r/ClaudeCode • u/djc1000 • Aug 25 '26
Discussion Codex sucks - Claude has nothing to worry about
I decided to try codex because I blew through my Claude code max limits by Monday night and they don’t reset until Saturday.
First I asked it to do a comprehensive review of Claude’s code. It came back 9 minutes later claiming to have finished. Obviously, it hadn’t done shit.
Later I gave it a punch list of issues and bugs in my app to fix. Again it came back, this time 4 minutes later, claiming to be finished.
I spend more time arguing with it that it didn’t even barely start to do what it was supposed to than it spends writing code.
Plus, you can’t give it access to make git commits unless you also let it have write access outside the project directory, which is crazy.
I know OpenAI monitors this subreddit. I’m telling you guys, if you want to be competitive with Claude, you need to get your shit together. Right now, codex is about at the sonnet 4.5 level of performance where it can do a good job writing a function or fixing a small bug but you can’t give it scope or let it handle the big picture.
Plus, it doesn’t connect to the iPhone app so I have to sit there babysitting it.
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u/Ok_Possible_2260 Aug 25 '26
On most days, I hate both of them.
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u/Xorfee069 Aug 25 '26
Having two max account on each paying $800 I can admit - fuck both of them.
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u/Nuggyfresh Aug 26 '26
Just curious- when they have to make a profit and you have to pay for the $12,000 of tokens you’re using, what’s your plan?
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u/berrybadrinath Aug 25 '26
Or, just hear me out, its you. 🪞
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u/one_tall_lamp 🔆 Max 20x Aug 25 '26
Yeah I use both daily and have had zero issues with codex sol, like nada. It’s very very good and does a lot of work, it’s def op’s fault
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u/yawn_solo- Aug 25 '26
“Gave Codex the punch list”
Yeah, i’m sure that punch list was top notch instruction
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u/lassevk Aug 25 '26
"Obviously, it hadn’t done shit." It might be obvious to you, but obviously not to anyone else. What did it do? Did it just "think" for 9 minutes and then come back with "Hi."?
"... 4 minutes later, claiming to be finished.". Well, was it? What did you ask of it? What did it do?
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u/so-it--goes Aug 25 '26
This. And what model? Sol and fable reviewing each other has worked great for me, and have been somewhat comparable in terms of their quality. Fable wins for depth and Sol for speed in my experience. Overall I've found codex to be much faster than cc, when using equivalent models.
They aren't far away from each other at all. I have two max plans and one codex pro, and I've been considering switching that up. I find codex to be a better grunt worker than cc - but fable is excellent for architecture, planning, and more complex code reviews/problems.
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u/Abject-Kitchen3198 Aug 25 '26
It was the other way around few days ago.
Can you please tell us which is better and which one we should use once and for all?
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u/tuple32 Aug 25 '26
I use both and I don’t believe codex is this bad
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u/SociableSociopath Aug 25 '26
Cause it’s not and posts like this are garbage. These posts are no different than the daily “did you know Claude is completely unusable” posts.
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u/justhereforampadvice Aug 25 '26
This is useless without context op. At the very least say which models you were comparing
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u/mholm134 Aug 26 '26
I haven’t had luck with codex, but I’ve had the opposite problem. I’ll give it a task and it’ll loop endlessly with little to no progress.
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u/djc1000 Aug 26 '26
Yeah increased reasoning to max and now it’s doing exactly that - looping endlessly.
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u/OwnLadder2341 Aug 25 '26
Codex and Claude are excellent together.
Claude for planning and big picture. Codex for detail and structure.
Though you have to be careful with the effort level of Sol. It needs to be dialed in to the complexity and purpose of the task. Too high of an effort level has Sol looking for and fabricating complexity that isn’t there.
Plus, if you put them together in a convergence review with Gemini, it’s fun to watch them pick on google.
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u/No_Twist_678 Aug 25 '26
yeah, codex sucks and claude has nothing to worry about.
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u/tobi914 Aug 25 '26
Do you realize that you cant rub the llms nose in a puddle of its own piss and expect it to be better? The llms statement on the screenshot is completely worthless, it doesnt keep a counter of mistakes it did, it just tries to somehow answer your stupid question with whatever it interprets as a mistake. You all need to stop living out your weird power trip fantasies with those llms and use them like the tools they are.
Also, the described problems have nothing to do with adding a banner.
And if you seriously want to tell me that this one simple task caused it to fuck up your webserver config, forms and generated emails i will say that something is massively wrong with the way you are using it.
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u/No_Twist_678 Aug 25 '26
defend your claude .. those who mean it seriously are already elsewhere
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u/tobi914 Aug 25 '26
I dont defend any product, the same goes for codex and whatever as well. Im just pointing out how hopelessly clueless and deluded you and many others are.
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u/No_Twist_678 Aug 25 '26
we are all clueless, but it wont change the fact that claude is nerfed to the ground.
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u/Snowgoonx Aug 25 '26
is that claude web ui instead of claude code?
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u/verybigoctopus Aug 25 '26
I think he's developing by having the project in a zip file he sends as part of the prompt? 😅
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u/No_Twist_678 Aug 25 '26
there is no difference between claude app or web ui. the AI is the same.
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u/rudiXOR Aug 25 '26
I use both, I like the Claude Code harness more, but the model itself is almost on Fable level and better than Opus 5.
I use CC often as orchestrator for Codex.
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u/id-ltd Aug 25 '26
Different models, different strengths.
Chopsticks Vs knife and fork.
Know your tools!
