Your agent team costs three to seven times a solo agent, and Cohere found the one cheap seat

Published 23 October 2026

Cohere Labs ran teams of GPT-5.6 agents against a solo one on 200 programs: the team wins, at three to seven times the cost. A strong lead that hands only planning to cheap workers recovers about half the gain for an eighth of the extra cost, and handing them the implementation makes results worse.