it's been almost a month since i (happily) switched from claude code to codex, so it's time for a short review:
i was a cc user since past june and i switched to codex out of frustration with opus 4.7 and overall, i'm glad i made the switch
what's better:
- gpt 5.5 is far more tolerable than opus 4.7. smarter, and much more predictable behavior
- codex app is well-built. i was a cc tui user; i tried to switch to claude app (and vscode extension) with no success. codex app has been built with the dx in mind (also, i replaced my voice-to-text app with codex and works pretty well)
- codex limits are way more generous. i was on the claude max and these past few weeks, the cognitive load of managing the limits was killing me. i don't want to think whether it's weekday or weekend, or whether it's peak hours on the other side of the world or not. on codex pro i almost never think about the limits
- compaction actually works. in claude, my session would be ruined after compaction but with codex, i can easily compact and continue the session
- codex gpt 5.5 is more agentic. it sticks to the plan and can work on a task for hours with minimal to none supervision. i can trust codex to stick to a plan (i had 70% trust with opus 4.5 and 4.6 and almost 30% trust with opus 4.7)
- codex is much more instructable. you can harness model capabilities in the way you want and you can be confident it would stick to your instructions
- using chatgpt subscription outside of codex (mobile app, image generation, etc.) is far more enjoyable than claude
what can be improved:
- product design. it's less of a problem for me because i'm highly opinionated about ui/ux but gpt 5.5's performance in designing anything is clearly inferior comparing to claude
- gpt 5.5's personality is less collaborative, more precise, and much more literal. it's perfect for coding, architecture, implementation and such. however, when it comes to brainstorming and collaboration it can't keep up with the claude. i mainly solve this problem by using gpt 5.5 pro for brainstorming and feeding its output to normal gpt. i wish i could switch between different personalities depending on how confident i am about a topic (low conf, more collaborative and easy going. high conf, more literal)
- claude has a few pre-installed skills/plugins which codex doesn't have. i used simplify command and also, playground plugin so much while i was using claude code. and yes, codex has migrate feature for these skills but for some reason, they don't work as well in codex
- claude code is better at tweaking itself than codex. earlier in my migration, i had so many issues with codex not using the latest docs (i had to spend like an hour to configure hooks)