Claude Code vs OpenAI Codex CLI: Which AI Agent Is Better?
An in-depth comparison of Claude Code and OpenAI Codex CLI across output quality, autonomy, reliability, speed, value, and ease of use. Vote for your favorite.
An in-depth comparison of Claude Code and OpenAI Codex CLI across output quality, autonomy, reliability, speed, value, and ease of use. Vote for your favorite.
Comparing the subscriptions instead?ChatGPT Plus / Pro vs Claude Max →
Either way, you pay for the model calls. A median coding-agent day on our gateway is 95 requests and 8.6 million tokens. The table prices every step at one model’s rate.
Both run on Standard Compute, where each step goes to the cheapest model that can do it: routine steps go to efficient open models, hard ones to frontier models such as Claude Fable 5.1 or GPT-6 Astra.
| Model | Typical day | Busy day |
|---|---|---|
| Claude Opus 5.5 | $7.34 | $59.10 |
| Claude Sonnet 5.5 | $3.67 | $29.55 |
| GPT-6 Luna | $0.23 | $2.43 |
Fixed monthly plans from $19. Eligible new accounts can try $0.25 of compute first, no card. Trial terms
Pick a winner in each category. You can change your vote anytime. 6 votes cast so far.
Claude CodeCodexChoose Claude Code if you are developers who want the strongest end-to-end coding agent, in the terminal or IDE. Choose OpenAI Codex CLI if you are chatGPT subscribers who want a capable terminal agent at no extra cost.
In our editorial scoring, Claude Code leads in 5 of six categories (output quality, autonomy, reliability, value and ease of use), while OpenAI Codex CLI leads in 0. On price, Claude Code runs included with claude pro/max / api and is proprietary; OpenAI Codex CLI runs included with every chatgpt plan / api and is open source.
Across 6 community votes on this matchup, OpenAI Codex CLI currently leads in 2 of six categories. Cast your own vote above to move the needle.
What it costs to run Claude Code or Codex
Best API for Claude Code →
4 options compared, with prices and limits
Best API for Codex →
3 options compared, with prices and limits
Standard Compute sends each step to the cheapest model that can do it, on providers we vet for price, uptime and speed. Plans start at $19 a month, and eligible new accounts can try $0.25 of compute with no card. Choose your agent below to connect.
See the trial and activation steps →
More on Claude Code: Claude Code pricing 2026: how much does Claude Code cost? · How do I use Requesty with Claude Code?
More on Codex: Is Codex CLI free, and what does it cost? · How do I use DeepSeek in Codex CLI?
Claude Code is Anthropic's agentic coding tool. It searches and understands your codebase, plans multi-step changes, edits files, runs tests and shell commands, and works through git workflows including commits and pull requests. Widely regarded as the quality benchmark among terminal coding agents, it's extensible through MCP servers, hooks, and subagents, and also ships as IDE extensions and a desktop app.
Codex CLI is OpenAI's open-source coding agent for the terminal. It edits files, runs commands in a sandbox with configurable approval modes, and can hand longer tasks off to Codex cloud to run in the background; the same agent also ships as an IDE extension and a desktop app. Usage is included with every ChatGPT plan, from Free and Go up to Plus and the $100 to $500 Pro tiers, with tighter limits on the cheaper plans, which makes it the default choice for developers already in the OpenAI ecosystem.
Claude Code and Codex both run on Standard Compute
