Claude Code vs OpenAI Codex
A side by side look at Claude Code and OpenAI Codex: pricing, features and what each one is best for.
All comparisons
| Visit Claude Code | Visit OpenAI Codex | |
|---|---|---|
| What it costs | ||
| Pricing | Paid | Freemium |
| Pricing details | Included in paid Claude plans: Pro $20/month ($17/month billed annually), Max $100/month, Ultra $200/month; Team seats $25/month ($20 annually). Not on the Free plan. | Codex has no standalone price. It is bundled with ChatGPT plans (Free, Go, Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise) and is usable on the free ChatGPT tier. The Codex CLI itself is Apache-2.0 and free to install. |
| Price range | $20 - $200/mo | Not published by the vendor |
| Free option | No free option | Free tier |
| What it is | ||
| What it does | Claude Code is Anthropic's agentic coding tool: it reads your codebase, edits files, runs tests and opens PRs from your terminal, IDE, desktop, Slack or web. | OpenAI's coding agent, shipping as an Apache-2.0 CLI, an IDE extension, a macOS desktop app and a cloud runner, all tied to a single paid ChatGPT account. |
| The details | ||
| GitHub stars | 155,340stars | 119,150stars |
| Language | TypeScript | Rust |
| Last commit | 11 Nov 2026 | 27 Aug 2026 |
| Tags | code-generationsoftware-engineeringdebuggingterminal | code-generationsoftware-engineeringdebuggingterminal |
What it costs
- Pricing
- Paid
- Pricing details
- Included in paid Claude plans: Pro $20/month ($17/month billed annually), Max $100/month, Ultra $200/month; Team seats $25/month ($20 annually). Not on the Free plan.
- Price range
- $20 - $200/mo
- Free option
- No free option
What it is
- What it does
- Claude Code is Anthropic's agentic coding tool: it reads your codebase, edits files, runs tests and opens PRs from your terminal, IDE, desktop, Slack or web.
The details
- GitHub stars
- 155,340stars
- Language
- TypeScript
- Last commit
- 11 Nov 2026
- Tags
- code-generationsoftware-engineeringdebuggingterminal
What it costs
- Pricing
- Freemium
- Pricing details
- Codex has no standalone price. It is bundled with ChatGPT plans (Free, Go, Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise) and is usable on the free ChatGPT tier. The Codex CLI itself is Apache-2.0 and free to install.
- Price range
- Not published by the vendor
- Free option
- Free tier
What it is
- What it does
- OpenAI's coding agent, shipping as an Apache-2.0 CLI, an IDE extension, a macOS desktop app and a cloud runner, all tied to a single paid ChatGPT account.
The details
- GitHub stars
- 119,150stars
- Language
- Rust
- Last commit
- 27 Aug 2026
- Tags
- code-generationsoftware-engineeringdebuggingterminal
Read the full reviews
What each one is actually like to use, tested by hand rather than summarised from the vendor’s own page.
