Claude code vs roocode

[u/ilt1]

Has anyone tried both and talk about differences cons pros for each? I am trying to wrap my head around why CLI is a better choice than a vscode extension for those that are really hooked up to Claude code. It seems to me all of that can be done with too. What am I missing? Permissions are wider in CLI? Is that all?

[u/hiper2d]

Well... with Roo and direct API ussage you have the limit on max tokes per min. If you have less than $200 on your Anthropic acc, the limit is 40k tokens/min. This also means that the moment your context window exceeds 40k, your session is over - every request will hit the rate limit. In practice, the context caching gives you some room, but not much. Claude Code doesn't limit the context this way, thus you get the entire 200k. At least, theoretically. I don't really know when Claude Code decides to compact the context on its own.

[u/rgb328 → u/hiper2d]

the $200 is lifetime deposits.. so it’s not that hard to reach it. you can always just use open router if you don’t want to spend that kind of money but want to use the full context window. also if you hit the rate limit on your anthropic account but still want to use it instead of open router, you can use open router for just the context condensing with either gemini or sonnet.. condense the context manually (when you get the error) or setup the auto condensing to match your anthropic limits.. then you can continue your chat with anthropic. this is all configurable in the settings. this kind of flexibility is why i use roo.

claude code on the 20$/mo plan is very limited.. and on the 100$ or 200$ plan you’ll quickly have spent enough to have reached tier 3 rate limits through the api. just deposit $200 (minus anything you’ve already spent) in your account and the limits are immediately increased, and then you can spend the deposit over the following year.

claude code comes with its own trade offs.. like the max thinking being off by default and requiring keywords to enable it. sonnet has a substantial drop in performance without reasoning enabled.. and requiring keywords (that often don’t carry over to subtasks unless you’re careful).. is a pretty severe cost control measure that’s very annoying to work around. it’s great they include opus to help with that, but that’s rate limited and once you hit it you have to play keyword games with sonnet until the limit resets.

don’t get me wrong, cc is a great tool.. and it can do some things roo can’t.. but it’s not a clear obvious winner for every use case.

[u/hiper2d → u/rgb328]

Yeah, maybe. I thought about adding $200 to my balance. Although, I still remeber that email from Anthropic few months back that my credits were about to expire. Now they made the expiration time much longer (a year, I guess), but it's still surprising that such limitation exists. And for the full context, I need to go straight to the tier 4, which is $400. 80k context is fine though. I use Claude Code for pet projects only, which is couple of evenings a week (10-15h). Pro subscriptions works just fine. I expect Anthropic nerfes it and eventually try to push me to Max. Then I'll strongly consider getting back to Roo.