I've always been fascinated to see significantly more people talking about using Claude than I see people talking about Codex.
I know that's anecdotal, but it just seems Claude is often the default.
I'm sure there are key differences in how they handle coding tasks and maybe Claude is even a little better in some areas.
However, the note I see the most from Claude users is running out of usage.
Coding differences aside, this would be the biggest factor for me using one over the other. After several months on Codex's $20/mo. plan (and some pretty significant usage days), I have only come close to my usage limit once (never fully exceeded it).
That (at least to me) seems to be a much bigger deal than coding nuances.
In my experience, OpenAI gives you unreasonable amounts of compute for €20/month. I am subscribed to both and Claude's limits are so tiny compared to ChatGPT's that it often feels like a rip-off.
Claude also doesn't let you use a worse model after you reach your usage limits, which is a bit hard to swallow when you're paying for the service.
Same experience here. I started our devoutly using Claude but ran into some many limits that I switched back to ChatGPT and it's been night and day. I haven't even really been able to play with the Opus model on my Pro plan because it devours usage and then blocks me for X hours until it resets, costing me a work day. OpenAI has never done that to me. In fact, Codex just churned away for 2 hours on a task and I'm still using it without hitting a limit. I used to love using Claude but the limits are too prohibitive.
Claude when used via Github Co-Pilot is much better for useage allowance. I used Opus 4.5 for a months worth of development and only just hit 90 pct of the pro $40 per month allowance.
If their pay as you go api token prices reflect their internal costs then it makes sense, but it could also be that claude makes money while gpt sells at loss to stay on top. Claude is way more expensive overall, and way more limited with flat rate subscriptions
Given how much you can use Codex on their $200 plan, I'm virtually certain that it's subsidized.
As to why, I think in part it is because people who are willing to pay that much per month are much more likely to be using it heavily on "serious" tasks, which is, of course, a goldmine for training data - even if you can't use the inputs directly for training, just looking at various real world issues and how agents handle them (or not) is valuable, especially when all the low-hanging fruit have already been picked.
I wouldn't even be surprised if the $20 users are actually subsidizing the $200 users.
> the note I see the most from Claude users is running out of usage.
I suspect that tells us less about model capability/efficiency and more about each company's current need to paint a specific picture for investors re: revenue, operating costs, capital requirements, cash on hand, growth rate, retention, margins etc. And those needs can change at any moment.
Use whatever works best for your particular needs today, but expect the relative performance and value between leaders to shift frequently.
I only switched to using the terminal based agents in the last week. Prior to this I was pretty much only using it through Cursor and GH Copilot. The Anthropic models when used through GH Copilot were far superior to the codex ones and I didn't really get the hype of Codex. Using them through the CLI though, Codex is much better, IMO.
My guess is that it's potentially that and just momentum from developers who started using CC when it was far superior to Codex has allowed it to become so much more popular. Potentially, it's might be that, as it's more autonomous, it's better for true vibe-coding and it's more popular with the Twitter/LinkedIn wantrepreneur crew which meant it gets a lot of publicity which increases adoption quicker.
Out of curiosity, what do you feel are the key differences between cursor + models versus something like Claude Code/Codex?
Are you feeling the benefits of the switch? What prompted you to change?
I've been running cursor with my own workflows (where planning is definitely a key step) and it's been great. However, the feeling of missing out, coupled with the fact I am a paying ChatGPT customer, got me to try codex. It hasn't really clicked in what way this is better, as so far it really hasn't been.
I have this feeling that supposedly you can give these tools a bit more of a hands-off approach so maybe I just haven't really done that yet. Haven't fiddled with worktrees or anything else yet either.
AFAICT it really is just a preference for terminal vs IDE. The terminal folks often believe terminal is intrinsically better and say things like “you’re still using an IDE.” Yegge makes this quite explicit in his gastown manifesto.
I been using Unix command lines since before most people here were born. And I actively prefer cursor to the text only coding agents. I like being able to browse the code next to the chat and easily switch between sessions, see markdown rendered properly, etc.
On fundamentals I think the differences are vanishing. They have converged on the same skills format standards. Cursor uses RAG for file lookups but Claude reads the whole file - token efficiency vs completeness. They both seem to periodically innovate some orchestration function which the other copies a few weeks later.
I think it really is just a stylistic preference. But the Claude people seem convinced Claude is better. Having spent a bunch of time analyzing both I just don’t see it.
This will be a Harvard Business case study on market share.
Claude Code was instrumental for Anthropic.
What's interesting is that people haven't heard of it/them outside of software development circles. I work on a volunteer project, a webapp basically, and even the other developers don't know the difference between Cursor and Claude Code.
Codex is great and I hit the usage once doing multiagent full 5 hour absolute degen session for the nornal workflow alongside never hit it and now x2 useage even and now with the planmode switch back and forth absolute great.
I know that's anecdotal, but it just seems Claude is often the default.
I'm sure there are key differences in how they handle coding tasks and maybe Claude is even a little better in some areas.
However, the note I see the most from Claude users is running out of usage.
Coding differences aside, this would be the biggest factor for me using one over the other. After several months on Codex's $20/mo. plan (and some pretty significant usage days), I have only come close to my usage limit once (never fully exceeded it).
That (at least to me) seems to be a much bigger deal than coding nuances.