Lessons from Scaling Teams of Coding Agents: Reach the Frontier at 30% of the Cost
Cohere, Wednesday, October 14th, 2026
Cohere research finds a strong lead agent with cheap workers nears frontier coding results at 70% lower cost.
Cohere research finds well-organized teams of coding agents outperform single agents by up to about 10 points on ProgramBench, but at three to seven times the cost.
Where agents are allocated matters more than how many are added, as delegating only exploration and planning matched broader delegation at half the cost.
A Sol lead coordinating 16 cheaper Luna planners reached 61.8 percent reward versus 63.2 percent for an all-Sol team, cutting cost from $510 to $155.