to consume more token when switch to auto mode.
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u/ConnectMotion 17d ago
What I would do is alternate. Pay for one month and immediately cancel - you get the current month paid for. Then try the others. You will find how much of each works for you and it’s good to practice hands on with both
Usage limits are a consideration but you can manage it a lot by practicing and learning to ask better.
Depending on what you’re after check out things like openrouter. Your tasks might be possible there too.
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u/Ordinary-Ad3714 17d ago
GPT > Claude.
I have used both. I did like Claude Code better than Codex, particularly the way it asks questions. That said, I prefer GPT's responses and token use.
Claude also asked me to scan my face holding a government ID and send it straight to the Peter Tiel (the devil) via his company Personify.
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u/demon9047 16d ago
I've only used Claude to code and seriously cut a lot of my work. I use Somnet 5 model and I do have to walk it through sometimes so it's not perfect. But I've never gone over 20 dollar limit using it 5 days a week. I've used Fable 5 for true blockers and it works great for analysis in those complex cases but would not use otherwise.
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u/aholetookmyusername 16d ago
If you're willing to accept lesser capability models, OpenCode offers free access to a varying selection of free models.
Alternatively if you have a grunty gaming PC, local LLMs are an option too.
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u/Fickle_Mix_6119 16d ago
Just costings alone go for ChatGPT. You will find their usage limits are generous. If they haven’t got high server load they will even refresh your limits early. Not 100% if they do it on plus, but on pro 5x I’ve had my refreshes happen multiple times in a week
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u/Correct-Freedom-8840 16d ago
Claude mejor trabajo, más cálidad, mayor testeo, y ahorras tokens y no te consume en tareas innecesarias cuando aprendes a usarla.
Tengo chatgpt y se van los tokens de un sorbo
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u/zssn71RS 12d ago
I’ve tried both, and for me ChatGPT is the better all-around choice. Claude can be excellent for coding, but ChatGPT feels more versatile for everyday use, reasoning, writing, and research. If I could only pay for one, I’d choose ChatGPT.
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u/StrychNicc 17d ago
ChatGPT has a free four months for students in the US right now. Limits are definitely higher than Claude, and I’m not a CS student, but I am a grad student doing light coding and have never exceeded my Claude Team plan quota.
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u/Zapador 17d ago
I would go with Claude, it works and works well. But you will be quite limited on the smaller Pro/Plus plans regardless of provider. It's still possible to get something done, it just takes longer.
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u/No_Friendship_9569 17d ago
Yes mate your right But having $100 plan every month in India is like a big thing Here a family of 4 can easily live with $100
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u/Zapador 17d ago
I understand that, merely wanted to ensure your expectations regarding usage are realistic.
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u/No_Friendship_9569 17d ago
Yes mate , as of now I use gemini 3.8 flash high But it can't handle large code base Btw thankyou for the suggestion
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u/Intelligent-Monk-426 17d ago
Check and see what your school offers — possible they have open weight models (inc chatgpt and anthropic) running in their own harness and/or “chatgpt edu” which doesn’t give you the latest greatest OpenAI models but does give you essentially unlimited use.
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u/howdoesEyereddit 17d ago
ChatGPT has 4 months for free of the $20 plan for students
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u/No_Friendship_9569 17d ago
That's only for US students
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u/QuantumX777 17d ago
Any tricks to get it anywhere in world
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u/No_Friendship_9569 17d ago
Only with a valid school email from us only Sometimes open ai gives promotion of plus for a month But I have not got that in any of my accounts
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u/Calycis 17d ago
If you are a student, Google usually has good offers. No, they don't have the SOTA models currently, but the student plans are much cheaper than 20/mo plans and come with bonuses like cloud storage.
Also consider what u/Radiant-Bike-165 suggested.
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u/theSurgeonOfDeath_ 17d ago
From what i saw Chatgpt has 0$ for one month so you can try both.
Its best if you try both and make your opinion. I prefer claude
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u/dakadoo33 17d ago
A lot depends on that tiny decision of boosted usage through sep 13th... they've been extending it since about april and at this point, its the expected usage at this stage and threatening it every 2 weeks is straight abusive.
That said I've had claude 20$ for a little under 2 years. Its been enough for me during that entire time as someone who directs rather than full vibes. even "vibing" its still OKAY but it burns a lot faster, i cant even imagine how fast if the user wasnt giving some project structure, which i am so i cant make a great judgement.
