I've been using Claude Code with Sonnet since August, and there haven't been any case where I thought about checking other models to see if they are any better. Things just worked. Yes, requires effort to steer correctly, but all of them do with their own quirks. Then 4.5 came, things got better automatically. Now with Opus, another step forward.
I've just ignored all the people pushing codex for the last weeks.
Don't fall into that trap and you'll be much more productive.
My point is, the cases where Claude gets stuck and I had to step in and figure things out has been few and far between that I doesn't really matter. If the programmers workflow is working fine with Claude (or codex, gemini etc.), one shouldn't feel like they are missing out by not using the other ones.
Even if the code generated by Claude is slightly better, with GPT, I can send as many requests as I want and have no fear or running into any limit, so I feel free to experiment and screw up if necessary.
However for many of our users that are CC users they actually don't hit the $250 number most months so its actually cheaper to use consumption in many use cases surprisingly.
I also really want Anthropic to succeed because they are without question the most ethical of the frontier AI labs.
I wouldn't call Dario spending all this time lobbying to ban open weight models “ethical”, personally but at least he's not doing Nazi signs on stage and doesn't have a shady crypto company trying to harvest the world's biometric data, so it may just be the bar that is low.
I’m a heavy Claude code user and similar workloads just didn’t work out well for me on Codex.
One of the areas I think is going to make a big difference to any model soon is speed. We can build error correcting systems into the tools - but the base models need more speed (and obviously with that lower costs)
Not because I love Anthropic (I do like them) but because it's staving off me having to change my Coding Agent.
This world is changing fast, and both keeping up with State of the Art and/or the feeling of FOMO is exhausting.
Ive been holding onto Claude Code for the last little while since Ive built up a robust set of habits, slash commands, and sub agents that help me squeeze as much out of the platform as possible.
But with the last few releases of Gemini and Codex I've been getting closer and closer to throwing it all out to start fresh in a new ecosystem.
Thankfully Anthropic has come out swinging today and my own SOP's can remain in tact a little while longer.