Claude Code vs Codex for Laravel teams: choosing your AI coding tool in 2026
Claude Opus 4.6 and GPT-5.3-Codex both dropped on February 5, 2026 — twenty minutes apart. Claude followed up with Sonnet 4.6 on February 17. OpenAI countered with GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark (a Cerebras-powered fast-inference variant) on February 12. The competitive intensity is unprecedented, and developers are describing both tools as “superhuman” at coding tasks.
For a Laravel/Vue.js/Inertia/TypeScript stack, Claude Code is the stronger choice today — but the answer isn’t absolute. Claude Code holds a decisive edge in Laravel ecosystem integration, multi-file editing workflows, and the specific tooling your stack demands. Codex excels in autonomous long-running tasks, token efficiency, and parallel agent orchestration. On raw coding benchmarks, the two are effectively tied at the frontier. The decision hinges on whether ecosystem depth and interactive control matter more than autonomous execution and cost efficiency to your team’s workflow.
Raw benchmarks reveal a dead heat with tactical differences
The headline numbers on established coding benchmarks are remarkably close. On SWE-bench Verified — the most-cited real-world software engineering benchmark — Claude Opus 4.6 scores 80.8% versus GPT-5.2’s ~80.0%, a gap within statistical error margins. On the independent vals.ai leaderboard, Claude Opus 4.6 with thinking mode holds the #1 position at 79.2%, followed by Gemini 3 Flash (76.2%) and GPT-5.2 (75.4%).
The picture shifts on newer benchmarks. Terminal-Bench 2.0, which measures real terminal skills essential for coding agents, tells a different story: GPT-5.3-Codex scores 77.3% versus Claude Opus 4.6’s 65.4% — a commanding 12-point lead. This benchmark matters because agentic coding tools spend much of their time executing terminal commands, running tests, and managing build processes.
On SWE-bench Pro (a contamination-resistant, multi-language variant maintained by Scale AI), Claude Opus 4.5 leads the public dataset at 45.9% versus GPT-5.2-Codex at 41.0%. But on the private subset — the truest test of generalisation — GPT-5.2 edges ahead at 23.8% versus Claude Opus 4.5’s 23.4%. Multiple researchers have flagged that SWE-bench Verified is approaching saturation, with mounting evidence of training data contamination. Scores on fresh, private codebases drop from ~80% to roughly 17–23% for all frontier models.
| Benchmark | Claude Opus 4.6 | GPT-5.3-Codex | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|
| SWE-bench Verified | 80.8% | ~80.0% (GPT-5.2) | Tied |
| SWE-bench Pro (public) | 45.9% (Opus 4.5) | 41.0% | Claude |
| SWE-bench Pro (private) | 23.4% | 23.8% | Tied |
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | 65.4% | 77.3% | Codex |
| OSWorld (computer use) | 72.7% | 64.7% | Claude |
| ARC-AGI-2 (reasoning) | 68.8% | ~54.2% (GPT-5.2 Pro) | Claude |
For complex multi-file edits and debugging — the daily reality of Laravel development — Claude Code’s practical advantage lies not in model scores but in how the tool orchestrates changes. Claude Code’s Plan Mode generates detailed refactoring plans, applies changes incrementally across files, and runs test suites between batches. In head-to-head practical tests, Claude Code captured more design detail and produced more architecturally coherent solutions, while Codex generated code that was more concise and often correct on the first attempt. GPT-5.3-Codex also achieves its results with fewer tokens than any prior model — a meaningful efficiency gain for heavy use.
Agentic autonomy follows different philosophies
Claude Code and the Codex desktop app represent fundamentally different approaches to autonomous coding. Claude Code is terminal-first and developer-in-the-loop — it acts like a senior developer who explains their reasoning and asks before making risky changes. Codex is a multi-surface command centre designed for delegating tasks and letting agents run independently for extended periods.
Claude Code offers three operating modes: normal (asks permission for each action), plan (describes intended changes and waits for approval), and auto-accept (full autonomy). Its most powerful agentic feature is subagents — separate Claude instances with independent context windows that handle specialised subtasks and report back summaries. The new Agent Teams feature (research preview with Opus 4.6) coordinates multiple Claude instances on complex projects; Anthropic demonstrated 16 agents building a 100,000-line C compiler in two weeks. Claude Code also supports async subagents for background tasks like CI/CD monitoring and hooks for deterministic automation at different points in the agentic lifecycle.
