Codex CLI vs Claude Code CLI: Which Is Better in 2026?
I've spent the last three months living in the terminal with both OpenAI's Codex CLI and Anthropic's Claude Code CLI. Not just running demos—actually shipping code, debugging production issues, and onboarding a junior developer on a legacy Rails app. Here's what I found.
The Quick Pitch
Codex CLI (built on GPT-4o) is a fast, stateless tool that excels at one-shot refactors and works natively across Windows, macOS, and Linux. Claude C