September 27, 2025

BuildBrief: Codex Is Better (and Cheaper) Than Claude

Comparing development costs and efficiency between Codex and Claude for coding tasks.

In just a few days I burned through $80 using Claude inside Cursor, and ran out of credits completely...

Most of that money was spent on features that never even fully worked.

Claude 4 has been slower and less reliable lately, leaving me stuck fixing endless little issues.

Yesterday I tried Codex instead, and the difference has been huge (so far).

It literally one-shot features that Claude couldn't deliver after hours of effort.

And Codex only requires a $25/mo ChatGPT Plus account.

No need to pay for Cursor at all.

The difference

Codex definitely takes longer before it executes, as it "thinks" more carefully upfront.

But when it's done, the code is solid.

With Claude, I usually get ~70% of the feature, then spend hours patching the remaining 30% manually.

I'll gladly trade 5–20 minutes of execution time with Codex for hours saved fixing broken code.

PS: I still use Claude for small tasks, but for bigger features Codex wins.

That's it! Now you're ready to build.

Enjoy!

Happy building!
– Kristoffer, BuildWithAI