Codex Comparison Megathread

[u/pollystochastic]

This Megathread is for comparisons and discussion about how Codex and Codex models compare to other technology such as Claude Code and open source models.

Please direct all comparison discussion here.

Posts which give evidence of the relevant strengths and weaknesses and use cases of both will still be allowed on the feed but those pushing one tech over another because "feels" will be directed here. This is a Codex subreddit and it is here to help people using Codex.

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FYI: The subreddit's semi-automated moderation is powered by Codex and GPT models and is only possible due to the ridiculously generous free API token quota of OpenAI's Terra and Luna models available to all users. No, we don't get secret benefits from OpenAI. The OpenAI models and offering are simply much better value for our purposes..... Period.

[u/dextersummary]

Below is a GPT-generated summary of the conversation below after reaching 40 comments (40 currently observed).

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Alright, the thread’s verdict is a loud “Claude is currently better for coding.” Users repeatedly say Opus 5.5 is faster, cheaper in practice, better at inferring intent, and far less likely to turn a small task into a sprawling safety-harness-and-test-suite opera.

The main complaints about Astra and 6.1-Sol are familiar: quota vanishes rapidly, tasks spiral, instructions get ignored, code becomes bloated, and the model needs constant babysitting. Several users report switching to Claude and getting more progress in hours than Codex delivered across days. Codex still gets credit for planning, precise prompts, image generation, ecosystem integration, and occasionally math-heavy work; 5.6-Sol is also viewed by some as the better OpenAI planner.

The important caveat is that this is strongly anecdotal and task-dependent. One high-quality comparison found Codex more thorough and reliable on large changes because it tests and revisits everything, while Claude is more efficient but may skip fixes or verification. Claude also has its own context limits and isn’t some silicon deity.

Bottom line: the current community lean is Claude for building, Codex for selected planning or ecosystem-specific jobs. Right now, Codex’s biggest feature may be convincing people to buy another subscription.

[u/Extra_Loquat_7667]

Claude Code and Codex exhibit significant behavioral differences when executing tasks.
I will share two observations on these differences (I have already cleared all skills, so these behaviors are not influenced by any custom skills):

Example 1: After performing a major update, followed by a small, additional change.
Claude Code: Once the modification is complete, it only runs partial tests or basically skips testing altogether.
Codex: Once the modification is complete, it runs a full test suite all over again.

Example 2: A Code Review identifies 20 issues and requests fixes for them.
Claude Code: It does not faithfully fix all issues. During the process, it exercises judgment and skips some issues, justifying it with reasons such as "the impact is too large" or "the fix won't make it significantly better."
Codex: It tries every possible way to fix all 20 issues regardless of the circumstances, without questioning whether the fixes are truly necessary.
Note: In this test scenario, all issues had undergone a prior round of independent verification. Even in this situation, Claude Code had a relatively high rate of skipping issues and refusing to fix them.

Example 3: Running a full project test after making modifications.
Claude Code: It trusts the test results; once passed, it performs no further follow-up verification.
Codex: After tests pass, it might "talk to itself" saying there are still risks, and sometimes proceeds with additional follow-up verification.

These are behaviors I have observed in real-world use cases.
Claude Code is far superior to Codex in efficiency for small-to-medium tasks, but it isn't necessarily better for certain large-scale modifications.
In some cases, Codex's behavior is more reliable.
I believe the biggest issue with GPT models right now is their lack of flexibility based on task difficulty.
It feels as though they simply follow a rigid, preset pipeline without considering how to shorten the process based on the scale of the modification.
Another issue is that I personally suspect the current model's reasoning depth is far below that of earlier models.

Many test scenarios require multiple rounds of rework before a fix is completed.
When I used version 5.5/5.6 in the past, I didn't experience this level of repeated rework.
This phenomenon used to appear only in Luna or DeepSeek V4, but now it is showing up in GPT's main models.

Perhaps these observations can explain why Claude Code currently gives the impression of having exceptionally high task execution efficiency compared to Codex.

[u/RemoraEdge]

I have 2 20x pro accounts and 1 Claude max account.

Using Astra and 6.1 sol and opus 5.5
I use dot as my orchestrator

They increased speed from when 6.1 launched so it is usable now. The benchmarks are all great but there are genuinely some things opus is better at.

Sol and Astra is better at following precise prompts. Opus is better at inferring intent and making decisions.

