How to review code your agents wrote: Claude Code Review vs Codex review vs a second-agent review (2026)

By Anurag Sharma. Last checked: October 26, 2026.

Claude Code Review is Anthropic's managed, multi-agent pull-request reviewer for Claude Team and Enterprise organizations, billed on token usage through usage credits. Codex code review is OpenAI's @codex review, automatic GitHub reviews and local /review, included from ChatGPT Plus within plan usage limits. A second-agent review has a different coding agent check the author agent's diff before you merge. It adds an independent check that works alongside either one.

Prices, plans and limits on this page link to the vendor pages we checked on October 26, 2026. Re-check them before you buy. This page is about Anthropic's Code Review feature, not a review of Claude Code itself. For the broader product comparison, see Codex vs Claude Code.

TL;DR: which review setup fits your team#

• Pick Claude Code Review if you're on Claude Team or Enterprise, host code on GitHub (including GitHub Enterprise Server), and want a verified, multi-agent review on pull requests with per-repository depth and an organization spend limit (Code Review (external site)).
• Pick Codex code review if you're on ChatGPT Plus or higher, or a Business or Enterprise workspace, and want reviews included in your plan, @codex review on demand and @codex fix to act on a finding (pricing (external site), GitHub (external site)).
• Add a second-agent review if agents write most of your code, you already pay for both vendors, or you want the review to come from a model that didn't write the change. You can wire it up by hand or run it in Traycer (see below).
• In every case, keep tests, branch protection and a human approval as the merge gate. Anthropic says a review "never approves or blocks the pull request, so the decision to merge stays with your team" (Code Review (external site)). OpenAI says review rules "don't replace tests, branch protections, or required approvals" (GitHub (external site)).

Why agent-written PRs need a different review step#

The volume changed first. When Anthropic launched Code Review in March 2026, it wrote: "Code output per Anthropic engineer has grown 200% in the last year. Code review has become a bottleneck" (March 9, 2026 post (external site)). At general availability in October it added: "Coding agents keep increasing the pace at which teams write code, and the review bottleneck hasn't eased" (GA post (external site)). Anthropic also reports that after it launched the research preview, the share of its internal PRs getting substantive review comments went from 16% to 54% (claude.dev blog, Oct 15, 2026 (external site)).

More code per engineer means less human attention per line. An automated reviewer fills that gap. Independence matters because an agent reviewing its own work shares its own blind spots.

A vendor-neutral way to review AI-generated code:

1. Read the intent. Check the task or ticket before you read the diff, so you judge the change against what was asked.
2. Run the checks. Tests, types and lint should pass before anyone spends review time.
3. Review by risk. Start with auth, data writes, migrations and anything that's hard to undo.
4. Add an independent reviewer. A managed reviewer, a second agent, or both.
5. Keep a human merge decision. Both vendors' reviewers leave the decision with you.

Neither vendor claims its reviewer catches everything. Anthropic's own caveat: "A review with no findings doesn't mean your code is error-free or secure" (Code Review (external site)).

What is Claude Code Review?#

How it works#

Several agents read each change alongside the surrounding code, looking for logic errors, security vulnerabilities and broken edge cases. A review runs on Anthropic infrastructure in four stages: find, verify, rank and post. The verify step "checks the candidate findings against the code and filters out false positives" (Code Review (external site)).

A review gets read-only access to your repository and doesn't push commits. It works "from reading the diff and the surrounding code, without building or running your code." Each review leaves inline comments ranked by severity, a summary, and a check run named Claude Code Review that "doesn't conclude as a failure" (Code Review (external site)). Findings are marked Important, Nit or Pre-existing. Pre-existing covers bugs the PR didn't introduce (reading reviews (external site)). By default it focuses on correctness, "not formatting preferences or missing test coverage."

Who can use it#

• Plans: Team and Enterprise only.
• Code hosts: GitHub, including GitHub Enterprise Server and GitHub Enterprise Cloud with data residency.
• Not available to organizations with Zero Data Retention or the HIPAA configuration, or that use customer-managed encryption keys, and not covered under Anthropic's BAA (Code Review (external site)).

Setup#

An Owner of the Claude organization turns on Allow code review in Admin settings > Claude Code, connects GitHub, installs the Claude GitHub App and picks repositories. You don't add workflow files (setup (external site)). Each repository has a Review runs setting:

• Once after PR creation
• After every push, which is where newly added repositories start and which runs the most reviews
• Manual (@claude review)

Anyone with write access can comment @claude review, or @claude review always to subscribe a pull request to reviews on later pushes. Automatic reviews skip drafts and pull requests from forks (setup (external site)).

Review levels and repository rules#

An Owner picks Quick, Standard (the default) or Deep for the organization and can override it per repository. Deep is "The most thorough pass. Takes the longest and costs the most" (setup (external site)). Code Review chooses the models itself. There's no model setting (Code Review (external site)).