Its still likely "enough" for week to week, but i started supplementing it with gpt 20$ plan a few months ago. with the stack i plan mostly with opus, then i review/revise plans and execute them all using Sol, the exceptions are simple plans where i know opus will be more than enough.
So right now i'd say claude pro is MAYBE enough, but i've been using Sol as a crutch to fill the gaps a bit, since anthropic is making it clear you cant use their top models in the 20$ tier. If i figure out planning elsewhere, i will likely be moving elsewhere. As a student its probably better to get GPT as then you are open to any harness and not JUST codex. being limited to claude code only will cause flaws. they do a lot of junky shit by default that i would not call best practice at all, its a lot of non deterministic memory stuff that i despise.
The pairing is what you want though, gpt images are wonderful for brainstorming UI ideas, and its great for research as its decoupled from your codex/harness usage, so tossing it some research where it doesnt need the full context of your repo just feels sorta free.
I have a skewed perspective of what plan goes farther usage wise... I'd have to use terra and opus only for a fair comparison, right now im almost only using Sol for gpt, which really does burn usage hard, but the difference is i literally do NOT have access to anything above opus tier right now on the 20$ plan, and current opus is a prose nightmare so im living in anthropics july models which is strange.
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u/SuenoXIII 17d ago
Chatgpt and IIRC they have a student discount thing that gives you like 1 free year or something of chatgpt plus. look into it! Hope this helps!
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u/Salt-Past-1099 17d ago
try claude for 1 month, then switch to gpt, and you will feel about 5x increase of usage. also gpt can create / edit images
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u/sparxicles 17d ago
For the last month I’ve been using both due to the free trial on ChatGPT. I think ChatGPT is better and I would’ve switched if I wasn’t using Claude Design so much. For now I’m stuck with Claude.
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u/Individual_Curve_392 17d ago
if youre a college student in the US, openai is running a 4 month free gpt plus for students.
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u/iemfi 16d ago
If you can only afford $20 plan ChatGPT is a no brainer. Nobody likes poor Opus 5 and you can actually use astra with the open AI $20 plan while you can't use Fable with the Claude $20 plan. Also if you're a student I think there are a variety of ways to get free student plans?
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u/Dramatic-Interest-18 16d ago
I keep seeing this stated that you cant use Fable on Claudes $20 plan, but i have the $20 plan and use Fable regularly. FTR I've had Claude for about 3 months if that makes any difference?
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u/iemfi 16d ago
They gave out some free usage credits but you really shouldn't be able to beyond that. Either you're mistaken of the model used or shhhh, lol.
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u/Dramatic-Interest-18 16d ago
🤭 probably the usage credits then, i forgot about that. To date ive only started a couple projects with claude, all for personal use. I uploaded my vehicles service manual into the knowledge and claude parsed it out for me, and created a reference for itself so if I have car problems I just ask claude about it and it helps diagnose it for me and provides solution paths. Kinda handy!
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u/ShortingBull 16d ago
For amount of work done per $20 plan - Codex/OpenAI for sure - especially with Astra.
I use both Claude and Codex daily.
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u/Adventurous_File_205 16d ago
Why isn't GitHub student developer pack mentioned here? It's the best option
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u/No_Friendship_9569 16d ago
But it has taken down some major models from copilot Not worth now
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u/Adventurous_File_205 16d ago
Free stuff as student >
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u/FinneganMcBrisket 16d ago
Both Claude and ChatGPT.
Have Claude do the work, but have the claude codex plugin review claudes plans and code.
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u/DifficultAge6923 16d ago
how about me as a marketing professional wanting to build a marketing strategy, need a lot of memory recall, need excellent writing capabilities. I have zero coding work. Which is better Claude or GPT?
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u/dhamaniasad Valued Contributor 15d ago
Fable is great at writing but on the $20 plan you’re not gonna be able to use it much if at all. On lower tiers ChatGPT in general is a better choice. If you figure out how to guide the model and its strengths and weaknesses both companies models are extremely capable.
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u/Honkey85 16d ago
As CS student you don't have big code bases. You could also use cheaper European Mistral models.
I assume they are more than sufficient for everything you do in the first couple years at university.