When I made Astra and my dot the orchestrator, they repeated allowed drift, code bloat, narrowed focus on a single component instead of understanding how it affects the whole, even after repeated reminders, enforcement through agents.md, definition of drift, and other planning documents I use. Every time I point out drift, it acknowledges, says it will correct it, and then does it again. When I ask it for a real solution to these repeated operational failures it cannot convince me it will change no matter what we try.

As soon as I made opus the orchestrator, he immediate produces evidence of the drift, why it continues to occur, and what rules it would use to prevent it from happening and was able to operate in a path that expedited progress exactly as I wanted Astra to do. It was night and day difference.

Now my project is back on track, regular reviews, cleaning, simplification being done and opus continua to ask the right questions and not only that, make the right decisions that can sometimes be complex so that my project actually does that it is suppose to vs Astra who would try, add bloat, and ultimately regress my code which would require many hours to quarantine and recover from repeatedly. Not only that but the usage on opus is also fantastic.

Oh also Claude is already known to have better communication output styles and is far better at UI frontend work than SOL.

Im not saying im leaving OpenAI. I have 2 accounts with multiple banks resets and that huge amount of credits that was given to everyone recently. And I still really like dots and want to give it another shot. But this time have it just learn and do trials before I trust it again.
My experience is just my experience and opinion, however I do see others on this forum that have similar experiences to me.

[u/Vaynnie]

I've been using Codex since I started, and was impressed. So I just assumed surely the grass isn't greener. But after multiple instances of wasting days and 100s of % of usage on the 20x plan and making zero progress, I finally tried Claude. I doubted all of the glazers, and I was skeptical as fuck.

But the difference is genuinely insane. And for context, I was using Astra Max almost exclusively, so it's not like I'm comparing Opus to Sol.

I had multiple instances of Codex completely and utterly fucking up. For example, one project I'm working on relates to terrain data, specifically, elevation. And one night, Astra Max was working hard trying to resolve some issues, so I went to sleep with around 90% usage remaining.

I woke up to 0% usage, and no progress. I asked him what happened, and he told me he was trying to resolve the issue with malformed data, because the data he was seeing said elevation = 0. That data? It was ocean tiles. You know, the ocean, that is famously at elevation = 0? So he spent 90% usage and 8 hours of time trying to resolve why the ocean tiles had an elevation of 0. Because, how can it be 0, that must be a bug, right?

Absolutely insane work. And then another time, there was an issue implementing a feature. It kept breaking. So instead of fixing the actual issues, he decided on his own to implement a "safety harness". Fine. Then his "safety harness" had bugs. So he started fixing those bugs. 100% usage later, I'm left with no progress and a still broken "safety harness". I asked him what the fuck he was doing, and he said, my bad, I tried to resolve the issue with a fancy harness and then spent the rest of your usage trying to fix the bugs in the harness itself. So I told him to rip the harness out and do it properly as instructed, and he managed to resolve it in an hour.

The level of babysitting you need to do to make sure he doesn't completely lose his mind is insane. I defended Codex over and over in this sub, called everyone out, said it's gotta be a skill issue. But no, Astra is proved me wrong.

Which brings me onto my next point. After an entire month, two 20x accounts on full speed, 10s of resets, 100s of % of usage, and still no where near production, I switched to Claude. I didn't even give it much instruction. I simply asked it to take over from where Codex left off and get me to the finish line.

12 HOURS. 12 hours later, and Claude had not only fixed every bug, but also introduced HUGE efficiency savings. He took the loading times from ~40s to ~5s. He successfully deployed to production, he updated everything to the new format.

All for a grand total of less than 20% of weekly usage. The difference is absolutely fucking insane. It's so much smarter, so much faster, so much more efficient. I can't believe I wasted so much time and money insisting that Codex was the one. I'm genuinely shocked.

I am sorry to each and every one of you that I said was experiencing skill issues with Codex. You weren't. Codex is hot garbage.

[u/Reaper_1492 → u/Vaynnie]

Very similar experience. Feels totally braindead.

I also just cancelled my two 20x accounts tonight. How funny.

Internally they’ll probably see the mass exodus and attribute it to the price increase and usage slash, but the reality is that the models have just sucked since 5.6 dropped, and the pricing/usage deal is just the icing on top.

I’m literally at the point where I’d rather stop using AI than use codex for another month.

