How much do multi-agent AI frameworks cost?

Cloud-only frameworks like CrewAI ($99-$10K/mo platform fee + API tokens) and LangGraph ($39/user/mo + $0.001/node) charge per API call. A team running 5 agents with 20 turns across 3 daily conversations can spend $50-500/mo in API costs alone. Cohort runs 95% of inference locally for $0.

Can AI agents run locally without cloud APIs?

Yes. Cohort runs 95% of agent work on your local GPU using models like Qwen 3.5 9B via Ollama or llama.cpp. Only 5% of complex tasks escalate to a cloud API, and those are pre-distilled to reduce tokens by 70%. Web search, page reading, RSS monitoring, and multi-agent conversations all run locally at zero cost.

What is the ROI of local AI inference vs cloud APIs?

Local-first AI reduces costs 10-20x compared to cloud-only frameworks. Capabilities that cost $350-900/mo on cloud platforms (web search, document processing, agent conversations, training, observability) cost $0/mo on Cohort. The only cost is optional API escalation at roughly $0.002 per escalated response.

Fiduciary AI

How much are your
AI agents actually costing?

Drag the sliders below to model your workload. See what you'd spend on a cloud-only framework vs Cohort's local-first pipeline.

95%

Local inference

70%

Token reduction on API calls

97.2%

Agent benchmark accuracy

Calculate Your Savings

Drag the sliders to match your workload. See what you'd pay on a cloud-only framework vs Cohort.

Agents per conversation 5

Turns per conversation 20

Conversations per day 3

Cloud-only framework

--

GPT-4o pricing ($2.50/$10 per 1M tokens)

Cohort

--

5% escalation via Claude Sonnet ($3/$15 per 1M)

You save

--

Cost reduction

--

// How we calculate -- all pricing from published sources [sources]
Cloud-only: Every turn resends the entire conversation history
  // API calls are cumulative -- input tokens grow every turn
  turn_1_input = 3,000 (persona + memory + first message)
  turn_2_input = 3,700 (+ prior turn resent)
  turn_10_input = 9,300 (+ all 9 prior turns resent)
  turn_20_input = 16,300
  output/turn = ~800 (response stays flat)
  per_conversation = sum of all turns (arithmetic series)
  monthly_cost = per_convo x agents x convos x $2.50/$10.00 per 1M x 22 days
Cohort: 95% runs locally (free). 5% escalates to API.
  escalated_turns = total_turns x 0.05
  no context snowball -- distillation sends a flat briefing, not raw history
  distilled_tokens = (3,000 + 800) x 0.30 per escalated turn (70% reduction)
  monthly_cost = distilled x $3.00/$15.00 per 1M x 22 days
// Cloud-only: GPT-4o pricing ($2.50/$10.00 per 1M tokens)
//  Source: openai.com/api/pricing
// Cohort escalation: Claude Sonnet 4.6 ($3.00/$15.00 per 1M tokens)
//  Source: platform.claude.com/docs/.../pricing
// 22 workdays/month. Growth rate +700 tokens/turn is conservative.

This calculator is the only JavaScript on this page. We treat your bandwidth the way we treat your API budget.

Every Response Tells You What It Cost

Cohort tags every agent response with its tier, model, token count, confidence, and elapsed time. No other multi-agent framework does this.

[OK] Cohort response

The connection pool should use a max of 10 concurrent connections with a 30-second idle timeout. Here's the implementation...
tier: smart   model: qwen3.5:9b
tokens: 847   confidence: 0.94
elapsed: 2.3s   cost: $0.00

Other frameworks

The connection pool should use a max of 10 concurrent connections with a 30-second idle timeout. Here's the implementation...
No metadata provided.
No cost visibility.
No confidence score.
Check your API dashboard... eventually.

Same answer. One tells you what it cost. The other doesn't.

Three Tiers. You Choose the Cost.

Cohort's response pipeline lets you match quality to the task. Most work never touches a paid API.

[S] Smart

Fast local inference

No reasoning, 4K token budget. Your local GPU handles it entirely. Good for quick lookups, status checks, and routine tasks.

Cost: $0.00

Speed: 2-5 seconds

[S>] Smarter

Local with reasoning

Extended thinking enabled, 16K token budget. Handles 90%+ of real work -- code review, planning, analysis -- entirely on your hardware.

Cost: $0.00

Speed: 5-15 seconds

[S>>] Smartest

Local draft + Claude review

Three-phase pipeline: local reasoning, distillation (70% token reduction), then Claude polishes. API-class quality at a fraction of the token cost.

Cost: ~$0.002/response

Speed: 15-45 seconds

// Smartest pipeline: how it actually works
Phase 1  Local model drafts response         (free, ~8K thinking tokens)
Phase 2  Distill: compress draft to briefing  (free, 70% token reduction)
Phase 3  Claude reviews the briefing         (API, but only ~30% of original tokens)

                Result: API-quality output. 70% fewer tokens billed.
            

Already Use the Claude API?
Get 3-5x More From It.

Cohort connects to Claude API via MCP. Three tools turn your existing subscription into an orchestration engine.

condense

Compress conversation context

Strips noise from long conversations before sending to Claude. Same context, ~70% fewer tokens.

Token reduction

~70%

distill

Pre-process for Claude

Local model generates a structured briefing. Claude sees a concise summary, not a raw thread of agent chatter.

Token reduction

50-70%

roundtable

One call, many agents

Compiled roundtable loads 3-8 agent personas into a single context. One inference call replaces N separate calls.

Token reduction

~90%

See all MCP tools [>>]

Cohort is not a new budget line. It's ROI on the AI investment you've already made.

