Codex CLI is pretty good. Codex GUI is fine but I can't get over how it dumbs it down.
IMO, $500 a month is pretty good for most dev work if you select models appropriately for the task (yourself), especially with how token efficient Opus 5.5 medium is. Unfortunately, people with subscription seats can easily get addicted to Fable, higher effort, fast mode, etc.
Could you elaborate on what you mean by dumbs it down? Chalk it up to inertia, but I still love Claude code CLI the best, but when using Codex, I tend to use the app. I don’t know why. No good reason. I’m guessing you mean you get much better results with the CLI?
I was in the same boat, but then I tried out Pi which works with the OpenAI subscription and now I prefer it more. I wish Anthropic let you use a custom harness with a subscription but I heard people get banned and don't wanna risk it.
even if claude is nice these hostile tactics from anthropic make me refuse to use their tooling. codex works fine and openAI i havent seen banning ppl for using their API.
there is something in there, and im quite sure someday it will bubble up to the surface and people will be sour. people who use claude that is.
yes, its just a hunch. but i can see these tactics, and u cant tell me its just corporate policies that were whoopsiedaisy. They are getting more from people using claude code than other harnesses, enough to ban and fearmonger people into not using those other harnesses.
the reason will be $ related. Likely their tooling wastes tons of tokens.
now, codex is also a bit wasteful ofc. (very much). but they dont mind u optimizing and rolling ur own.
[flagged]