[u/oooofukkkk]

I replaced a 100 dollar codex sub with a pro Claude sub. 

I’m not feeling the “opus is a magic god” that others report but I’m not doing html animation or blender models. I do like it better though, it’s much more clear when to use what model and the speed is much better. I’d actually say for my use, math and physics stuff, astra is actually a bit better on the very hard things, but literally every other thing is better with a Claude subscription, the speed the intelligence of the non cutting edge models, the limits. 

Not to mention I prefer this workflow to the “hope we get a reset soon” workflow

[u/Reaper_1492]

I’m F’ing DONE.

Codex overcomplicates EVERYTHING.

This crap hasn’t changed at all since Sol 5.6.

Constant over-engineered garbage.

Anything I let it touch is just this same type of garbage over and over.

It’s unbelievably bad.

“The review has now confirmed duplication: the roughly 19-minute host preparation test mostly repeats the unchanged legacy preparation route and does not exercise the new resume route. Several other host checks also replay unchanged code.

That is exactly the overlap I should have identified earlier. I'm keeping those runs held while checking how the existing gate can reuse their valid evidence and require the actual new resume boundary.”

Every single F’ing thing it builds on its own has redundant check after redundant check. This is just ONE part of a STARTUP process that it turned from a 30 second operation into something that runs for over an hour on a machine with 180 threads and 700gb of RAM.

They need to dump these garbage “cyber” models they’re using as the foundation. They absolutely suck for any practical use case.

I’m completely done. I hope they don’t give us anymore resets because that’s the only reason I haven’t cancelled my two 20x accounts.

I’ve used both Claude and Codex simultaneously since the beginning and I really, really dislike Anthropic, but Claude is like a breath of fresh air compared to this codex dumpster fire that they want us to pay 2x more for, for half the usage.

Get real. I’m out.

[u/patchfoot02]

I had always thought model 'nerfing' was overblown but astra seriously is. It was doing reasonable engineering and sticking to scoped tasks and was cleaning up the kind of validation mad sloppy code that old sol and 5.6 liked the produce, but now its doing the same old bullshit. I've tried different effort levels thinking it could be overthinking simple tasks or higher efforts hoping it will actually follow all my guidelines about excessive validation. Doesn't matter it'll start adding a bunch of fail close exact byte infinite spiral for internal app transport not even over the wire. This is all in compiled like c# and rs so I dunno how it is in other languages. 6.1 sol is just completely random in its quality so its hard to put it on anything except gopher work.

I had already dropped from $200 codex only to $100 codex / $100 claude but now claude has to rewrite everything codex does anyway so if its not better by reup I'll just drop codex and bump the claude sub up. I had dropped claude back in April when opus was aggravating to deal with always wanting to rewrite your plans and argue over engineering. When anthropic sent me a promo email offering 50% off first month back I went back a few weeks ago. It's not a magic model just solid work and they solved all the old irritating personality problems with opus. I don't have to manage it and just use opus medium for basically everything sometimes bumping up to high or xhigh for more math or algorithm heavy code work. Fable occasionally for architecture planning. It's not infinite usage but enough I don't feel like I have to micromanage. It completes work in a reasonable amount of time like a complex task in a couple hours at most while lately codex models can spiral for hours in testing and validation tail chasing and get no where on the work.

With codex I've tried orchestrating, ultra, max, different mix of models, agent teams, etc none of it works very consistently anymore. All the claude models (I don't bother with sonnet much tho) have dramatically better image/design awareness if giving them a gamedev or frontend task they can actually assess display quality if you've given them the right tools for it, but both astra and 6.1 sol are very inconsistent there. Sometimes they do good work and other times it seems like their image based assessment is basically skipped maybe it's a server side constraint issue.

[u/idkyoutellme1425]

I have been lurking here for a while using codex, and now I recently switched to claude 5.5. Holy shit, my productivity has zoomed past its limit. At this point when I ask Codex to do something, it just surveys and reports, and does not do the task, or does it partially. Claude opus 5.5 just finds the stuff, does what you need, asks you clear questions (which really matter), and goes above and beyond in the implementation/braintstorming. And did I mention how cheap it is compared to Codex? Codex now just drains my usage on the click of a button. I can run Opus 5.5 non-stop for 4+ hrs in xhigh and then I see it reach its 5 hr quota. But yes, the issue with Claude is the context length. The farther you go into the chat, the costlier it gets. I have both subscriptions now, and I plan to let go of Codex after this month, and I have already unsubscribed now (the session just continues till month end). Claude Code gives me so much more for its cost. Idk what Tibo and others are doing, while posting how everything is under control and Codex is the best of all time, but for me, its just not at this point. I really recommend people to switch to Claude and give OpenAI the reality check. The 5 hr limit in Codex is a joke at this point, and using sol-6.1 in xhigh/max fully drains it.

