Which AI Code Editor Is Actually Worth It

I have been jumping between AI code editors for months now. Some of that was intentional research, some of it was frustration with whatever I was using at the time. I tried six of them seriously enough to have opinions, so here they are.

I’m slightly biased toward OpenCode because that’s what I use daily. I’ll flag where that bias might be showing up.

Cursor

Cursor is the easiest recommendation on this list. I haven’t tried their CLI version, just the in-editor agent, so I don’t have a lot to complain about.

The limitation is that they’re locked into being an IDE. I don’t always want to stare at code anymore. A lot of what I do now is steering an agent through a task, and for that I want a conversation, not a file tree. They also charge per usage and don’t accept external subscriptions, so you’re paying their rates for every token. Their $200 Ultra tier gives you $400 worth of usage, which is genuinely good value. For the amount I code though, it’s still not enough.

What makes Cursor worth it is the integration with the code itself. They’re fast, they support all the major models, and the native editing experience is as seamless as it gets. The UI keeps getting cleaner too. If you want to write code with AI and you want to see the code while you do it, Cursor is the answer.

Claude Code

Claude Code is well built out of the box. Context compaction works really well, continuation prompts are solid, and you can jump into real work without spending a day on configuration. That’s genuinely valuable.

The problems start when you try to push beyond the defaults. It’s a TUI, and while some people love that, I find the GUI they shipped underwhelming: parallel execution doesn’t work, I can never tell when skills are loaded, and the whole thing flickers. It’s also basically a cult. You cannot use any model other than Claude unless you really hack around it, which means you’re locked into Anthropic’s pricing and capabilities. Memory and settings are all vendor specific, so switching away later means losing your setup.

It also uses a lot of memory on my machine, and I ran into authentication issues with the VS Code extension that just refused to sign in for a while.

OpenCode

OpenCode is what I use, so take this section knowing that. I’ve written about my setup, what it can do in a real session, and how I tune the prompts.

Without a subscription the free models are rough. That’s the biggest barrier to entry: you need a Claude Max or similar subscription to get the most out of it. It also doesn’t get the fastest updates. I had to write a plugin to use Opus 4.6 Adaptive because their PRs hadn’t merged yet. Workspace history isn’t visible in a way that makes it easy to find individual chats. Big conversations lag for about one to four seconds on open, probably loading from the local SQLite into memory. The web version can be slow with input sometimes.

What keeps me here is the configurability. I’ve built plugins, custom modes, skills, and custom tools that do things none of the other editors support. The desktop app feels fast (similar to Codex), the TUI doesn’t suck as badly as Claude Code’s, and it’s truly model agnostic. I switch models mid conversation when I need to, and it just works.

OpenAI Codex

Codex surprised me. The UI is really intuitive, with nice workspace isolation views on the side that make it easy to track what’s happening across sessions. It’s configurable enough to handle basically any coding work.

The lock in is the problem. You can only use OpenAI models, which means no Opus 4.6 for me. The UI doesn’t have smooth animations (minor, but noticeable after using Cursor). And unless you’re on the $200 subscription, GPT 5.3 Codex is painfully slow. On the $200 tier though, the usage limit is so high it’s effectively infinite. Unlike Cursor where I burn through the cap, I genuinely cannot hit the Codex ceiling with normal coding work.

The automations feature is genuinely interesting though. Scheduled tasks, triggered workflows, background agents that run on events. I want to build something similar for OpenCode.

GitHub Copilot

Copilot is model agnostic on paper, but you can’t bring your own subscriptions, so you’re paying per token and it’s easy to blow through your usage. The agents feel noticeably slower and less capable than competing options, and I’m not sure why. Their CLI tool isn’t there yet; using it doesn’t feel good. You also can’t customize it properly with plugins or sub modes.

The saving grace is that most companies pay for it, so it’s effectively free until you hit the cap. It was also hard for me to figure out how to give it full autonomy, which is something the other tools make more obvious.

Factory Droid

Factory claims a lot. Continuous agent mode? Wasn’t there when I tried it. “Best coding agents”? It felt slow and performed about the same as everything else.

The pricing is confusing. The $20 plan gives you “10M Factory Standard Tokens, shared across all models.” Those are their own token units, not the model provider’s tokens, so you have no idea how much actual usage that translates to. I ran one chat where I asked it to change a few things and it burned through 1M of their tokens. That’s 10% of my two week allocation in a single conversation. At that rate I’d burn through the whole thing in half a day.

The desktop app is missing basic features. No custom prompts, no custom agents, and MCP configuration isn’t in settings; you configure it inside the chat, which I only discovered after starting a conversation. They do have native integrations with GitHub, Linear, Slack, and Jira, which is stuff I’ve had to build custom tools for, so that’s a genuine advantage if you don’t want to roll your own.

Most universal pick: Cursor. The free “auto” tier is genuinely good, and the $200 Ultra tier gives you $400 worth of usage which is excellent value if you’re willing to pay. You get a capable coding model, seamless integration with the editor, and if your company pays for Copilot you can install that inside Cursor too, so there’s really no reason not to have it. Whether you’re paying nothing or $200, Cursor is the most universal recommendation I can make.

Best value for money: Codex. The $200 subscription gives you effectively unlimited usage; the cap is so absurdly high that you will not hit it with coding. That alone makes it better value than Cursor’s $200 tier where I regularly run out. If you know how to code and you want an agent that handles the boring stuff without a week of configuration, Codex is the move. It just works.

Best absolute output: OpenCode with a Claude Max subscription. Not the Claude Code CLI, just the subscription for API access. The Claude Max sub is also effectively unlimited for coding; you can technically hit the cap if you’re running ten parallel sessions doing bulk copywriting, but for normal development work it’s practically impossible. See what that actually looks like in practice. If you don’t want to set up your machine and experiment with configs, Codex is the better choice. If you’re comfortable and you want the best of all worlds, this is it.

	Best for	Model flexibility	Customization	Pricing model
Cursor	Most universal pick	All major models	Medium	Free / $200 Ultra
Claude Code	Quick start, no config	Claude only	Low	Subscription
OpenCode	Power users, full autonomy	Any model	Very high	Bring your own sub
Codex	Best value, zero config agentic	OpenAI only	Medium	Subscription + usage
Copilot	Company pays for it	Multiple (no subs)	Low	Per token
Factory Droid	Native integrations	Multiple	Low	Confusing token units

I optimize for absolute output. The setup took me a solid week of configuration and tweaking (spread over about 8 months, not a single week), and I’m still refining it. The diminishing returns are real: that effort probably gets me 10% more output overall compared to Codex. I will always make that trade. If I can put in 50% more effort during setup to squeeze out 10% more productivity across every session after that, it’s worth it to me. That math doesn’t work for everyone though, which is why Codex and Cursor exist.