Ask HN: Claude Code or Codex?
And why? I'd genuinely like to understand who is on which side and why. I'd also like to know, if you use one of them, what kind of subscription plan you have.
(For example, I use Claude (max) [...])
(For example, I use Claude (max) [...])
Until the launch of Fable I'd been very happy with claude code besides the outages where it could be offline for hours.
When Fable released it was a good step up from using Opus.
When it was taken away and then reinstated under some weird billing and vague notion of how it would be available in the long run, I noticed the model itself was worse than the brief time it was up before the US gov shut it down.
Now I'm evaluating Codex at home for personal use. I may switch to using chatGPT at home and whatever work provides (which is currently Claude).
Codex and 5.6 Sol seem just as good as Opus and Fable right now, but I only have 1-2 weeks testing.
Keeping the flagship models in the basic subscription is the main driver for me evaluating chatGPT again, I hadn't really used it since about GPT4 (I missed all of the O-models like o1, o3) and I moved to Claude when it was clearly better.
The ergonomics of claude skills are better than codex's agent skills imo.
ChatGPT and codex have more generous usage limits it seems.
Also, Fable access was now removed from small 20$ Claude plan, while Codex includes access to comparable model (gpt-5.6-sol) even on small subscription.
Not saying it's ideal, just saying it's an option
Although Codex and Claude seem to have the same price for similar plans, Claude's tokens run out much faster. But I can't complain about that because I get much better results. Especially when working with very complex systems, I don't need to repeatedly revise Claude's changes as much as Codex, so in some cases it might even be cheaper.
Also, in my experience, Claude tends to follow rules and instructions more consistently
https://stencil.so/blog/prewalk
most advanced, configurable and capable harness of all time, and i use both 200$ subs with it. Has a huge learning curve though so if you're not into that i'd go with whatever you already use the most
do you still choose claude vs codex depending on the task, or has the harness made them mostly interchangeable? what took the longest to learn?
It “feels” like Sol gets off track more easily than Fable (it’s hard for Sol to ignore a stray remark). My theory is this comes from smaller context window - Codex uses a 350K token context window (that you can’t change), even though model can handle more…
Personally, I think Codex is better. Aside from the frequent resets, since the Fable incident, there have been cases where connections drop. For writing code, Codex generally does a better job. That said, I feel Fable is better for overall structure, but ultimately, it varies from person to person. I use both as my coding assistants
The checking each other's work is so helpful.
New features, mockups, I use Claude Code. Deep fact-checking, I use Codex.
My harness matters at least as much as the model. I use the best harness and then invest a ton in it
what kind of tasks are you comfortable leaving fable alone with, and how often does it take the project in a direction you need to undo? also, gpt translating the pro-claude comment is a nice ending :)
What does […] mean in the OP post body? That you use other solutions than the 1 mentioned but are omitting them?
- OP
I used to be a heavy Claude Code user but I ended my subscription around the time this Fable nonsense started, as I really don't like the direction Anthropic is taking. I now spend less, get more done, have a better time doing it, and feel better about it.