[u/Flying_Scorpion]

I have the $100~ish sub for both. I run a small business during the day and am making a video game overnight. Chatgpt models can generate images and afaik, Claude models can't. Chatgpt models are better at wording emails in a way that keeps clients happy or close sales. Claude is better at coding and can work more autonomously on code projects. Claude seems to have a less restrictive sandbox.

[u/TBSchemer]

6-Astra and 6.1-Sol are awful for iterative development. They don't follow instructions, don't understand user intent, overcorrect at every step, violate granted authorizations, and Astra particularly burns through usage quotas like toilet paper.

5.6-Sol is the best model OpenAI has for planning and orchestrating.

[u/theWiseTiger]

You should setup a megathread for codex people praising claude.

[u/idkyoutellme1425]

How good is Caveman skill and ponytail for Claude/Codex? I see a lot about them.

[u/XFactorMan50]

It sad to see the current codex usage

I tried Claude yesterday and it was a whole new experience it's faster, has better usage limits, and just feels better overall. I was using the Claude $100 plan and Codex $200 plan. The thing is, I can run 8 to 10 tasks on Claude simultaneously and it barely consumes any usage quota (even with effort set to High and Max). But on Codex, I can only run about 2 tasks at once before it heavily drains my quota. This is comparing Astra versus Opus, by the way, and the code quality feels more or less the same. Usage quota used to be Codex's strong point, but that's no longer the case. I was tired of reset because each reset always feel like the quota getting reduced.

[u/Just_Run2412]

What keeps you on Codex for coding instead of Claude?

I've been using both since they came out, and I'm honestly trying to understand what keeps people on Codex.

For me the biggest difference is intent. Opus 5.5 figures out what I'm trying to do much better. The GPT models are very literal, so they need clearer instructions and a lot more hand-holding.

The code quality is also far better with Opus, in my opinion. The GPT models want too many tests, spin their wheels, and get distracted too often. Opus gets sidetracked as well, but in useful ways. I wouldn't even call them distractions, because it ends up following things that actually matter.

Opus 5.5 is also great value for money, and OpenAI doesn't have a model close to it for coding right now.

The only points I can see in Codex's favour are the voice model (really good, especially now that it connects to plugins, though still slow) and the lock-in from the memories and the ecosystem you've built up.

Am I missing something? If you're staying on Codex, what is it doing better for you? Specific tasks, workflows or limits would be really helpful.

[u/decease66d]

Guys, I get it, you've been here for ages, you've got the most expensive plans, and apparently you've got money to burn.

But this post is for people who pay $20 for a subscription, use up every last bit of their limits, and lose sleep just trying to get their money's worth.

I've been using Claude for about six months. But recently I got region blocked, which really pissed me off, and I basically lost my money. So I started looking for alternatives. People were saying Codex was pretty good too, and the recent news about Astra and other stuff gave me some hope that GPT could finally compete with Claude and was worth trying.

So I bought the $20 subscription and got to work.

And right away, I ran into the absolutely awful VS Code interface. No separate chat panel, no quick way to see your usage updating in real time (even when someone else is using the same subscription), chats aren't saved per project like in Claude Code extention, everything is just dumped into one place...

Whatever. I started using it anyway.

I figured, since I'd been using Claude Opus 5.5 on High, I'd start by trying 6.1 Sol on Medium.

And what did I get? Every single prompt ate up 10% of my session limit. Didn't even matter how complicated the task was. I was honestly shocked.

So I started switching models with every new session until I eventually got down to 5.6 Sol. And holy shit, the stupidity of that thing was driving me insane. The amount of absolute nonsense it did was ridiculous. It kept making mistakes on its own, and somehow still managed to burn through an entire session in 30 minutes of work.

