I pay for three Claude Max plans as well as a $200 ChatGPT Pro plan. After relying on both of them every day, I have concluded that Claude Code stands as the best coding tool currently available. The gap is substantial. I understand the usage complaints that people raise. They make sense. Yet with those three Max plans I essentially have unlimited access to Claude Code, and I now turn to it for nearly every task. Codex performs genuinely well. I continue to rely on GPT 5.5 for specific needs. Even so, Claude Opus 4.8 represents the most intelligent model on offer at this moment, and it proves shockingly effective at design work too. That pairing is what continues to draw me back in. It offers the best model. It delivers the best agentic tool. It comes with the best plan provided you can manage the expense. For anyone who builds software professionally, Claude Code covers its own cost in short order.