May be a bit different depending on what kind of work you're doing, but for me 5.2-codex finally reached higher level than opus.

If i could use GPT-5.2 with Claude Code - yeah. Otherwise slOpus requires too much steering to get things done. GPT-5.2 just works

5.2-codex is pretty solid and you get dramatically higher usage rates with cheap plans. I would assume API use is much cheaper as well.