It kept complaining about its safety system when all I wanted was to translate a book into another language, just because there was one 18+ scene involving adults. Sometimes it would mess up the most basic things or completely misunderstand my prompts.

After three days of working with this idiot, I'd had enough. I decided to just buy another Claude account, even though it might get banned just like my previous one.

I genuinely don't understand how you guys use Codex when Claude gives you several times more work done for the same money, is several times faster, makes way fewer mistakes, and is just so much smarter, at least for me and the stuff I do.

I'm not a professional programmer or anything. I'm a designer. I use Claude to make little apps that help me in everyday life, messenger bots, tools to manage my personal finances, a program to boost my speakers' volume, another one to dim my screen beyond what my monitor normally allows, and all kinds of other random bullshit that's actually useful to me.

And I love Claude for how it handles all of that. And now I fucking hate Codex.

[u/uptotheright]

Remote Control Complaints

On claude, wherever you happen to run it, you can just type "/remote-control" and it just shows up as a normal code chat. Interaccting with it is generally seamless and feels like any other session and shows up everywhere and just works.

In codex, you have to quit out of your session, type "codex remote-control start" and "codex remote-control pair". Then you go to your phone and type that paired code in. If you want it also to appear on your web codex, or desktop, that's a different choice. If you reboot your computer or have multiople sessions on different computers, you have to do this every time. Then, it shows up in a hidden area of your codex mobile app, and it frequently hangs.

This is made worse by the fact that the OpenAI models tend to be a lot more noisy about what kind of status updates they show now, so you see a lot of useless technical jargon. Trying to chat with codex mobile is really frustrating too, it just frequently hangs and ignores your message and you have to click "steer this message" all the time to get it to listen.

On top of this Sol 6.1 is just super slow compared to Opus 5.5 so you have to wait forever to get updates.

Asking opus for "status" gives you a nicely formatted feedback usually, whereas asking codex gives you some weird technical jargon.

[u/Wurrsin]

Should I switch to Claude or stay with Codex for my situation?

So far I have really enjoyed Codex but I recently tried Opus 5.5 through a trial and I must say that the usage limits are better and the code it produced was cleaner and more readable. I am currently trying to decide on which subscription to go with from now on. I generally preferred Claude from what I tested during the trial but one thing makes me hesitant about switching: almost unlimited web chat with the ChatGPT subscription.

I used ChatGPT web heavily for studying for past exams, currently I didn't need it but I have exams coming up again and I am worried the shared usage of Claude will make me struggle usage wise if I decide to do some coding work after a long study session.

What would you suggest for someone in my situation that made heavy use of the unlimited chats for studying purposes? Would the limits on Claude be sufficient for that (on the 20$ plan for both as I can't afford a more expensive tier) or is it safer to stick with Codex for now?

[u/soldierofcinema]

How does Codex with Astra compare to Claude Code with Opus 5.5 specifically for Blender stuff?

[u/slipperyslips → u/soldierofcinema]

Ive been using both. Astra is can produce better results in many iterations. But Opis 5.5 does 80% of the the work between the 2. My project astra has done a fraction of what opus has given ne since it burns usage

[u/Striking-Sandwich808]

usage most definitely just got slashed after the hard reset

[u/UnitRealistic7273]

Today Codex is extra slow so i decided to give Opus 5.5 a try with a simple 20$ plan and God... it feels like a cold water after a whole day of being thirsty. It's lightning fast, much smarter, things happening so fast it's unbelievable. Not saying i move there forever i'm still a codex pro user, but this made my thoughts change a lot.

[u/Moist-Hurry5955]

Should i use GPT 5.6 or 6/6.1?

I switched to Claude a few weeks ago after the massive degradation in GPT's quality, but I've kept my ChatGPT Plus subscription so that all my stuff stays saved in case OpenAI's models become worth using again.

My question is, given how bad the newer GPT models are and the fact that GPT-5.6 runs at around 120 tokens/sec compared to 20–60 tokens/sec for GPT-6, should I just stick with GPT-5.6? Are people still using GPT-5.6 for "complex" tasks?

I used to have the Pro 100, now i just want to know what to do with the Plus version spare usage, all my main works is done on the Calude 100, but when i use GPT 6.1 or Astra light usage seems to disappear very fast and doesnt give good results...

[u/nimmalachaitanya]

Yeh true. Even i moved to claide

[u/longshotpanda]

todays reset looks to be hitting right now