and Codex are powerful coding agents in their own right. I have tried both models a lot, and in my opinion, both are very good and comparable, at least I compare the model Claude Opus 4.8 with Codex with GPT-5.5.
However, they definitely have different strengths and weaknesses. In some cases, I find myself using Claude, and in others, I find myself using Codex. In this article, I will discuss how I combine the two models and in what situations I use each of them.
It's important to note that the field of coding agents is moving incredibly fast. You may see Claude Code or Codex leading the way in the coming months, or even a third competitor coming, like Google and their Gemini models.
Why use Claude Code and Codex
First, the reason you should use Claude Code and Codex is that they are incredibly powerful coding agents. They can be used to complete planning tasks, but they can also be used to complete any other office or computer related tasks you may be working on.
For example, if you want:
- Plan a budget
- Create a PowerPoint
- Create an email
Any other work like that, I try to use coding agents for all the work I do, instead of doing the work myself on the computer. I'm trying to get the code agent to complete the task. This could be, for example, setting up a new framework in your application instead of learning about the API and configuring everything in the UI. Instead I download the API key and give it to my coding agent, and I have the coding agent set everything up for me.
How I use the Claude Code and Codex
Now, in this section, I will discuss how I use the Claude Code and the Codex, in what situations I use them, and what are the different strengths and weaknesses. Finally, I'll cover a very powerful strategy that I've started using recently that gives me great results and helps models build robust code.
Circumstances when I choose the Claude Code
First, I want to cover the situations in which I prefer Claude Code. I would say that my main driver of the coding agent when I work with the code myself is Claude Code. It's the main go-to tool I use when I'm designing or writing code to troubleshoot my computer.
This is because the Claude Code is very strict. It's great at planning, asking me the right questions to clarify ambiguities, and making me aware of any major decisions I need to make that will impact the solution the agent is building.
I also find that the Claude Code has a lot of features that I really appreciate and sometimes miss from the Codex. Overall, it's not even those advanced features, but I just find that Claude Code always surpasses Codex when it comes to features in their CLI tool, which makes me love Claude Code more and more.
These are features like:
- Speak again – Claude's Code provides a shortcut to the bottom of the dialog, making it very easy to pick up the code and write again if you've been away from the Claude's Code tab.
- Create function trees in the beginning. In Claude Code, you can type -w, which will automatically build a working tree for the repository you're working on. This is currently not possible in Codex.
- Work flow – Claude Code recently released a very powerful feature called Workflows, which allows you to use multiple tokens to complete complex tasks. I find this very important to complete a migration, for example.
I also noticed that the Claude Code had some features in the past that the recent Codex used. However, I think it's the most general note I can make that Claude Code is ahead of the curve with features and usually publishes the best features first. In some cases, the Codex implements those features later.
Overall, I think Claude Code works well as a main driver for your coding agents. Most of the tasks you want to do can be completed by Claude Code, which is why I chose to have a Claude Code subscription. In addition, I also liked the UI in Claude's desktop app, and I think Claude Cowork is a great feature. Yes, OpenAI has a similar app, but I don't think it's as good and well designed.
If you are a non-technical user, I would definitely recommend using Claude's program.
Circumstances when I choose a Codex
Even though the Claude Code is incredibly powerful as my main driver, there are many cases where I use the Codex. First of all, I just use Codex whenever Claude Code is down, which has happened a surprising number of times lately. You can see how often this has happened on the Claude Status page. We can see that Claude Code's uptime is approaching 99.0%, which I would consider inefficient.
However, the Codex isn't just as good as a secondary alternative to the Claude Code. And it's incredibly important in some cases, like:
- Doing code reviews
- Enables OpenClaw bots
- Getting the job done quickly (quick mode)
The three points mentioned above are my three main reasons for choosing Codex when I do.
First of all, I think Codex does a great code review, and they've made it easy for you to do code reviews with Codex. You can just upload it to your GitHub and tag it for code review.
Second, I think Codex is probably the best way you have to power your OpenClaw bots. The reason is that you can power your OpenClaw bots by subscribing to Codex, which you can no longer do with Claude Code. I believe this is the highest intelligence you can get, considering that Codex is a borderline LLM. It's on a subscription basis, which makes it very cheap to use OpenClaw bots like this. I can both use Codex as a programming or coding agent on my computer and power multiple OpenClaw bots without hitting the limits.
OpenAI's limits are really generous, as I mentioned in my last post. Additionally, OpenAI also offers something called a fast mode, which makes the coding agent faster without sacrificing quality at all. This is an option you can have where the agent will be about 50% faster, and you will spend about twice your token limit. However, I find that I rarely hit OpenAI's token limits, so using fast mode is the best option.
I also believe that OpenAI's Codex works very well for solving many tasks, even if you don't use fast mode. Finally, I think Codex is somewhat better at following pure instructions from the user. I find that Claude Code, in some cases, does work that I don't want it to do, and I rarely run into this issue with OpenAI's Codex.
Combining Claude's Code with Codex
Finally, I also want to cover the small part of combining Claude's Codex with Codex in the same coding session. One very powerful method I developed and found to work very well:
I made Claude Code do my first programming and code execution to implement the solution. Then I made my Claude Code tag with OpenAI's Codex in PR to review the code made by Claude. In most cases, I find that the Codex is able to find stories that Claude didn't know, but the Claude Code agrees with it after looking at the Codex presenting the matter. Then I have Code Claude automatically fix the problem in the Codex and ask for a re-review. Let them iterate together like that until the review from OpenAI's Codex passes as positive.
This is a simple setup, as you can simply tell Claude Code to behave this way after installing OpenAI's Codex in your repository. This exposed me to a bunch of bugs that Claude Code introduced when he was writing the code, and it would have been brought to production if it wasn't for Codex doing an update or being reviewed by someone. However, having human reviews is no longer possible, given the amount of code we produce.
I believe that combining OpenAI's Codex with Claude Code is the best way to code and get the best out of both coders and more. I believe that combining these two forms gives a value greater than the sum of its parts.
The conclusion
In this article, I discussed how to combine Claude Code with OpenAI's Codex to get code efficiency and power. I have discussed why you should use Claude Code and Codex, which is obviously to save time and get the job done more efficiently. Then I discussed in which situations I prefer Claude Code and in which situations I prefer OpenAI's Codex. They certainly have strengths in different areas, which is great if you're a user of both platforms, as you can choose to use the platform that works best for any given task. Finally, I also put together a very powerful strategy where I combine both Claude Code and Codex to write incredibly robust code and find problems before they come to production. I believe that you, as a developer, should definitely take a closer look at the code agent space and try any new models that come out, like the Claude Opus 4.8 model that was released a few days ago.
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