codex offered the 1m context window (without markup, and via subscription) first, and is now wrapping up a 2 month promo of 2x usage rate. they've also provided free tier access which claude code lacks, and have shipped a desktop app (unlike claude code) for mac and windows. codex is also beating them on many benchmarks and has influencers like @steipete (before they hired him) proclaiming that he uses codex exclusively for code, after having been a claude code user and popularizing openclaw initially on top of claude code (but never for writing openclaw, only running it).

codex is still in minority use but has taken many customers from them over a short period.

Ah gotcha, thanks