Single-agent runs cost 25% of a 16-agent swarm's tokens, per GPT-5.6 release data
tobyordoxford · x · 2026-09-22
Toby Ord shares data behind his Swarm Scaling analysis: per graphs in OpenAI's GPT-5.6 release, reaching any given capability level takes the fewest total tokens (and thus compute) with the smallest 1-agent swarm — roughly 50% of what a 4-agent swarm needs and 25% of a 16-agent swarm. A quantitative look at the cost structure of scaling inference via agent swarm size.
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