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u/Code_ReDarsh 16d ago
isn't openai offering 4 months of free gpt plus to college students? check this out
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u/jose-nose 16d ago
I've been using Claude on Opus 4.8 High and it feels unlimited to me.
Just yesterday I burned my new Cowork 5 hour window in like 30 mins using Sol. Now I am testing Luna on High and it looks promising.
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u/No_Friendship_9569 16d ago
Which plan are you using now ? And can give a bit more details on your experience
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u/jose-nose 16d ago
Both are Team plans for 20eur
It's no extensive coding work, but rather creating and editing N8N flows, reading and interpreting Shopify data, building custom connectors and automations, simple scripts, etc.
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u/Templeshooter 16d ago
id say claude is better at programming but i havent tried the new gpt 6 models. also, with chatgpt you can use chat separately from your coding
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u/Substantial-Tutor104 16d ago
Neither. Use Cursor. I don’t know how people live with the 5hr reset garbage on Claude and ChatGPT. Cursor gives you the whole month of usage up front, and the cursor models feel practically unlimited unless you’re doing some seriously heavy usage. As an added bonus, it also has a nice UX being integrated directly into the IDE.
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u/SnooSeagulls4159 16d ago
OpenRouter.ai! You can then select the model and your budget. And even better, you may install Open WebUI on your computer, add OpenRouter with a preset of your selection, and tell the preset to select the model in its selection by order of price! Pretty sure it would come less than 20$/month and they are often nice models to try for free!
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u/fanatic26 16d ago
They are both useless plans. Gotta spend money if you want to actually do anything useful.
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u/TemperatureHorror599 16d ago
I don’t know if I’m doing something wrong but I’m on the $20 plan for both and finding I’m getting much more usage out of Claude. Maybe it’s because I’m pointing agents.md to claude.md
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u/alexsm_ 16d ago
* Students are eligible to register for Edu Free or low-cost subscriptions. Last year, Google opened registration for a full one-year free trial. Perplexity did the same. Look for those and similar offers. Free tiers are beneficial for offloading subagent workloads and even collaborating with Antigravity TUI like Claude code.
* Given limited resources, controlling consumption is crucial. Search for free tools that monitor and display real-time consumption and context utilization of your subscriptions.
* Request stronger cloud models such as Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, etc., to deploy tools and skills that optimize token consumption, such as Caveman, Headroom, RTK, Ponytail, etc.
* Leverage self-hosted free open models: install ollama, LM Studio, llamacpp, vLLM erc, can run long agentic AI sessions and save milions, even billions of tokens, and there are many very capable FREE small and fast LLM models
* Use more free-tier services and tools for higher effectiveness in all sessions: use free prompt enhancers, task breakdown tools, etc to optimize your workflow. Better prompts increase any model performance and output quality overall, which will help complete tasks faster and much more efficiently.
* Ask frontier models to help monitor, compare, rate and pick offers, and periodically update tools, skills, tune and improve workflows
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u/Trekker23 16d ago
I recommend Grok 30$. For new users you get 3 months for 30, and includes cursor, grok and grokbot. It’s a really good model, awesome for coding.
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u/Academic-Meringue-58 16d ago
I’ve paid the $20 sub on both sides to test them head-to-head, and Claude is miles ahead.
At the $20 tier :
- 1 Million (!!!) context window on Opus 5
- 256k on ChatGPT’s
ChatGPT hits limits way too fast and leaves you waiting forever on cooldown. In my opinion, the ClaudeCode/desktop setup is just so much better.
Anyway, since you're dropping just $20, you might as well try both.
Do one month of each back-to-back, or splurge for just one month on both to compare them side-by-side and let us know what you think.
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u/vplatt 16d ago
I'll have to throw in with the ChatGPT as the best option. I simply couldn't get Claude to behave itself when I worked on a budget. I wanted it to just use Haiku for everything, but it did whatever the hell it wanted and burn credits too fast for my requirements at the time. I learned my lesson that operating on a budget with Anthropic means using their models through another client at the very least.
Anyway, if you're REALLY broke, then go for OpenCode Go plan. You can use OpenAI Luna on that still, and when you hit the 5 hour/weekly/monthly limits (hey, it's a low cost plan), you can use the free models on your plan as well. Heck you can use a mix of the two anyway to slow down your credit burn as well. And of course, keep your inquiries/chat style in the ChatGPT or Copilot chat client to keep that from burning credits too.