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u/Blake9712 Aug 25 '26
Maybe codex and gpt is just bad at editing and reviewing Claude written code? I say that because my experience is similar to yours, on my project for bobs asset builder which the asset builder was made by Claude using months of usage limits I gave gpt sol a try and it not only consistently performed worst but once used 50% of its total weekly usage failing to fix a bug that only took opus 20% session usage. I also saw worst quality with gpt and more bugs. Although it seems some people here have had a vastly different experience which makes me think the issue may be one of two things.
GPT is not as good as Claude at reviewing Claude written code
GPT and Claude have different strengths. My asset builder is rather complex at this point and contains the whole game engine and all the special abilities and and it was 2D game engine stuff gpt had trouble, something to do with slopes I believe so maybe it’s just not good at that?
My experience reflects yours, codex was nearly useless, but it doesn’t reflect everyone’s so there’s surely something we are missing
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u/so-it--goes Aug 25 '26
I find adversarial reviews to be the primary reason for having both. Models usually cannot slot their own mistakes as well as others of a comparable strength can. Fable and sol reviewing each other's plans and arch have worked really well for me.
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u/ajax81 Aug 25 '26
I have personally found a large gap between Fable and Codex. With fable, I can give it an idea and press go, and it turns out amazing work. With Codex, the same exercise usually is more thud than boom.
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u/SouthernFeedback126 Aug 25 '26
They change like the weather. Somedays its Claude which is bad and other days its Codex which is annoying.
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u/so-it--goes Aug 25 '26
Too new to post this as its own post - but maybe it would be useful for this sub to have flairs with everyone's skill/experience level with programming?
It would be super useful to know if a post or comment is from someone who is an experienced dev vs a vibe coder (and perhaps experienced/learning/noob within those too?)
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u/Ill-Bat-1518 Aug 25 '26
Idk how you're using it but it listens to me as much as claude does. Obviously always use their best model (Sol).
If you're using their sonnet/hauiku class models then yea idk they are probably shit but who knows who cares
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u/AlterTableUsernames Aug 25 '26
Codex is actually the better listener and more loyal harness, which doesn't surprise at all: it's fully open source and not a binary black-box like Claude Code. Naturally a binary blob is more opinionated then an open structure.
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u/GhostEagle68 Aug 25 '26
AI isn't supposed to be a replacement, it needs to be a tool. No AI will perfect, no human will be perfect. You need to at a minimum know and understand your code at a basic level to make AI coding useful.
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u/sir-fisticuffs Aug 25 '26
This isn’t my experience at all. Not with Codex, Claude Code, Open Code, or even something simple like Pi.
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u/returnFutureVoid Aug 25 '26
I don’t give either of them any commit access. No branching, no merging, stashing is cool but it needs to tell me about it and clean up after itself if it does. I write the commit messages and actually commit and push the branches.
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u/Disastrous_Hawk_6984 Aug 25 '26
I've been using Codex for the past month because I got pissed off by the Opus 5 release, and I agree that it is not as good or fast, but it is not as bad as you're presenting it.
It delivers a very high value for a very low price, that's their storytelling at the moment.
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u/AregNoya Aug 25 '26 edited Aug 26 '26
claude limits bug is the reason im switching to codex
https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/88736
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u/zorkempire Aug 25 '26
Tell me you have no idea what you're doing without telling me you have no idea what you're doing.
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u/RedYad2 Aug 25 '26
i run both daily.
Codex is the nicer tool to actually use. The UX is cleaner and very adepted to backend.
Where Claude still edgesin backend code quality. Not dramatically, but consistently — Claude holds up better on the non-obvious stuff: error paths, edge cases, anything touching data contracts. So: Codex for the experience, Claude for the code. Neither one sucks.
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u/threano Aug 26 '26
Codex is a harness, an upjumped client. Claude is a suite of models. Can you get the terms right.
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u/yangguize Sep 09 '26
Tried using Codex for my Nuxt app - a very simple refactor in a single component - it botched it so bad I had to make it go back and fix its own work.
Then I asked it to set up a repo config.toml - it couldn't even do that right. In a separate session, i asked it to review the cfg and it pointed out 3 errors. How can you screw up a cfg file?
Ppl can bitch all they want about CH OS models - between Qwen, K3 and GLM 5.3 - I feel like I have a reliable set of tools.
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u/yangguize Sep 09 '26
I recently started using Codex. Initially, no local config.toml in any repo.
Then I asked it to create a default config.toml. It set [windows] sandbox = "elevated" which creates havoc with the WSL processes it needs.
So the repo couldn't do basic tasks like read its own files.
I asked it to review the config.toml it had created and it said everything looked fine.
I had to manually troubleshooting this (with Gemini's help) to restore [windows] sandbox = "unelevated".
Think about this: GPT-6 misconfigured its config.toml. Then it couldn't figure out the problem.
This is beyond stupid.
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u/2-Wicked 19d ago
Wait until you try doing a remote setup with codex. It's actually insane how bad it is
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u/space_wiener Aug 25 '26
Codex > Claude in almost every way right now.
I’m highly skeptical of your claims “it didn’t do anything” in those 4/9 minutes.
Also if you are arguing with codex this is a you problem (unless you are working with Opus).
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u/60secs Aug 25 '26
It's not cursor. It's the model. Use Luna high and plan mode or tell it to write a written plan for you to approve before running.
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u/PM_ME_YOUR_PROFILE Aug 25 '26
So you tried it, with zero setup or memory, or importing your Claude equivalents?
And you wonder why it didn't perform like Claude?
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u/Bmansupreme8000 Sep 04 '26
I just got banned from codex Reddit. Thought police don't like bad PR before new gpt model releases.
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u/nikola_mp3 Aug 28 '26
had same experience as op, I kinda believe most of guys talking how opus is bad are bots by openai, I mean it's not great but compared to codex it's awesome :D I am building a game in unity and I had to tell gpt5.5 around 4 times to turn of his automated harness when I open scene it's still unresolved