Pipe fence is welded steel: strongest, safest for horses, effectively permanent, and priced accordingly. Wire (barbed, field, no-climb) covers distance economically. The working compromise is pipe posts and top rail with no-climb mesh: horse-safe, long-lived, and cheaper than full pipe.
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The two families solve different problems. Pipe fence, built here from drill-stem and new pipe with welded rails, is a structure: it holds its line for decades, shrugs off a leaning cow or a backed-up trailer, contains horses without the injury risk wire strands carry, and looks like what people picture when they picture a Texas ranch entrance, which is why it fronts so many corridor properties even where wire runs the back sections. Its costs are honest: more steel, more welding, more per foot, and paint as the maintenance cycle. Wire fence covers ground: 5-strand barbed wire is the cattle standard and the cheapest real perimeter; field and net fence hold goats, sheep, and general stock; no-climb mesh (2x4 openings a hoof cannot pass through) is the horse-safe wire tier. Wire's economics come from t-posts and tension rather than steel and welds, and its life depends on the braced corner assemblies that carry that tension; wire fences fail at lazy corners long before the wire itself gives up. The hybrid most horse properties land on: pipe posts, pipe top rail, no-climb below, combining pipe's strength and visibility with mesh's safety at a middle price. Species decides more than budget: barbed wire and horses are a bad combination that ends at a vet clinic, so horse fencing here means pipe, no-climb, or the hybrid, and the quote will say so plainly if the plan and the animals disagree.