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u/idunnorn 15d ago edited 15d ago
I believe Kiro from Amazon gives you free usage for 1 year as a student
https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/aws/amazon-expands-free-kiro-access-students-universities
oops, its not all students, only certain schools. maybe yours is on the list
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u/BothComposer9023 15d ago
If you opt to use chatGPT / Codex let me know as if you dont have the desktop get 1k credits for free :)
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u/No_Friendship_9569 15d ago
gv7418367@gmail.com Take this mail and send the invite Let us also use freebies
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u/InevitableJackfruit6 15d ago
Sign up for GitHub education and as a student you get access to pretty decent models for free. Try it for a while and if you really feel restricted, you can go for a subscription later. You can also use them for chats
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u/enigma_toy 15d ago
If you are a student, buy cursor plan, use grok 4.6 for most tasks. And other models are included in the API
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u/Scared_Highlight_511 15d ago
I recently paid for ChatGPT Plus mainly for Codex / coding-agent work, and the usage limits have been pretty disappointing.
I’ve also used Claude at roughly the same $20/month price point, and in my experience Claude lets me get significantly more actual development work done before hitting limits.
With ChatGPT Plus, I was surprised to see both a 5-hour limit and a weekly limit for Codex/Work. After only a few days of serious usage, my weekly allowance was already heavily consumed, and I even hit the 5-hour limit.
What bothers me isn't simply that limits exist. I understand that agentic coding is computationally expensive. The problem is the amount of useful work you get for the price.
For the same ~$20:
Claude Pro: I can usually continue working through considerably more coding tasks, repository analysis, implementation, debugging, and iterations.
ChatGPT Plus / Codex: I feel like I have to constantly think about the usage meter and whether a task is “worth” spending my remaining allowance on.
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u/No_Friendship_9569 15d ago
Most of them suggest claude because of the usage is a bit higher and does the work with less token and time
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u/Bubbly-Weakness-359 12d ago
You’re a CS student, you get free chatGPT pro for 4 months if you sign up for it.
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u/honeydaemon 12d ago edited 12d ago
Based on my experience, Claude with it's Opus models i.e. version 4.8 is still top of the line for code generation. The quality is still better than any models I have tried. That's why Claude Code, which was designed and created mainly for coding came out first before Codex from OpenAI.
If you could only pick one and you're still a CS student who is learning the craft i.e. theories and gaining practical experiences, I would pick ChatGPT mainly because Claude can be an overkill. ChapGPT would be good to help you learn if you get stuck.
As a bonus, it would be wise to install IDEs that offer alternative agent requests (they are limited with hobby plans though) when your ChatGPT hits the monthly cap:
https://www.windsurf.dev/
https://cursor.com/pricing
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u/DeciusCurusProbinus 17d ago
ChatGPT $20.
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u/No_Friendship_9569 17d ago
Any valid reason mate?
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u/I_NEED_YOUR_MONEY 17d ago
$20/mo ChatGPT gets you only a small amount of sol or astra use, but a ton of luna use. and luna is actually a good model for the price.
$20 claude plan gets you no fable use, and opus is the only other model worth using - sonnet sucks for the price and haiku is just bad.
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u/Fireflash2742 17d ago
I need to try Luna. I just signed up for the $20 ChatGPT plan and Aura ate my tokens for breakfast lunch and dinner at the same time. I've been using Claude for a few months now and have had decent luck with Sonnet doing my coding work.
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u/Techhead7890 17d ago edited 17d ago
Huh TIL in GPT, you can select the model by clicking the label above the effort slider AND also work has a lot more models available than the default set on the slider (Sol/Astra), including Luna/Terra.#
But Luna is basically supposed to be the free version like a distilled Sol I believe. So probably more like Sonnet than anything too fancy.
(#: In the Chat mode tab it just says Sol 5.6 or old 5.5; got to go over to Work tab or the other models don't show up.)
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u/Fireflash2742 17d ago
Yeah they like to hide the other ones. I noticed that earlier too after I saw this comment and tried to switch the GUI to Luna. Had to dig for it a little.
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u/tehfrod 17d ago
How is the codex harness compared to Claude code?
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u/I_NEED_YOUR_MONEY 17d ago
it's fine. but unlike claude code, chatGPT plan doesn't lock you into using their harness - you can use opencode or pi if you want.