The Codex desktop app (launched February 2, 2026, macOS only) takes a different approach with parallel agent threads — each working on an isolated Git worktree so multiple agents can modify the same repository without conflicts. Its Automations feature runs tasks unprompted (issue triage, alert monitoring), and the Skills system bundles instructions and scripts for task-specific capabilities. A standout capability is mid-turn steering: you can redirect Codex while it’s working without losing context — something Claude Code doesn’t natively support. Codex cloud tasks can run autonomously for up to 30 minutes, and GPT-5.1-Codex-Max was tested working independently for 7+ hours on single tasks. For long-running refactoring of a large Laravel codebase, that sustained autonomy is a genuine advantage.
Both tools handle error recovery, test execution, dependency installation, and Git operations. Both support session resumption and context compaction when approaching limits. The practical difference: Claude Code gives you more granular control over each step, while Codex is better at sustained autonomous execution with less human oversight.
Cost structures diverge at scale
Entry-level pricing is identical: both offer core access at $20/month (Claude Pro, ChatGPT Plus). The divergence begins at the power-user tier and becomes significant for team-wide deployment.
| Tier | Claude Code | Codex |
|---|---|---|
| Entry | Pro: $20/mo | Plus: $20/mo |
| Power user | Max 5x: $100/mo; Max 20x: $200/mo | Pro: $200/mo |
| Team | Standard: $20/seat/mo; Premium: $100/seat/mo | Business: $25–30/user/mo |
| Enterprise | Custom (contact sales) | Custom |
API pricing reveals Claude’s flexibility advantage. Claude Opus 4.6 costs $5/$25 per million tokens (input/output) — a dramatic 67% reduction from Opus 4.1’s $15/$75. Sonnet 4.6, which scores within 1.2 points of Opus on SWE-bench, costs just $3/$15 per million tokens and is now the default model for Pro users. GPT-5.2-Codex API pricing sits at $1.75/$14 per million tokens, but GPT-5.3-Codex API access isn’t generally available yet — it’s currently restricted to ChatGPT subscriptions with a phased API rollout underway.
The real cost story lies in token consumption patterns. In head-to-head tests, Claude Code consumed 2–4x more tokens than Codex for equivalent tasks (one test showed 6.2M vs 1.5M tokens for a Figma-to-code task). Despite Claude’s competitive per-token pricing, actual monthly spend skews higher. Anthropic reports average developer spend of ~$6/day ($120–180/month) with 90% of users under $12/day, but heavy users report $500–800/week. The most common community complaint about Claude Code is hitting usage limits — developers on $150+/month plans routinely encounter caps, with one GitHub issue garnering 237+ upvotes about the problem.
For a UK team evaluating costs, a realistic monthly budget per developer:
- Claude Code (Sonnet 4.6 primary, Opus for complex tasks): £80–160/month on Max plans, or £100–250/month on API pricing for heavy use
- Codex (GPT-5.3-Codex via ChatGPT Pro): £160/month flat for unlimited access within rate limits, or £20/month on Plus with tighter limits
Both offer prompt caching (90% savings on repeated context) and batch processing discounts. For team-wide deployment, Claude’s Team Standard plan at $20/seat/month with SSO and admin controls competes directly with OpenAI’s Business plan at $25–30/user/month.
Laravel ecosystem: a clear winner
This is where the comparison tilts most decisively. Laravel has invested heavily in Claude Code as a first-party integration, and the ecosystem advantage is substantial.
Laravel 12 ships with laravel/boost, an official MCP-powered package that transforms Claude Code into a Laravel expert. It provides database schema inspection, route listing, Tinker integration, Artisan command execution, browser log access, and a documentation API with 17,000+ pieces of Laravel-specific knowledge using semantic search. Running php artisan boost:mcp generates CLAUDE.md, .mcp.json, and skills files automatically. Laravel also maintains an official laravel/claude-code plugin repository on GitHub.
