I ping pong back and forth between claude code and codex.

In my experience (very subjective, obviously) for backend/"logical" tasks Codex seems to outperform Claude.

For front-end/UX related tasks Claude wins easily.

Overall, Claude does seem to be a little better in other areas too.

Codex's biggest advantage in my personal opinion, however, is usage. I think maybe once in several months did I even get close to hitting my limit with the $20 plan.

With Claude, however, I feel like I can sneeze and half my weekly usage is gone. Same $20 price tag.

That's been my experience, I'm sure it differs user to user though.

Just pay the $20 for codex and use it. It's the only real alternative.

I've gone fully custom and would never look back. All of the popular tools lack the experience I'm after, generally lacking the advanced customization I have found makes weaker models more capable. I'm also moving towards open weight models.

The underlying motivation is to avoid Big Ai as much as possible. Incentives are not aligned.