Hard Math: Splitting AI Agent Planner and Worker Roles Cuts Costs by Over 90%
sandyyevans · reddit · 2026-08-12
Following recent price drops (e.g., DeepSeek V4 Flash stable release), the author breaks down the actual costs and overhead of using a Planner/Worker split architecture in AI coding workflows.
- Cost Comparison: At 3.174 billion worker tokens/month, using a premium model (Sol) costs $2,151, while delegating workers to a cheaper model (Luna) costs only $86.
- Cache Advantage: 97-98% of delegated tasks rely on cached input tokens, priced at 1/25th of the top-tier cost, driving the massive savings.
- Coordination Overhead: On average, each delegation reports back to the main agent 12.2 times, needs 0.98 follow-up runs, and is force-interrupted 0.23 times, with 85.8% completing cleanly.
- Conclusion: Despite extra scheduling overhead, the overall cost-efficiency is extremely high with no observed drop in quality.
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