Claude Code, Codex, and Antigravity constructed the identical Android app in beneath half-hour and here is which one I would use once more

For a number of months, I’ve run a journey running a blog website, GoingSolo.Life. The website matches solo vacationers with metropolis itineraries. I not too long ago began engaged on an app for the location for each Android and iOS. For the previous, I made a decision to make use of AI to get the job completed since I wasn’t serious about studying Kotlin.

So I arrange a take a look at. I wrote one immediate describing the Android app I envisioned, pasted it into Claude Code, OpenAI’s mostly good Codex, and Google’s Antigravity, and informed every one to construct the app and set up it on my Google Pixel with no assist from me. My guess entering into was that at the least one would stall on a construct error and want rescuing.

All three completed the job. The apps they produced are near interchangeable, and what separated the instruments was how lengthy every took and the way usually it stopped to ask me one thing.

The app I requested them to construct

Travel the global community, one faucet at a time

One huge a part of GoingSolo.Life is a cruise hub the place you possibly can find crusing directories, cruise finders, and Facebook neighborhood listings for 11 cruise traces. I used that web page because the blueprint. The app, which I known as Solo at Sea, covers three of these traces: Royal Caribbean, Celebrity, and Viking. Each line will get a Sailings tab with filterable playing cards and a Communities tab itemizing Facebook teams. Tapping a card opens the cruise line’s web site or a Facebook search within the browser.

The immediate spelled out the remaining. It requested for Kotlin with Jetpack Compose, bundled pattern knowledge as a substitute of dwell scraping, and the location’s navy, gold, rust, and cream colour scheme. It additionally set a transparent end line: construct the app, set up it over USB, and launch it on my Google Pixel 9 Pro XL and the newest model of Android 17.

My guidelines have been easy. Every instrument received the identical immediate, phrase for phrase. I might approve permission requests, however I could not write code, paste in error messages, or ship follow-up directions.

Claude Code

I ran Claude Code on my Claude Pro subscription with Anthropic’s Opus 5.5 mannequin. It completed in slightly below 9 minutes, the quickest of the three.

What shocked me was how hardly ever it wanted me. Claude Code requested for permission about 3 times through the construct, and every request was a easy yes-or-no about file and folder permissions. The remainder of the time, I simply watched it work.

It was additionally the one one which left the final step to me. When Claude Code reported the app was put in, nothing had opened on my cellphone, so I discovered Solo at Sea within the app drawer myself. After that, every little thing checked out. All three cruise traces confirmed up on the house display screen, each tabs loaded, the filters narrowed the record, and each card I tapped opened the browser.

Codex

For Codex, I used my ChatGPT Plus account with GPT-6 -Astgra. The construct took simply over 14 minutes.

Codex requested for permission roughly 10 occasions. That’s a part of how Codex works. It runs instructions inside a sandbox and asks earlier than stepping outdoors it, and constructing an Android app means stepping outdoors so much, whether or not to obtain construct instruments or discuss to a cellphone over USB.

When it completed, Solo at Sea was already open on my cellphone. It handed each verify the Claude Code model did.

Antigravity

Antigravity is a full code editor, not a terminal instrument. I ran it on my Gemini Pro subscription with Gemini 3.8 Flash. It took simply over 22 minutes, greater than twice so long as Claude Code.

It additionally requested for permission about 30 occasions, and a few of that’s on me. To maintain issues even with the opposite two, I set Antigravity to Request Review, a mode that asks earlier than each terminal command. By default, lots of these instructions would have run in a sandbox with out asking. I additionally used Gemini’s Flash mannequin, a lighter and quicker tier than Claude’s Opus 5.5. Even so, the app opened on my cellphone routinely and labored similar to the opposite two.

So which one must you use?

Put the three apps aspect by aspect, and also you’d have a tough time telling who constructed which. Though the cardboard layouts differed barely, all of them used the identical fonts, and the tabs have been strikingly related.

Looking again on the immediate, that is sensible. It named the screens, the fields on each card, the colours, and the framework, so the brokers had only a few selections left to make on their very own. A looser immediate may need produced three very completely different apps.

Judged solely by the completed app, none of them wins. Pay for any of the three, and you may describe an Android app in plain English, then watch it open in your cellphone in lower than half an hour.

The distinction is in getting there. Claude Code completed first and barely wanted me, and it is what I’ll open subsequent time I need to paste a immediate and refill my espresso. Codex took about 5 minutes longer and requested a handful extra questions. Antigravity was slowest by a large margin and requested for approval essentially the most, although a part of that comes from the setting I selected.

I’ve written loads about apps through the years, however I’ve by no means constructed one. This week I constructed three, every on a lunch break, with out writing a single line of Kotlin. Whatever instrument you already pay for can do the identical for you. In some circumstances, you possibly can even create the app using a free AI account.

Here’s another take on creating an app with AI, this time solely with a screenshot.