AGENT SKILLS · SEO · 6 MIN
Claude SEO vs Codex SEO: same audit, pick the agent you already pay for
Two SEO skill suites, one author, the same methodology underneath, and one question that settles it: which coding agent does your team already pay for. Claude SEO and Codex SEO are ports of each other rather than rivals in the usual sense, and that is precisely why the comparison matters. If you went looking for SEO tools for Claude and landed on a Codex option, or the reverse, the tiebreaker is the runtime, not the feature list.
Codex SEO is the OpenAI Codex port of the Claude skill, built by the same author, AgriciDaniel. It covers the same surface, from technical audits and on-page analysis through E-E-A-T, schema, Core Web Vitals, GEO and AEO for AI search, backlinks, local and ecommerce SEO, hreflang, and semantic clustering, because it tracks the Claude skill as its upstream. What it does not share is the codebase, the licence, or the community. Those three differences are where the decision lives.
Most readers should pick Claude SEO. It is the upstream project that the Codex port synchronizes to, its MIT licence lets you read and fork every skill, and its community is far larger. Choose Codex SEO only if your team already runs OpenAI Codex and would rather not add a second agent platform. In that case the SEO output is the same and the integration is native to the tool you already use, which is a real advantage in itself.
The comparison at a glance
| Decision factor | Claude SEO | Codex SEO |
|---|---|---|
| Methodology | Upstream reference: 25 sub-skills and 18 agents | Port synchronized to Claude SEO at a pinned commit; 26 workflows and 24 TOML agents |
| Runtime | Claude Code, interactive sessions | OpenAI Codex, with deterministic headless runners |
| Licence | MIT, fully open source | Proprietary, free to use, no self-hosting |
| Integrations | Claude Code, Google Search Console, DataForSEO, Firecrawl, Lighthouse | OpenAI Codex, Google Search Console, DataForSEO, Firecrawl, Gemini |
| Running cost | Free skill, plus Claude Code API tokens per audit | Free to use, plus Codex API tokens per audit |
| Community | Established base, roughly 16,675 GitHub stars | Smaller base, a few hundred stars |
| Best fit | Teams on Claude Code | Teams on Codex |
| Interface | Terminal only, no dashboard | Terminal and headless runners, no dashboard |
The table hides one thing worth stating plainly: neither product is a SaaS platform. There is no dashboard, no rank history, and no scheduled report in your inbox unless you build the schedule yourself. Both are skills you install into a coding agent, which is why the runtime question dominates everything else here.
Factor by factor: who wins and why
Methodology and coverage: Claude SEO. The Codex suite is not an independent invention. It synchronizes to the Claude skill at a pinned upstream commit, which makes Claude SEO the reference implementation where new skills and fixes land first. The port ships a comparable set of 26 workflows, but by design it is always tracking a target that has already moved.
Automation and headless runs: Codex SEO. This is the port's clearest advantage. Codex SEO uses 24 TOML agent profiles and deterministic headless runners, so an audit can be scripted into a pipeline or put on a schedule without an interactive terminal session. Claude SEO is built around interactive commands inside Claude Code. If your requirement is "run it every Monday and open a ticket on what it finds," the Codex runtime makes that a smaller engineering job.
Integrations: Codex SEO. Both suites reach DataForSEO, Google Search Console, and Firecrawl. The Codex port adds Gemini for image analysis workflows, while Claude SEO lists Lighthouse instead. If your audits include a performance pass and you already have Gemini access, Codex is the shorter path. If you want Lighthouse data folded into the same report, the Claude skill covers that case.
Licence and control: Claude SEO. MIT against proprietary is not a footnote when the whole appeal of the category is ownership. Claude SEO's skills are readable, forkable, and self-contained. Codex SEO is free to use but closed, with no self-hosting option, so you cannot audit the methodology or patch it when the author's direction and yours diverge.
Community and support: Claude SEO. Claude SEO's repository carries roughly 16,675 stars against a few hundred for the Codex port. That gap reflects the size of the Codex audience as much as any quality difference, but it changes day-to-day experience: more third-party write-ups, more community answers, and faster surfacing of the bugs that any skill suite ships with.
What you pay: a tie that is not really a tie. Both suites are free software. Claude SEO is MIT licensed; Codex SEO is free to use under a proprietary licence. The cost sits in the agent platform behind each and the API tokens every run consumes. If your team already pays for one of the two agents, that recurring bill is the only number that matters, and adding the other platform just to get an SEO audit is the expensive choice.
Which should you pick
You already run Claude Code. Stay with Claude SEO. It is the original, it is open source, and it is the version that every third-party comparison, benchmark, and tutorial is describing. Adding Codex to save nothing makes no sense.
You already run Codex. Take Codex SEO. You get the same audit surface with native agent profiles and the ability to run audits headlessly. The proprietary licence is the trade, and for an internal SEO workflow it is usually an acceptable one.
You are choosing the agent platform and SEO is part of why. Claude SEO wins on the strength of the ecosystem around it: more contributors, more coverage of the project, and an MIT licence. If SEO audits are a major reason you are adopting a coding agent, start there and let the Codex port catch up.
One caution for both. Neither suite verifies its own scoring, and we have documented Claude SEO scores moving between grader versions on an unchanged site, from 96 under v2.2.4 to 61 under v2.2.5 within a day. Pin the version you install, keep the reports, and compare a site against its own past runs. A single audit is a snapshot, not a certification that the work is finished.
We have run Claude SEO on production sites and reported the results in full. The Codex SEO assessment draws on public documentation, the repository, and vendor pages; we have not run this tool.
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