Kiro vs OpenAI Codex (2026)

Pricing side by side

Kiro vs OpenAI Codex: public pricing

Item	Kiro	OpenAI Codex
Starting price	Free; Pro $20/user/mo	Free; Plus $20/mo
Pricing model	Per seat	Subscription
Free plan	Yes	Yes
Plans	Free: $0/month Pro: $20/user/mo Pro+: $40/user/mo Pro Max: $100/user/mo Power: $200/user/mo	Free: $0 Go: $8/mo Plus: $20/mo Pro: from $100/mo Business: $25/user/mo
Pricing note	not published	Or use your own API key and pay API prices.
Checked	October 29, 2026	October 28, 2026
Source	Vendor pricing page	Vendor pricing page

Copied from each vendor's public pricing page on the date shown. "not published" means the vendor doesn't publish it; we don't guess. Prices change; confirm with the vendor.

Features and details from our listings

Use cases

Kiro

We haven't found a verified public use case for Kiro yet.

OpenAI Codex

• Use caseCoding

  A solo developer spent three months making the Steam game Solitaire: Kingdom in Chains with Claude Code and Codex alongside Photoshop, Cubase and Filmora, and puts the AI share of the work at about 30%.

  Oct 2026@bigbropatchwork on X ↗

• Use caseCoding

  After running Claude Code and Codex side by side on two real projects for weeks, a builder logged one day in which Claude Code delivered 9 changes he could open and use, while Codex stopped three times over rules it had written for itself and got about 18 minutes of building done.

  Oct 2026@bstuartTI on X ↗

• Use caseCoding

  A developer ran Google's open Gemma 4 model locally inside Codex CLI and wrote up how a coding agent performs without a cloud model.

  Apr 2026Daniel Vaughan (blog), via Hacker News ↗

• Use caseCoding

  Simon Willison used Codex CLI to port the JustHTML HTML5 parser from Python to JavaScript in about 4.5 hours, using the existing html5lib test suite to check the agent's work.

  Dec 2025Simon Willison's Weblog ↗

• Use caseCoding

  Semgrep's security researchers had Claude Code and OpenAI Codex hunt for vulnerabilities in real Python web apps: both found real bugs (about 20 high-severity), but more than 80% of what they flagged were false positives.

  Sep 2025Semgrep blog ↗

Use cases are summarised in our own words from the linked public post; vendor case studies are labelled. All use cases.

Who each is best for

• Per seatFree plan

  Kiro is best for

  • Teams that need to: Turn a spec into working code; Run coding agents in an IDE.
  • Budget: starts at Free; Pro $20/user/mo (per seat, free plan available).
• SubscriptionFree plan

  OpenAI Codex is best for

  • Teams that need to: Port or rewrite code against a test suite; Delegate coding tasks to run in the cloud.
  • Budget: starts at Free; Plus $20/mo (subscription, free plan available).

From our listing data (jobs, public pricing); not a hands-on test. Full details: Kiro · OpenAI Codex.

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