Best AI for coding
What 229 creators said they actually use for coding, from podcasts and YouTube. Not benchmark scores. Updated Oct 18, 2026.
Short answer
For coding, most creators use Claude Code (106), then Codex (84). The model they name most is Claude Opus (33).
Top tools for coding
Creators who use or recommend each"I tell Claude to spin up command line sub agents because those maintain their persistent session over time. And so you can have it spin up these agents separately. You can actually run them from other sessions and so on. And that allows ..."
"I just learned how to use Claude Projects, learn a little bit about GitHub, learn a little bit about Convex, and I just asked Codex. I said, 'Hey, if you were to manage this and make sure that it's secure and run this for a team, what wo..."
"I've just noticed this app is really fast right now. Claude Desktop, especially running Claude Opus 5.5, is just the dream stack right now. I'm moving much faster, and I'm just getting way more done using this stack."
"We have a consistent scheduled job running on Cursor cloud agent that always checks every single day at a specific time for those issues."
"If you want to do longer projects and you want to have a lot of use of GPT-6, I highly recommend at least for one month getting the $100 per month plan, this Pro plan right here. You will learn so much if you use this tool on this plan f..."
"Grokbot feels incredibly fast right now. I don't know why it is. Additionally, the UI is just the most polished of any agent platform out there. And I genuinely believe I'd be using it for almost every task if the models were at the fron..."
"Use Gemini to code this up for you. So you want to build in public, market in public, and whoever generates the most revenue in three months wins."
"DeepSeek. This is quite good at hard thinking and coding problems. But heads up, the reasoning models take 10 to 30 seconds to think before they answer. And that's normal."
Models creators name for coding
Most creators name the app (like Claude Code), not the model, so these counts are smaller.
Head to head for coding
Only creators who compared the two for coding.
Best AI for other jobs
How this works: we read every podcast and YouTube transcript we track and note when a creator says they use or recommend an AI tool for a job. Each creator counts once per tool. Sponsored mentions are left out. More about Followed.