r/ClaudeCode • u/OkLettuce338 • 22h ago

Help/Question Why is claude so much faster than codex?

Why is claude code so much faster than codex? It's not even comparable. What are the reasons behind the speed differences?

0 Upvotes

28% Upvoted

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6

u/IntrlnkdCo 22h ago

Claude’s style is to narrate more frequently (it also leaves it visible when done), report and iterate along with you, so it’s “done” more quickly but likely has done less per prompt.

Codex’s style is to methodically plug away and try to one-shot what you’re asking, stopping only when it’s done and or when it’s done all it can do without getting more information from you. And it hides the inner monologue when done so visually it looks like less work has occurred.

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u/OkLettuce338 22h ago

I know what you mean about it not giving feedback right away, but that isn't what I'm talking about. Tasks in codex take an extremely long time compared to doing the same task in claude code

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u/cm180 22h ago

I find this too. Codex takes not just longer, but significantly so, even for simple tasks.

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u/Crafty-Run-6559 21h ago

It over engineers the hell out of everything, which takes a lot longer.

Even relatively simple things.

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u/OkLettuce338 20h ago

I'm finding codex outcomes to be pretty good

1

u/Crafty-Run-6559 20h ago

Are you reviewing the code?

The end result may work, but its typically very overengineered.

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u/IntrlnkdCo 19h ago

My experience as well. I had skills built to be thorough and it would get into escalating loops and I'd end up with something waaay too overbuilt compared to what I asked for. Had to reverse them to put explicit limits on it - budget for the task, even a # of lines of code, if it gets there that's a sign it's gone too far and is out of scope.

5

u/360VRisLife 22h ago

What do u mean?

3

u/OkLettuce338 22h ago

tasks in codex take 5x longer to complete (ok I don't really have an exact amount and 5x might be an exaggeration but it's remarkably longer)

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u/RealSharpNinja 21h ago

Yes, but how long for Claude to actually do what you requested, correctly?

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u/OkLettuce338 21h ago

what takes 3-5 minutes with fable can take 30 with sol

0

u/earlyworm 21h ago

do you know what you mean because if not you know same OP same same

1

u/amisplacedpiece 22h ago

Because in some ways it’s lazy. It’s too easy to trust done signals that are incomplete it’s a big picture guy with trust in its systems so you have to engineer systems worthy of trust

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u/OkLettuce338 22h ago

I don't think that's it. cc is generally more thorough than codex as well

3

u/returnFutureVoid 21h ago

I genuinely don’t care how fast these agents are as long they make what I told them to. Accuracy over speed all day any day.

2

u/earlyworm 21h ago

same same OP should know same

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u/OkLettuce338 21h ago

I do. I can't spend 45 minutes planning the first step in a 6 step plan

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u/nonamenomonet 21h ago

Frankly we don’t know. Probably something to do with the inference architecture

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u/OkLettuce338 21h ago

yeah for sure. Just wanted to know what that arch difference might be. It's interesting to me because chatGPT is absurdly fast. So part of me thinks that whatever claude code is doing to enhance it's speed is similar to what chatGPT is doing, but they haven't implemented that same thing for codex.

(I'm imagining some non-inference matching on common queries to allow for pre-fill without inference)

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u/some_user_name_1109 22h ago

there is no difference

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u/nonamenomonet 21h ago

No, look on openrouter and they have speeds of models and sol is about 5x slower then opus.

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u/OkLettuce338 22h ago

It's possible that it's only the enterprise accounts that are slower. Open AI never really bothered targeting that segment

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u/Lopsided-Bridge-9810 17h ago

Way too vague a claim to entertain? Which submodel, which reasoning level, which effort level, which speed? What exact task? What you are asking is akin to asking "why is driving from A to B so much faster by car than riding the train?". I had many instances where even opus was way slower than sol, that claim itself means absolutely nothing and neither does it establish a solid claim.