# GPT-5.1-Codex-Max

30 Hacker News commenters recommended GPT-5.1-Codex-Max and 19 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 5 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Praised for web development, debugging and multi-step refactors. Common caveat: it is slow and weak outside web development.

## Why people recommend it

- Strong at debugging problems (3 comments): "I've used max in problem sets as diverse as "troubleshooting Cyberpunk mods" and figuring out a race condition in a server backend." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46238491)) "opus-4.5 and gpt-5.1-codex-max are perhaps better than me at debugging" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46181931)) "Codex Max solved a problem I had Claude Code fail multiple times." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45986781))
- Good at web development (2 comments): "I've found models (codex-5.1-max, opus 4.5) to be absolutely useless writing shaders or ML training code, but really good at basic web development." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46235610)) "I was especially impressed by 5.1-codex-max for a webapp" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46776730))
- Completes tasks others cannot (2 comments): "there are some tasks Opus can't do at all which Codex has no problem with" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46196267)) "Codex Max solved a problem I had Claude Code fail multiple times." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45986781))
- Efficient token use (2 comments): "30% more token-efficient at the same reasoning level across many tasks" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45982917)) "you can get much more mileage out of them due to post-training" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46062193))

## What people warn about

- Slow, long waits for results (4 comments): "it completed 10 of 10 but took perhaps 5-10x as long" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46735718)) "If I have to wait 20 minutes for GPT-5.1-codex-max medium to look at git diff and give a paltry and inaccurate summary" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46039291)) "It can churn for hours and get one test working, or churn for hours and fail." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46805337))
- Weak outside web development (2 comments): "I've found models (codex-5.1-max, opus 4.5) to be absolutely useless writing shaders or ML training code, but really good at basic web development." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46235610)) "These things are infuriatingly bad as soon as you move away from things like web development." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46611286))
- Poor code quality and approaches (3 comments): "if you bother to watch what it does and read its code the approaches it takes are absolutely horrifying" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45982905)) "codex didn’t adhere to codebase standards for me and the code quality was worse (very defensive)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45983374)) "I've actually gotten worse results with xhigh than high with gpt-5.1-codex-max" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46238166))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Cursor Composer](https://hackerapproved.com/p/composer-2-5.md): 214 recommend
- [Qwen3-Coder](https://hackerapproved.com/p/qwen3-coder-next.md): 165 recommend
- [GPT-5.3-Codex](https://hackerapproved.com/p/gpt-5-3-codex.md): 135 recommend
- [Meta Muse Glimmer 30B](https://hackerapproved.com/p/meta-muse-glimmer.md): 70 recommend
- [GPT-5.2-Codex](https://hackerapproved.com/p/gpt-5-2-codex.md): 54 recommend

## Where to get it

- [Visit the official site](https://openai.com/)

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "GPT-5.1-Codex-Max", https://hackerapproved.com/p/gpt-5-1-codex-max/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).