GPT-5.2 Codex vs GPT-4.1

1. Optimized for Long-Horizon Coding Tasks

• OpenAI describes GPT-5.2 Codex as a highly intelligent coding model built for long-horizon, agentic coding work.
• Well suited to planning, refactoring, debugging, and multi-step implementation flows inside real codebases.

2. Adjustable Reasoning for Coding Work

• Supports configurable reasoning effort from low to xhigh depending on speed and quality needs.
• Accepts both text and image inputs while producing text output.

3. Large Context + Long Output

• 400 k token context window supports broad repository understanding and larger working sets.
• Allows up to 128 k output tokens for longer patches, code generation, and technical explanations.

4. Up-to-Date Model Snapshot

• Knowledge cut-off of Aug 31 2025 keeps it current with newer tools and frameworks.
• Supports streaming, function calling, and structured outputs for tool-driven coding workflows.

1. Smartest non-reasoning model

• Highest intelligence among models without a reasoning step.
• Great for tasks where speed + accuracy matter without deep chain-of-thought.

2. Excellent instruction following

• Very strong at structured tasks, formatting, and precise execution.
• Ideal for productized workflows and deterministic outputs.

3. Reliable tool calling

• Works smoothly with Web Search, File Search, Image Generation, and Code Interpreter.
• Supports MCP and advanced tool-enabled API flows.

4. Large 1M-token context window

• Allows extremely long conversations, large documents, and multi-file use cases.
• Handles context-heavy tasks without requiring chunking.

5. Low latency (no reasoning step)

• Faster responses than GPT-5 family when reasoning mode isn't required.
• More predictable timing for production use.

6. Multimodal input

• Accepts text + image.
• Output is text only.

7. Supports fine-tuning

• Can be fine-tuned for specialized tasks.
• Also supports distillation for smaller custom models.