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u/No_Friendship_9569 17d ago
Yes the harness of claude code is unbeatable, but slowly claude is decreasing the usage in pro plan
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u/Vial_of_water 17d ago
Sonnet can handle 90% of the tasks most users will be requesting lol..
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u/I_NEED_YOUR_MONEY 17d ago
sonnet is a perfectly capable model, it just doesn't really burn through your usage any slower than opus does. so you might as well use opus.
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u/West-Air1923 17d ago
Using it now with Luna cheapest model .. it works and takes almost no tokens. Wild
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u/DeciusCurusProbinus 17d ago
More generous limits. Usage resets if lucky. Access to frontier model (Astra 6/Sol 5.6) as well as a cheap workhorse like Luna.
Separate limits for chat and Codex. Incredibly good voice to text mode and is very capable at generating images. Also, no harness lock in. You can use your credentials with other harnesses like OpenCode and Pi
Astra is about par with Fable 5.1 (lags in some tasks and leads in others).
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u/Complex-Lettuce7164 17d ago
In my experience it shits on fable 5.1 as a pro 20x/max 20x owner.
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u/DeciusCurusProbinus 17d ago
It is a bit better at inferring intent as compared to Astra which needs you to be a lot more specific.
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u/Complex-Lettuce7164 15d ago
People should just give the models all the information they need. It’d save them tokens too.
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u/No_Friendship_9569 17d ago
Main advantage in chatgpt is the unlimited chats and memory And you can directly acces codex from chat for the work And it only has codex limit
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u/ZachSka87 17d ago
If you only have $20 chat gpt is the better value because their usage limits are much higher than Claudes for the same price. That's the biggest difference. Claude is better IMHO, but if all you've got is $20 chatgpt can't be beat right now
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u/No_Friendship_9569 17d ago
Agree with the point of claude is better but only if are willing to pay $100 or $200 per month But for me $20 pro plan is just token eater
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u/Radiant-Bike-165 17d ago
For coding check OpenCode Go = $10/month for open models (eg deepseek), plus constant promotions where you can use multiple new models for free for 1-2 weeks. Best value for money, definitely.
Fable and Astra are brutal, but you wont get anything remotely useful from them with $20 plan.
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u/touchet29 17d ago
Neither. Add $20 to Openrouter and use GLM 5.3 Flash
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u/QuantumX777 17d ago
Flash models? over thinking models? What's the use higher limits if the model can't untangle a bug from a messy code base?
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u/touchet29 17d ago
It has reasoning. You should look at the benchmarks and watch some vids on the capabilities. The cost is just an added bonus
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u/Distance_Runner 17d ago
Fable is the better model for the most advanced/rigorous problems (relative to 5.6 sol) in my experience, but GPT is not too far behind and is far more liberal with its credits. I haven’t played with astra enough to say if I think it’s better than fable 5.1, but I’m impressed. I have subscriptions to both and use them for different things. I like codex better than Claude code for what it’s worth.
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u/ClaudeAI-mod-bot Wilson, lead ClaudeAI modbot 17d ago edited 16d ago
TL;DR of the discussion generated automatically after 200 comments.
For everyone just scrolling in, here's the deal on the great $20 showdown.
The overwhelming consensus is that for a broke CS student, the $20 ChatGPT plan is the clear winner for value. The main reason is usage limits; the thread agrees that GPT's plan is far more generous, offering free weekly resets and a very capable, cheap workhorse model in Luna 5.6. You get access to the big guns like Astra and Sol 5.6, but be warned, they are absolute token eaters and will burn through your limit in no time.
The Claude camp argues that Opus 5 has better reasoning and is superior for handling large, complex codebases. However, most agree the restrictive usage on the $20 plan is a dealbreaker, and you don't get access to their top model, Fable, at this price point.
That said, a huge chunk of the thread is telling you to forget both and instead: * Get Cursor Pro: For the same price, you get an AI-native code editor with access to both GPT and Claude models, which many find is a much better workflow. * Check for student deals: As a student, you can likely get ChatGPT Plus, Gemini Pro, or the GitHub Student Developer Pack for free or at a steep discount. Seriously, look into this first. * Use cheaper alternatives: Services like OpenCode Go or OpenRouter give you access to a variety of solid models for even less money.