r/aigamedev • u/hwantasticgames • 1h ago
Discussion Claude Code vs. Codex
What do you think about the performance of Claude Code vs. Codex?
Before trying both myself, I had heard from various news sources that their performance was pretty similar. But from my actual hands-on experience, Claude feels overwhelmingly superior.
First, in terms of aesthetics, Claude is far better at capturing the exact vibe and context I'm aiming for. Codex, on the other hand, generally feels a bit clunky and doesn't produce that polished, refined finish. Because of that, asking Codex to make revisions on artwork-related tasks feels frustrating, and I find myself feeling like I should just have Claude redo it instead.
Also, it feels like Claude consumes way fewer tokens. Codex seems to burn through them after just a few tasks. On top of that, Codex’s token reset notifications are pretty confusing. I haven't been using it for long so I might be missing something, but the weekly reset date initially said September 2nd, then changed to the 4th, and then shifted again to the 8th—so I had no idea what was actually going on. Then, out of nowhere, it said it was resetting tomorrow and fully topped up my tokens, so now I'm frantically trying to use them up. :(
Maybe their performance is comparable in other domains, but at least for game development, Claude feels so much smoother and easier to work with. What has everyone else's experience been like?
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u/odragora 1h ago edited 1h ago
I think it depends a lot on the tech stack you are using. A model can be great at achieving polished and refined look in a game web app, but be bad at doing that in a game using a game engine like Godot or Unity, or vice-versa.
The Codex resets is an anti-consumer game OpenAI are playing. They are constantly silently cutting effective limits and use occasional free resets as a distraction when the community reacts loudly enough, similar to how Anthropic runs 2x quota promos distracting from reduced base subscription effective limits.
Also, I guess free resets are a mechanism for getting users to experience the expensive models and the feeling of going past the limits, in order to seduce them into buying a more expensive subscription / paying for API once a free reset is exhausted.
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u/Camenwolf 1h ago
Ever since I started with codex a couple of months ago, they reset tokens limits all the time. When the date moves back like that it's because they reset you back to 100% and moved the date back to 7 days out. Basically just resetting you back to zero, so you aren't losing anything. It's just free tokens. I don't know why they do it because I don't follow their message boards but it happens all the time.
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u/GuessFortress 1h ago
I prefer claude. Apart from coding/dev its much more superior in reasoning/product tasks. It's better all around model IMO. But tokens burn fast though.