The problem with OpenAI models is the lack of a Max-like subscription for a good agentic harness. Maybe OpenAI or Microsoft could fix this.
I just went through the agony of provisioning my team with new Claude Code 5x subs 2 weeks ago after reviewing all of the options available at that time. Since then, the major changes include a Cerebras sub for Qwen3 Coder 480B, and now GPT-5. I’m still not sure I made the right choice, but hey, I’m not married to it either.
If you plan on using this much at all then the primary thing to avoid is API-based pay per use. It’s prohibitively costly to use regularly. And even for less important changes it never feels appropriate to use a lower quality model when the product counts.
Claude Code won primarily because of the sub and that they have a top tier agentic harness and models that know how to use it. Opus and Sonnet are fantastic agents and very good at our use case, and were our preferred API-based models anyways. We can use Claude Code basically all day with at least Sonnet after using our Opus limits up. Worth nothing that Cline built a Claude Code provider that the derivatives aped which is great but I’ve found Claude Code to be as good or better anyways. The CLI interface is actually a bonus for ease of sharing state via copy/paste.
I’ll probably change over to Gemini Code Assist next, as it’s half the price and more context length, but I’m waiting for a better Gemini 2.5 Pro and the gemini-cli/Code Assist extensions to have first party planning support, which you can get some form of third party through custom extensions with the cli, but as an agent harness they are incomplete without.
The Cerebras + Qwen3 Coder 480B with qwen3-cli is seriously tempting. Crazy generation speed. Theres some question about how long big the rate limit really is but it’s half the cost of Claude Code 5x. I haven’t checked but I know qwen3-cli, which was introduced along side the model, is a fork of gemini-cli with Qwen-focused updates; wonder if they landed a planning tool?
I don’t really consider Cursor, Windsurf, Cline, Roo, Kilo et al as they can’t provide a flat rate service with the kind of rate limits you can get with the aforementioned.
GitHub Copilot could be a great offering if they were willing to really compete with a good unlimited premium plan but so far their best offering has less premium requests than I make in a week, possibly even in a few days.
Would love to hear if I missed anything, or somehow missed some dynamic here worth considering. But as far as I can tell, given heavy use, you only have 3 options today: Claude Max, Gemini Code Assist, Cerebras Code.
> If you plan on using this much at all then the primary thing to avoid is API-based pay per use.
I find there's a niche where API pay-per-use is cost effective. It's for problems that require (i) small context and (ii) not much reasoning.
Coding problems with 100k-200k context violates (i). Math problems violate (ii) because they generate long reasoning streams.
Coding problems with 10k-20k context are well suited, because they generate only ~5k output tokens. That's $0.03-$0.04 per prompt to GPT-5 under flex pricing. The convenience is worth it, unless you're relying on a particular agentic harness that you don't control (I am not).
For large context questions, I send them to a chat subscription, which gives me a budget of N prompts instead of N tokens. So naturally, all the 100k-400k token questions go there.
16 hours ago the readme for codex CLI was updated. Now codex cli supports openai login like claude does, no API credits.
From the readme:
After you run codex select Sign in with ChatGPT. You'll need a Plus, Pro, or Team ChatGPT account, and will get access to our latest models, including gpt-5, at no extra cost to your plan. (Enterprise is coming soon.)
Important: If you've used the Codex CLI before, you'll need to follow these steps to migrate from usage-based billing with your API key:
Update the CLI with codex update and ensure codex --version is greater than 0.13
Ensure that there is no OPENAI_API_KEY environment variable set. (Check that env | grep 'OPENAI_API_KEY' returns empty)
Run codex login again
I just went through the agony of provisioning my team with new Claude Code 5x subs 2 weeks ago after reviewing all of the options available at that time. Since then, the major changes include a Cerebras sub for Qwen3 Coder 480B, and now GPT-5. I’m still not sure I made the right choice, but hey, I’m not married to it either.
If you plan on using this much at all then the primary thing to avoid is API-based pay per use. It’s prohibitively costly to use regularly. And even for less important changes it never feels appropriate to use a lower quality model when the product counts.
Claude Code won primarily because of the sub and that they have a top tier agentic harness and models that know how to use it. Opus and Sonnet are fantastic agents and very good at our use case, and were our preferred API-based models anyways. We can use Claude Code basically all day with at least Sonnet after using our Opus limits up. Worth nothing that Cline built a Claude Code provider that the derivatives aped which is great but I’ve found Claude Code to be as good or better anyways. The CLI interface is actually a bonus for ease of sharing state via copy/paste.
I’ll probably change over to Gemini Code Assist next, as it’s half the price and more context length, but I’m waiting for a better Gemini 2.5 Pro and the gemini-cli/Code Assist extensions to have first party planning support, which you can get some form of third party through custom extensions with the cli, but as an agent harness they are incomplete without.
The Cerebras + Qwen3 Coder 480B with qwen3-cli is seriously tempting. Crazy generation speed. Theres some question about how long big the rate limit really is but it’s half the cost of Claude Code 5x. I haven’t checked but I know qwen3-cli, which was introduced along side the model, is a fork of gemini-cli with Qwen-focused updates; wonder if they landed a planning tool?
I don’t really consider Cursor, Windsurf, Cline, Roo, Kilo et al as they can’t provide a flat rate service with the kind of rate limits you can get with the aforementioned.
GitHub Copilot could be a great offering if they were willing to really compete with a good unlimited premium plan but so far their best offering has less premium requests than I make in a week, possibly even in a few days.
Would love to hear if I missed anything, or somehow missed some dynamic here worth considering. But as far as I can tell, given heavy use, you only have 3 options today: Claude Max, Gemini Code Assist, Cerebras Code.