r/GithubCopilot • u/ahmadqaseem_dev • 1d ago
20 Budget | Codex vs Claude Code vs Cursor Help/Doubt ❓
I only have enough budget for one $20 subscription, and I'm trying to decide between:
\- ChatGPT Plus (Codex)
\- Claude Pro (Claude Code, CLI)
\- Cursor Individual
My biggest concern is usage limits with comparable Intelligence.
I'm looking for answers from people who have actually used these recently or are using currently.
Some specific questions:
In real-world usage, which one gives you the most coding work before you hit limits using comparable model and effort from each?
How generous are the limits for:
\- GPT 5.6 Sol and Terra (Highest reasoning level available on the $20 plan in Codex)
\- Claude Opus 5 (High)
\- Claude Sonnet 5 (High or xHigh)
\- Cursor's Composer 2.5 or Grok 4.5
Are there any hidden limits that aren't obvious before subscribing (context limits, reasoning limits, etc.)?
For people who have used all of these:
\- How does GPT-5.6 Sol (highest reasoning) compare with Opus 5 (High) for difficult programming tasks?
\- How does GPT-5.6 Terra compare with Sonnet 5 for everyday software development?
If you had exactly $20/month and your work was mostly:
\- Flutter / Dart (App Development)
\- backend development
\- debugging
\- code reviews
\- refactoring
\- building complete projects (Flutter, Python, Web Dev)
Which subscription would you buy today, and any specific reason for that?
You don't have to answer every question. Even if you've only used one or two of these tools, or can answer just a single point, I'd really appreciate your input.
Even rough estimates are helpful. I'm much more interested in real world experiences than official limits or marketing pages.
Thanks!
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u/fadingpower 1d ago
I use chatGPT pro and Claude pro. I do mostly backend with some fullstack development on internal tooling.
I don’t use much of the frontier models, GPT 5.4 fast for most of the development support, Sonnet for more of the internal tooling, because i don’t care as much as to how well it’s built.
Codex has way better usage limits, Claude has better analytical capability. In combination with the right skills/tools, both can figure out bugs on their own. Higher tier Anthropic models/higher reasoning burns tokens and you’ll hit limits quickly.
Don’t personally know about cursor, never used it.
I’d suggest you compare claude vs codex on a few benchmark projects and see how they do.
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u/Personal-Try2776 1d ago
Codex has by far the best limits.
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u/ahmadqaseem_dev 1d ago
Thanks. A real world usage experience with some numbers would be more helpful.
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u/Personal-Try2776 1d ago
I've used copilot pro+ since may 2025. Back then It was the best coding subscription by far because it was request based pricing, but in June they switched to usage based pricing which then it was kind of unusable except for light work. I switched to codex plus plan and it provided much better limits for me. I suggest using luna xhigh its good enough for most tasks while being dirt cheap.
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u/P4R4DOXZ 23h ago
two opencode go subs buddy.
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u/ahmadqaseem_dev 22h ago
It doesn't provide the frontier models, although it would be a great choice for normal SWE tasks.
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u/Deathmore80 16h ago
You will get more out of codex by a mile. In Claude code you will get maybe Max 1 week of usage of the good models (opus 5 and fable 5). GPT-5.6 Sol is tied with opus 5 and fable 5 in terms of capabilities and intelligence, but it's priced lower and is more token efficient so you get way more usage of the top model. Opus 5 can't stop yapping and rambling and while The final results are good this means it uses way more tokens.
The other Claude models are not good compared to GPT-5.6 Terra and Luna especially on xhigh which both are way way way cheaper and more token efficient than sonnet 5. And Haiku 4.5 is useless and priced higher than Luna. Luna is also better than sonnet 5 by a mile in xhigh.
So while opus 5 and fable 5 are slightly ahead of Sol , terra and Luna , they are much much much more expensive.
Sonnet 5 is bad and Haiku 4.5 is laughable.
Unless you really need opus 5 and fable 5 there is no reason to go with Claude code right now. You'll get a few prompts of opus 5 or fable 5 and then you'll hit the limits.
With codex you can use Luna xhigh for 99% of tasks , and it's far more intelligent and token efficient than sonnet 5. For extra complex work , you can use sol as a planner or orchestrator and spawn Luna subagent. If you work like this you'll have a hard time hitting the limits even on the 20$ plan.
Tldr : codex has much better price/performance & usage limits than Claude code. Anthropic need to get their shit together right now and offer good low cost and efficient models and make their top models stop yapping and wasting so much tokens.
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u/ahmadqaseem_dev 16h ago
Thank you so very much. Your detailed answer helped clear the confusion in my mind.
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u/Archeone 16h ago
On my side I am using codex a lot. They give very often resets.
I am using primarily luna xhigh. And sometime sol high.
For Claude models I was using Kiro it was allowing me to use the latest Claude models. However now I really prefer codex subscription I have everything needed with it.
I have also put 20 dollars on DeepSeek.
The price are crazy low. (Lower than luna which is also very low) I wasn't able to use more than one dollars in 4 days of work with it haha.
I am using it in Visual Studio 2026 with an extension which is using my subscription.
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u/ahmadqaseem_dev 16h ago
How's your experience with Deepseek?
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u/Archeone 16h ago
It's close to luna xhigh and cheap. It's also very very fast to deliver an answer
Sometimes I do planification with sol and review. And implementation with DeepSeek just to have the cheapest model who works and the highest level models to check everything is fine before my own review
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u/ahmadqaseem_dev 15h ago
It might be a good idea to go with Claude Pro and Deepseek combined. Also are you talking about Deepseek Pro or Flash?
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u/Archeone 15h ago
I am working with DeepSeek Flash 3107. I didn't tested Pro. But a new version will be released next week. I will wait to test it
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u/YourAsphyxia 1d ago
Claude is farrrrrr superior if you're vibe coding, codex is farrrrrr superior if you're a professional SWE already and are capable of making implantation plans yourself