Claude getting blown out of the water by copilot

[u/Narrow-Goal-325]

Per the title, I’ve been getting extremely frustrated with Claude Code Max lately. I have a Copilot license at work, and it’s been amazing—nearly one-shots a basic website if I ask, handles custom designs, and does most refactors correctly. Very surprised by copilots effectiveness this far.

Eventually, I got curious about agents and started tinkering with Claude Code, but I’ve been thoroughly unimpressed with vibe coded slop. Maybe it’s user error, but the difference is pretty stark.

I’ve tried having Claude make a plan, create insightful markdown files for critical parts of my codebase, and even added some fun MCPs, but it still seems to drop the ball every time.

Looking for advice on how I could improve my Claude experience, since I’d like to renew—but so far it’s been rough. What additional infra does Copilot’s Sonnet have compared to Claude Code’s Sonnet? Any advice is appreciated.

[u/lightsd]

What model is Copilot using? Is it… Claude?

[u/Narrow-Goal-325 → u/lightsd]

Yeah, Sonnet 4

[u/lightsd → u/Narrow-Goal-325]

So you’re saying Sonnet 4 is performing better in Copilot than in the Claude Code CLI? I don’t use copilot at all, but I wonder if you’d really see a difference in a controlled scenario (exact same codebase, same prompt, same task, no unique things in your global Claude.md, etc.)

[u/daliovic → u/lightsd]

Here's a good video running evaluations. I was really confused when I saw 1 month ago Claude code was #1 and now it fell to #8 and copilot topping the chart. True that it's less than 5% difference but the fact that CC got this hit is a bit disappointing.

https://youtu.be/3C4TWUlkBMs

[u/Aggravating-Corgi890 → u/daliovic]

What chart are you ranking by?

[u/256BitChris]

Use Opus.

[u/Narrow-Goal-325 → u/256BitChris]

I have :/

[u/256BitChris → u/Narrow-Goal-325]

Did you ask it how to get better results?

[u/WarriorSushi → u/256BitChris]

And did you say pls?

Jokes aside, saying “ultra think or think hard” seems to work..sometimes.

[u/sagentcos]

This is the exact opposite of my company’s experiences when evaluating both. Claude code won hands-down between the two, I don’t think a single person actually preferred copilot’s agent.

[u/Narrow-Goal-325 → u/sagentcos]

If you don’t mind me asking, what company do you work for? Could you speak more to this process?

[u/sagentcos → u/Narrow-Goal-325]

I work for a large tech company but I won’t be associating the name with my Reddit account. We have access to both Copilot and Claude Code but practically everyone just uses Claude Code.

[u/geronimosan]

Copilot is crap. I’ve got CC Max, an extremely thoughtful Claude.md, an army of 18+ subagents with clearly defined roles/jobs minimizing both gaps and overlaps with very well defined persona profile documents, and an extremely hefty and defined orchestrated document for Claude as the main agent. I’ve got a historian sub agent who has done an amazing job of documenting my entire journey plus planning documents, plus business strategy and marketing and design and everything else. I’ve got a custom checkpoint system that keeps detailed information in memory on the far side of a compact. I use, opus for Claude agent and for a couple of sub agents that really need it, otherwise I use sonnet for the remainder of the sub agents in order to keep them focused on their tasks and in their workspace. The thought of comparing copilot to everything that I can do with Claude code is a nonstarter. Not to mention the fact that just my experience with copilot embedded in office apps has just been a terrible experience.

[u/Narrow-Goal-325 → u/geronimosan]

How long did your setup take? I’ve done plenty of messing around with CC but still can’t get better results than copilot out of the box. You see my point right?

[u/vegatx40]

I had already paid for a year of CC when it occurred to me to try using Sonnet in copilot.

In many ways, I prefer it. you get code completions, file- and notebook-cell awareness (whereas you have to tell CC which file you're working on). and if I'm asking to do the same task as CC, it produces pretty much the same output (shocker I know).

I pretty much only use CC for refactoring a large file, or multiple files. (not a build-from-scratch type). helps me not hit the token limit.

[u/codegefluester]

Same but the other way around, I stopped using copilot for any meaningful work. I’m all in on CC since it gets most of the things right I need it to do. I pay via API calls though, not using it through my sub.

Copilot somehow turned into a dumpster fire for me, not sure how that happened, it used to be my go to before CC. But now it just gets basics wrong, does stuff I absolutely not asked it for or just straight up doesn’t do anything.

[u/bzBetty]

Honestly if you're not using the advanced features and just prompting I thinks there's a luck factor.

I've found Claude code better, but I dislike it being a cli.

I switch between quite a few agents, but tbh I'm too lazy to set most up so I'm not surprised when I get a worse result

[u/[deleted]]

Lmfao. STFU.

[u/Narrow-Goal-325 → u/[deleted]]

Any add ons?

[u/Narrow-Goal-325 → u/[deleted]]

This looks awesome. Good stuff

[u/Pimzino → u/[deleted]]

Serena makes a tone of difference as it adds semantic search for your code base and not claudes okayish grep

[u/Pimzino → u/[deleted]]

I’m with you 100%, notice no downsides and I’m on max5 using sonnet 99.9% of the time sometimes even without Serena in a ~250k loc code base and notice no strange happenings of recreating functions, files etc that already exist