For Vue.js and TypeScript, Claude Code offers dedicated community plugins including claude-skill-vue-development (Vue 3 Composition API patterns, TypeScript-first, Testing Library integration) and LSP integration with Vue Language Server v2 for “go to definition” and “find references” in .vue files. For Inertia.js specifically, community-published configurations exist for both Inertia+Vue and Inertia+React variants, including auto-detection scripts and stack-specific skills from the richardhowes/claude-code-laravel repository.
Codex can work with Laravel projects, but requires manual environment setup — a community Gist from Laravel developer Marcel Pociot provides PHP 8.4 and Composer installation scripts for Codex environments. Laravel Boost now generates Codex-compatible configuration (AGENTS.md), but the integration is newer and less documented. No Vue.js-specific or Inertia.js-specific Codex skills or plugins were found in the current ecosystem.
The practical implications for multi-file Laravel operations are significant. A typical feature addition — creating an Eloquent model, migration, controller, route registration, Form Request, Policy, Vue component with TypeScript props, and Pest test — requires coordinated changes across 8+ files. Claude Code’s Plan Mode handles this naturally through its batched refactoring workflow. Codex can achieve similar results through its cloud sandbox (which preloads the full repository), but the tooling is less structured for this specific workflow.
Developer experience and team onboarding
Claude Code is a terminal-first CLI (npm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code) that now extends to VS Code, JetBrains IDEs, a web interface, a desktop app, and an iOS app. Sessions transfer between surfaces — start in terminal, review diffs in the desktop app, monitor from your phone. Configuration lives in CLAUDE.md files (project-level instructions), with a settings hierarchy from global to project to session levels. MCP support is mature with 300+ integrations available, and the JetBrains plugin (WebStorm, PhpStorm) provides interactive diff viewing.
The Codex desktop app (macOS only; Windows in alpha, no Linux yet) serves as a visual command centre for multiple agent threads. The CLI (npm i -g @openai/codex) provides full terminal access, and IDE extensions cover VS Code, Cursor, Windsurf, and JetBrains. Configuration uses config.toml files and AGENTS.md for project-specific instructions — analogous to CLAUDE.md. Both tools share configuration across CLI and IDE surfaces.
For team onboarding, Claude Code offers SSO, domain capture, admin-controlled configurations, enterprise managed settings, and an Analytics API for usage tracking. OpenAI offers comparable enterprise controls through its Business and Enterprise plans with SOC 2 compliance, SSO, and RBAC. Both support non-interactive modes for CI/CD integration.
A practical onboarding consideration: Claude Code’s effectiveness scales with configuration quality. As one developer noted, “it’s only as good as the context you give it.” Teams that invest in comprehensive CLAUDE.md files, custom skills for their Laravel conventions, and curated MCP configurations will see significantly better results. Codex tends to produce high-quality results out of the box with less configuration overhead — which may matter for teams with varying technical sophistication.
Practical takeaways
For a Laravel/Vue.js/Inertia/TypeScript team, the evidence points toward Claude Code as the primary tool with Codex as a strategic complement.
Three factors drive this:
- Laravel’s official investment in Claude Code through Boost, the laravel/claude-code plugin collection, and community-maintained Inertia.js configurations creates an ecosystem advantage that directly reduces setup time and improves output quality for your stack.
- Plan Mode and multi-file editing workflows align naturally with how Laravel features span models, controllers, routes, components, and tests. The 8+ file coordination problem is a solved workflow in Claude Code.
- Sonnet 4.6 delivers near-Opus performance at $3/$15 per million tokens, making Claude Code meaningfully more cost-effective for daily use when you don’t need the flagship model.
Codex earns its place for specific scenarios: long-running autonomous refactoring (7+ hours unattended), terminal-heavy operations where its Terminal-Bench advantage translates to practical gains, and as a second opinion on complex debugging where its first-try accuracy rate is reportedly higher. Parallel agent threads with Git worktree isolation are genuinely useful for tackling multiple issues simultaneously.
The most important caveat is velocity of change. Multiple developers explicitly warn that comparisons become outdated within weeks. Both Anthropic and OpenAI are shipping major updates monthly. Budget for flexibility — adopt whichever tool wins your stack today, but avoid deep lock-in to either platform’s proprietary configuration formats. The MCP standard, supported by both tools, provides the best path to portability.