Codex vs. Claude Code (Today) Dec 22, 2025 | 5 min read
Every programmer has their favorite language. Some prefer Python, while others swear by TypeScript1. Many teams build their apps on Postgres, while others use MySQL. These choices are often flame-war bait for programmers with strong opinions, but most of these decisions are centered around pragmatism, priorities, and tradeoffs. They’re reflections of different working styles, rather than moral statements.
All of this applies to the choices people make when they decide whether to use Claude Code or Codex.
Before we continue, I need to make a disclaimer: This post is about the Claude Code and Codex, on December 22, 2025. Everything in AI changes so fast that I have almost no expectations about the validity of these statements in a year, or probably even 3-6 months from now.
I also must emphasize that both Codex and Claude Code are already superhuman developers. I don’t say that solely based on the quality of outputs from Opus 4.5 and codex-5.2-high, but in how they work. Codex and Claude Code sometimes arrive at a solution in ways that almost feel alien to how we think about coding, much like AlphaGo’s Move 37.
I keep up with every AI tool I can so I can teach AI to anyone and everyone, but it’s becoming more of a necessity for all software developers. When it comes to coding I’ve mostly settled into using Codex for “coding”, and I put coding in quotes because the process is very different than writing code by hand. I spend anywhere from 30 minutes to two hours writing prompts and generating context for Codex, then the task runs for 15-20 minutes while I context-switch to something else entirely. When I come back, I’ve got somewhere between a day and a week’s worth of code waiting for me.
But I still use Claude Code a lot. The coding environment they’ve built is exceptional. Much like Peter Steinberger describes Claude Code as his computer, I delegate all sorts of tasks to Claude Code. I’ll use Skills to transcribe videos to mp3s, generate a dark mode color palette for my website, or quickly prototype an idea from a blog post.
Why People Love Codex
When I need something done and done right, I call on Codex. The reason is simple: the results are unbelievably good for me. And that’s because of how I work. By investing time into context engineering and context plumbing, I’m able to stay hands-off-keyboard for much longer.
Having long-running tasks might sound like a drawback, but it’s just a different way to work. When I send Codex off to do a task that takes 20 minutes, I switch my focus entirely. I’ll open Figma to do some design work, write my newsletter, or open another terminal and prompt Codex with some server work while the first terminal is chugging along on some client work.
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