You tune what it flags with REVIEW.md and CLAUDE.md. REVIEW.md is read from the base or default branch and "never from the pull request's own changes," so a PR can't rewrite its own review rules (Code Review (external site), customize (external site)).

Cost and speed#

Code Review "has no flat per-review price." It's billed on token usage through usage credits, separately from your plan's included usage, and billed to the organization. Cost scales with the review level, the size of the change and how often reviews run. Owners set a monthly Code Review spend limit, and reviews are skipped when that limit, the organization limit or the credit balance runs out (costs (external site)).

Older articles quote the preview figure. The March 2026 launch post said reviews "generally average $15–25, scaling with PR size and complexity" and took "around 20 minutes" (March 9, 2026 post (external site)). At GA on October 15, 2026, Anthropic said "Most reviews now finish about 3x faster (~20 minutes down to 6-10 minutes)," and that eligible Enterprise organizations "can claim at least $10,000 in Code Review credits by January 15, 2027" (GA post (external site)).

Other Claude review options#

• /code-review (alias /review) runs in your own Claude Code session on any plan and counts toward your normal usage. --fix applies the findings and --comment posts them to a GitHub pull request or a GitLab merge request (local review (external site)).
• Ultrareview (/code-review ultra, a research preview) runs a multi-agent review in a cloud sandbox. Pro and Max accounts get three free runs, once. After that it's "typically $5 to $25 in usage credits," and a review "typically takes 15 to 25 minutes" (ultrareview (external site)).
• /security-review checks your branch's diff for vulnerabilities such as injection, auth issues and data exposure (commands (external site)).
• Claude in your own CI runs through GitHub Actions or GitLab CI/CD with an API key or cloud provider credentials (Code Review (external site)).

What is Codex code review?#

In GitHub#

Connect the repository to Codex, then turn on Automatic review in Codex settings or comment @codex review on a pull request. Codex reacts with 👀 and posts "a standard GitHub code review." In GitHub it "flags only P0 and P1 issues so review comments stay focused on high-priority risks." Add a one-off focus in the comment, for example @codex review for issues in the database migration (GitHub (external site)).

To act on a finding, comment @codex fix the P1 issue. Codex starts a legacy cloud chat with the pull request as context "and can push a fix back to the branch when it has permission to do so." @codex security review requests a separate Security Review, which is in research preview (GitHub (external site)).

Repository rules go in a ## Code Review Rules section of AGENTS.md. Codex applies the root file and any nested AGENTS.md that covers each changed file (GitHub (external site)).

Locally with /review#

In the Codex CLI and app, /review reviews against a base branch or your uncommitted changes. The CLI also takes a single commit or custom instructions. Codex reports prioritized findings "without changing your working tree." review_model in config.toml lets reviews use a different model from your session (code review (external site)). For scripts, codex review runs a non-interactive review of uncommitted changes, a base branch diff, a commit or custom instructions (CLI reference (external site)).

In the Codex app#

The app's Code Review plugin shows a pull request's description, changed files, comments and checks, with an inbox for reviews assigned to you or your team. Review with Codex starts a review in a new chat. Reviewing in chat "doesn't post comments, approve it, or merge it". Submit review is where you choose Comment, Approve or Request changes (code review (external site)).

Plans and limits#

GitHub code review and automatic PR reviews are available on Plus, Pro, Business and Enterprise, and not when you sign in with an API key. Plus is $20 a month. Reviews through GitHub count as Code Review usage. Reviews run locally or outside GitHub count toward your general usage limits (pricing (external site)). GitHub code review is generally available, and GitLab merge request review is in preview (code review (external site)). For what each subscription includes beyond review, see Cursor vs Claude Code vs Codex.

Claude Code Review vs Codex review: side-by-side#

Last checked: October 26, 2026. Re-check the pricing and availability rows before you rely on them.

Where Claude Code Review is stronger: depth and verification on every PR without CI files, per-repository review levels, GitHub Enterprise Server, organization spend caps and analytics, and a check run that never blocks a merge.

Where Codex code review is stronger: cost for individuals and small teams (included from Plus at $20), a P0 and P1 signal in GitHub, @codex fix in the same pull request, local /review and codex review for scripts, and GitLab merge requests in preview.

The third option: have a second agent review the first agent's work#

A second-agent review means the agent that reviews isn't the one that wrote the code, and ideally runs a different vendor's model. It's useful when one vendor's agent wrote the change and you want a reviewer with different training and different blind spots.

