Comment by redrove
14 hours ago
I’ve been using Codex Pro since they lobotomized Opus 4.6. Codex is so much better, GPT 5.4 xhigh fast is definitely the smartest and fastest model available.
For a while there I had both Opus 4.6 and Codex access and I frequently pitted them against each other, I never once saw Opus come out ahead. Opus was good as a reviewer though, but as an implementer it just felt lazy compared to 5.4 xhigh.
One feature that I haven’t seen discussed that much is how codex has auto-review on tool runs. No longer are you a slave to all or nothing confirmations or endless bugging, it’s such a bad pattern.
Even in a week of heavy duty work and personal use I still haven’t been able to exhaust the usage on the $200 plan.
I’ll probably change my mind when (not IF) OpenAI rug pull, but for spring ‘26, codex is definitely the better deal.
I also made the switch to OpenAI, the $20 plan, I dunno about "so much better" but it's more or less the same, which is great!
The models and tools levelling out is great for users because the cost of switching is basically nil. I'm reading people ITT saying they signed up for a year - big mistake. A year is a decade right now.
I underscored using xhigh + fast mode when saying it’s so much better.
Now with Opus 4.7 of course the “burden” of adjusting reasoning effort has been taken away from you even at the API level.
In my experience people don’t change the thinking level at all.
What issues did you consider about sending your code base to OpenAI?
None mate. Code is cheap, it's not worth anything any more, especially not my little personal projects
Any alternative to Claude Design ? Tried Figma with Opus 4.6 but it doesn't come close in my experience.
Codex is abysmal for UI design imo.
It really depends on what you‘re trying to do and what your skillset is.
But if you go information architecture first and have that codified in some way (espescially if you already have the templates), then you can nudge any agent to go straight into CSS and it will produce something reasonable.
I've been using paper.design and it's been working well for me via mcp on claude code
Have you tried stitch.withgoogle.com?
Thanks for the tip! Hadn't seen that, but definitely giving it a try.
I created some decent prototypes with stitch but I don't know how it compares to claude design
stitch.withgoogle.com
Google Stitch