> Usage limits [...] Winner right now is Codex by a mile

This hasn't been the case since around July. If you measure usage in raw api costs, Anthropic is actually giving more on $200 than OpenAI now. This includes resets. Usage allocation difference would be humiliating for codex subs were it not for resets. But fixing usage limits with resets is ugly, and they're not good for your mental well-being.

> Context window in the harness

Codex now allows 1M for subs with config params. But generally speaking, you shouldn't really be using 1M context. If you accidentally send a request with say, ~700k context already accumulated in a session which is outside cache TTL, you're paying full cost of these 700k tokens.

> I've subscription hopped a bunch

OpenAI actually has a new strategy to prevent subscription hopping after their 2-3 month-long marketing push to get claude-folks to switch over:

you can't buy a $200 sub anymore. So if you cancel, you won't be able to get back in. Hostage situation, essentially.

EDIT: re: usage limits, oh-my-pi maintainer has been tracking this - https://nitter.xitter.cc/_can1357/status/2090075496948060372

I’ve been a Claude user, switched to Codex expecting usage limits to be more loose but I can’t even get through a basic sysadmin task on the $20 plan using Sol medium before I hit the 5hr one.

I think I’m gonna move back to a Claude plan. I could barely hit the $200 limit if I went non-stop on programming tasks.

I'm not sure the tokens can be compared like that between OpenAI/Anthropic.

When i swapped between a 200k Fable context into an Astra model (i was out of fable) the token usage in that context dropped to 150k or something.

Either there was a bug somewhere, or the same text got cut up very differently between providers.

To add my anecdote, while the Codex subscription appears to get you much fewer tokens as measured by cost, I find the amount of actual useful work that can be done by both subs to be about equal. Codex seems much less prone to burning millions of tokens just reading the codebase and doing nothing useful. That also makes it much quicker. Plus it actually does what I tell it with few mistakes first time, so less rework needed.

The Claude TUI is just so much better though so I'm hoping Opus 5.5 is actually good and not just benchmaxxed.

Given that Anthropic models are very verbose and OpenAI models can be very concise, wouldn't a count of expected task completions be a better measurement than raw API costs?

Anthropic has a separate meter for Fable. I used to get like five Fable sessions per week and that's it.

OpenAI has no such nonsense. No separate meter. No five hour limits. I get to use Astra at max effort on literally every task if I want to, and even this somehow lasts me several days.

Anthropic got caught playing stupid "20x refers to the 5h limit" word games with their customers. Meanwhile, I have statistically verified that OpenAI Pro 20x = 4 * Pro 5x = 20 * Plus, exactly as advertised.

I quantified cybersecurity lockouts on my code review benchmark and they were significantly lower on OpenAI:

https://www.matheusmoreira.com/articles/code-reviewing-lone-...

My benchmark also suggests even OpenAI's Sol models can match Fable performance at a fraction of the cost.

OpenAI also used to have a ton of very nice features: unlimited chat separate from codex, allowing turns to finish even at 0% usage remaining. Sadly these got removed after abuse.

As a former Anthropic customer, OpenAI is simply the better company. There is no way around it. Good place to be while the chinese open weights models catch up. Claude is good but it doesn't make up for Anthropic's shenanigans.

Do you have a source on the first note? I switched away from Claude around July because of how bad the usage limits were, and Codex gave me easily double the amount of usage per task completed. Would be interested to see if that's no longer the case.

I think the problem with Anthropic's plan is that Fable just destroys it. If you stick to Opus and below, the $200 plan goes from "using 50% of the weekly quota on the first day" to something much more reasonable.

> If you accidentally send a request with say, ~700k context already accumulated in a session which is outside cache TTL, you're paying full cost of these 700k tokens.

Thinking aloud:

The harness UI should probably implement a timer that shows whether you are still within Cache TTL since your last turn of the conversation.

> you can't buy a $200 sub anymore

Are you sure?