Three officially documented ways to do it yourself:

• The Codex plugin for Claude Code. OpenAI's plugin adds /codex:review, "a normal read-only Codex review" that "gives you the same quality of code review as running /review inside Codex directly," and /codex:adversarial-review, "a steerable challenge review" that questions design choices, tradeoffs and failure modes. It needs a ChatGPT subscription (including Free) or an OpenAI API key, and its usage counts toward your Codex limits (codex-plugin-cc (external site)).
• Claude reviewing Codex's branch. Run /code-review main...my-feature in Claude Code on the branch Codex wrote (local review (external site)).
• Codex reviewing Claude Code's branch. Run codex review --base main on the branch Claude Code wrote (CLI reference (external site)).

The costs are real. You manage two sets of usage limits. You carry each finding back to the agent that wrote the code, by hand. And if both agents work in one checkout, the reviewer can trip over the author's uncommitted changes.

Steps#

1. Build the change with agent A on its own branch or worktree.
2. Start agent B, from a different vendor if you can, read-only on the same branch.
3. Ask B for prioritized findings against the base branch.
4. Send the findings you confirm back to A, with the file and line.
5. Re-run B's review on A's fixes.
6. Run tests, open the PR, and let a human make the merge call.

Where this fits among AI code review tools#

Dedicated review products such as CodeRabbit, Greptile, GitHub Copilot code review and Cursor Bugbot are a separate category, and this page doesn't rank them. What's new: the vendors behind the coding agents now ship their own reviewers, so a team already paying for Claude or ChatGPT can review agent-written PRs without adding another vendor.

Doing a second-agent review in Traycer#

Traycer doesn't replace Claude Code Review or Codex review. It takes the manual work out of the do-it-yourself option above. You start a reviewer from a different vendor in the same window as the agent that wrote the change, and Send to chat hands each finding back to that agent, so you don't carry it across by hand. Each agent still uses its own plan and limits.

Traycer is an open source (MIT) desktop app "for running Claude Code, Codex, Cursor and other AI coding agents in parallel, with shared plans and code review" (docs (external site), repo (external site)). It runs on Mac, Windows and Linux, with mobile apps for iOS and Android (install (external site), mobile app (external site)). It supports 22 coding agents, including Claude Code and Codex (coding agents (external site)). Traycer is SOC 2 Type 2 certified.

The documented review flow (Review agent changes (external site)):

1. See the change. A turn that changed files ends with a Changes card. Review all opens every file the agent changed in one diff.
2. Start a reviewer. Start a new agent on the same folder or worktree (Existing worktree), for example Codex on the branch Claude Code wrote.
3. Get a written review. Run $traycer-review Review the changes on this branch. It writes a review artifact with prioritized findings. For a large change, $traycer-changeset-walkthrough writes a guide to what changed and the order to review it in.
4. Send fixes back. In the review artifact, select a finding, click Send to chat and pick the agent that made the change. Or comment on the findings and ask the agent to address the open threads (Comments (external site)).
5. Roll back what you don't want. Undo one file, one turn (Undo, then Restore) or everything (Undo all) (Undo a turn (external site)).
6. Follow the pull request. When the agent opens a PR, the Pull Requests panel shows its checks and review state, and Fix in chat puts a failing check or a review comment into the agent's composer, ready to send (Pull Requests (external site)).

Review can also happen against the plan. traycer-execute starts one child agent per ticket and "reviews each batch against the plan," and traycer-autobuild pairs a builder agent with "a separate evaluator agent" (artifact workflow (external site)). Agents can message each other to get a review, too. On the Chat interface every coding agent can send and receive. On the Terminal interface only Claude Code has an inbox (agent-to-agent (external site)).

Traycer is free for individuals with your own agents. The Sync plan, for sharing Tasks with a whole team, is $20 per user per month, or $16 billed yearly (pricing (external site)). The Traycer homepage lists 11,000+ developers using Traycer Desktop and 40,000+ Tasks created in it (traycer.ai). For how it compares with other tools for running agents in parallel, see the best tools to run coding agents in parallel.

Which should you choose?#

A Claude Team or Enterprise organization on GitHub. Use Claude Code Review at Standard, set Deep on critical repositories, and set a monthly spend limit first.

A solo developer or small team on ChatGPT Plus or Pro. Turn on Codex automatic review and use /review locally before you push.

A team running Claude Code and Codex side by side. Run one managed reviewer on the PR, and a cross-vendor second-agent review before you open it. If you run several agents in parallel, Traycer keeps the author agent, the reviewer and the PR's checks in one Task, and its iOS and Android apps let you follow the review from your phone.

An organization on Zero Data Retention, HIPAA or CMEK. Claude Code Review isn't available. Use /code-review locally or Claude in your own CI, and check Codex's data controls for your workspace before you turn on cloud reviews.

FAQ#

Run a second agent's review on your next agent-written PR: download Traycer Desktop, free and open source (MIT).