At this point, the deciding factors for me between Claude Code 20x and Codex Pro 20x are:
1/ Usage limits: downstream of input/output cost, but resets and obscure windows and odd 20x plan / 5x plan != 4x usage math throw a wrench into it. Winner right now is Codex by a mile, especially when you factor in the fact that ChatGPT usage (even 6 Astra Pro) is essentially unmetered on the 20x plan. Always a bummer when asking if I should see a doctor about a rash means I can't code as much. It's also is a godsend if you use an MCP like oracle to automate the process of calling the Pro model on particularly tough problems, giving better planning results or deeper code analysis without burning usage.
2/ Context window in the harness. Claude Code wins on this. There used to be a toml file workaround for Codex to extend the GPT context window to 1m, but this stopped working on the plans and only on per-token billing (ETA: noname120 pointed out this is no longer the case and it can be enabled again [1]). 252k is just not enough. Codex's compaction is very good, fwiw, but it happens so frequently that even a model as powerful as Astra sometimes loses the plot on long-running tasks.
3/ Ability to use the plan outside of the official harness. Codex wins. Anthropic does shit like bills requests as extra usage if it sees a hermes.md in a commit.
I've subscription hopped a bunch, and at times I've had both, but I keep coming back to Codex because it wins on 2/3.
ETA: apparently I haven't been Keeping Up With the Altmans and new 20x signups have been disabled for a few weeks. I am grandfathered in, which makes the comparison above pretty much moot.
> Ability to use the plan outside of the official harness. Codex wins. Anthropic does shit like bills requests as extra usage if it sees a hermes.md in a commit.
I'm quite puzzled about why Anthropic is so hellbent on blocking other coding agents. It's not like Claude Code has any secret sauce, right? And doesn't Anthropic make monkey off API usage, and their magic is on the model side anyway?
It's for lock-in - same reason why it took them so long to finally support AGENTS.md.
But to be fair, they don't really enforce the harness rule that much anymore. I guess if your harness doesn't do a lot of weird things like a lot of cache misses, or triggers some distillation attacks, or some broader Chinese fingerprints, they're tongue-in-cheek okay with you using a third party harness.
Not natively, as it's still a ToS violation and adding that in pi would go against pi principles, but there are many plugins/proxies that make it work.
oh-my-pi supports it natively (again, still a ToS violation), by impersonating claude code's fingerprints.
I have been using oh-my-pi with 3 claude subs for the past few months without any issues. Even native server-side OAI/ANT compaction works out of the box.
Yes, you need an extension that uses the claude code credentials from the file system, like this: <a href="https://github.com/fdietze/pi-claude-auth" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/fdietze/pi-claude-auth
Works pretty well for me, even with latest opus-5-5
Originally it was because Anthropic was so compute constrained they relied on the extra care the Claude harness took with caching (heavy use of cache breakpoints etc) that other harnesses didn't.
I think that is less of a factor now, and I think Anthropic have backed off some on being as strict (eg, AFAIK they never implemented the two-tier "claude -p" pricing model they were planning)
This feels like a horrible precedent. Billing based on data like commits feels like it opens the door to tech stack based billing in general - could we see different prices for people who use other devtools Anthropic doesn't like? Makes me feel grateful for open models
jeffnash · · focus · HN ↗
1/ Usage limits: downstream of input/output cost, but resets and obscure windows and odd 20x plan / 5x plan != 4x usage math throw a wrench into it. Winner right now is Codex by a mile, especially when you factor in the fact that ChatGPT usage (even 6 Astra Pro) is essentially unmetered on the 20x plan. Always a bummer when asking if I should see a doctor about a rash means I can't code as much. It's also is a godsend if you use an MCP like oracle to automate the process of calling the Pro model on particularly tough problems, giving better planning results or deeper code analysis without burning usage.
2/ Context window in the harness. Claude Code wins on this. There used to be a toml file workaround for Codex to extend the GPT context window to 1m, but this stopped working on the plans and only on per-token billing (ETA: noname120 pointed out this is no longer the case and it can be enabled again [1]). 252k is just not enough. Codex's compaction is very good, fwiw, but it happens so frequently that even a model as powerful as Astra sometimes loses the plot on long-running tasks.
3/ Ability to use the plan outside of the official harness. Codex wins. Anthropic does shit like bills requests as extra usage if it sees a hermes.md in a commit.
I've subscription hopped a bunch, and at times I've had both, but I keep coming back to Codex because it wins on 2/3.
ETA: apparently I haven't been Keeping Up With the Altmans and new 20x signups have been disabled for a few weeks. I am grandfathered in, which makes the comparison above pretty much moot.
[1]<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49806060">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49806060
hintymad · · focus · HN ↗
I'm quite puzzled about why Anthropic is so hellbent on blocking other coding agents. It's not like Claude Code has any secret sauce, right? And doesn't Anthropic make monkey off API usage, and their magic is on the model side anyway?
InsideOutSanta · · focus · HN ↗
glub · · focus · HN ↗
But to be fair, they don't really enforce the harness rule that much anymore. I guess if your harness doesn't do a lot of weird things like a lot of cache misses, or triggers some distillation attacks, or some broader Chinese fingerprints, they're tongue-in-cheek okay with you using a third party harness.
codybontecou · · focus · HN ↗
glub · · focus · HN ↗
oh-my-pi supports it natively (again, still a ToS violation), by impersonating claude code's fingerprints.
I have been using oh-my-pi with 3 claude subs for the past few months without any issues. Even native server-side OAI/ANT compaction works out of the box.
goosejuice · · focus · HN ↗
manx · · focus · HN ↗
Works pretty well for me, even with latest opus-5-5
nl · · focus · HN ↗
I think that is less of a factor now, and I think Anthropic have backed off some on being as strict (eg, AFAIK they never implemented the two-tier "claude -p" pricing model they were planning)
spacebanana7 · · focus · HN ↗
saralily · · focus · HN ↗