Platform Comparison

Comparison of Cohort, CrewAI, and LangGraph on cost, transparency, and features
	Cohort	CrewAI	LangGraph
API cost per agent turn	$0.00 (local)	Per-token (cloud API)	Per-token (cloud API)
Platform fee	$0 (Open Source)	$0 (OSS) / $99-$10K	$0 (OSS) / $39/seat
Cost transparency	Per-response metadata	None	LangSmith (add-on)
Local inference	[OK] Built-in	Limited	Limited
Web search (built-in)	[OK] Free MCP tool	Third-party / paid	Third-party / paid
Website processing	[OK] Free MCP tool	Not included	Not included
Air-gap deployment	[OK] Enterprise	Cloud required	Self-hosted option
Compiled roundtables	[OK] 90% token savings	N/A	N/A

See full comparison [>>]

Competitor data reflects published pricing. Costs marked "per-token" vary by provider and model.

Things That Cost $0 on Cohort

Other frameworks charge per-token for research. Cohort ships these as free local tools -- no API key, no metering, no surprise invoices.

web_search

$0.00

100+ Free Web Searches Per Day

Agents research topics, verify facts, and pull current data -- locally routed through DuckDuckGo. No API key. No per-query billing. No daily caps that matter.

competitor: $0.005-0.01/search (Tavily, SerpAPI)
100 searches/day: $11-22/mo
cohort: $0.00/mo

web_fetch

$0.00

Full Webpage Reading & Transcription

Fetch any URL, extract clean text, and feed it to agents -- all locally. Documentation pages, blog posts, competitor sites, research papers. Zero token cost.

competitor: Send page text as tokens to API
avg page (~4K tokens): $0.01-0.04 each
cohort: $0.00 (local extraction + local LLM)

content_monitor

$0.00

24/7 RSS & Content Monitoring

Track industry feeds, competitor blogs, and news sources around the clock. Local LLM analyzes, filters, and summarizes -- no API involved.

competitor: Feedly AI ($18/mo) + API tokens
50 feeds, 4 checks/day: $18-40/mo
cohort: $0.00/mo

roundtable

$0.00

Multi-Agent Conversations

5 agents discussing a code review? 8 agents planning a feature? Every turn runs locally. The conversation that would cost $2-5 on a cloud framework costs nothing.

competitor: 5 agents x 20 turns x ~1K tokens
one conversation: $0.50-2.00
cohort: $0.00 (all local inference)

document_library

$0.00

Document Ingestion & Knowledge Base

Ingest PDFs, HTML pages, manuals, and research papers into a persistent local library. Agents search it, extract facts, and build domain knowledge -- no vector DB subscription required.

competitor: Pinecone ($25-70/mo) + embedding API
1K docs indexed: $30-100/mo
cohort: $0.00 (SQLite + local extraction)

generate_briefing

$0.00

Executive Briefings & Observability

Auto-generated summaries of all agent activity -- who did what, key decisions, blockers, task progress. Local LLM compiles it. No LangSmith, no Datadog add-on.

competitor: LangSmith Plus ($39/user/mo)
5-person team: $195/mo
cohort: $0.00 (built-in MCP tool)

training_pipeline

$0.00

Agent Training & Benchmarking

Overnight training pipeline: research topics, curate materials, inject knowledge, test with 2,400+ questions, certify. All local inference. Agents get smarter while you sleep.

competitor: Fine-tuning API ($8-25/M training tokens)
weekly fine-tune cycle: $50-300/mo
cohort: $0.00 (local Ollama pipeline)

condense_channel

$0.00

Context Compression & Archival

Long conversations get summarized and archived locally. Channels stay fast, history is preserved, and you never re-pay to process old context through an API.

competitor: Re-process old tokens on every call
50K stale tokens x 20 calls: $2.50-5.00/day
cohort: $0.00 (local summarization)

All 8 capabilities above

$350-900/mo on cloud frameworks

$0.00/mo on Cohort

Real Work. Real Numbers.

7:39

Website Generation

9 pages, 5 agents, 0 hand-written lines of code.

API cost: $0.00

6h [>>] 30m

Content Pipeline

RSS to published post. Fully orchestrated, human reviews only.

API cost: $0.00

97.2%

Agent Benchmarks

2,400 questions across 23 agents. All difficulty levels. Local model only.

API cost: $0.00

Sources & Methodology

Every number on this page comes from a published source. We show our work because that's the whole point.

API Pricing (Calculator Inputs)

GPT-4o: $2.50 input / $10.00 output per 1M tokens
openai.com/api/pricing
Claude Sonnet 4.6: $3.00 input / $15.00 output per 1M tokens
platform.claude.com/docs/.../pricing
Claude Haiku 4.5: $1.00 input / $5.00 output per 1M tokens
platform.claude.com/docs/.../pricing

Industry Context

Average monthly enterprise AI spend: $85,521 (2025, +36% YoY)
Zylo: AI Pricing Report 2026
AI-native app spend grew 108% YoY; large enterprises 393%
Zylo: 2026 SaaS Management Index
AI agent operational costs: $3,200-$13,000/mo post-launch
Cleveroad: AI Agent Development Cost Guide

Competitor Platform Pricing (Comparison Table)

CrewAI: $99/mo (Starter) to $120K/yr (Ultra). API costs billed separately by provider. Pricing requires account login.
ZenML: CrewAI Pricing Guide | Lindy: CrewAI Pricing 2026
LangGraph: Requires LangSmith Plus ($39/user/mo). Plus plan limited to 10 users. Node execution fee: $0.001/node.
ZenML: LangGraph Pricing Guide

Calculator methodology: The calculator models a team running multi-agent conversations where each agent turn generates ~800 tokens (60% input, 40% output). Cloud-only frameworks send every turn to a paid API. Cohort runs 95% of turns on local hardware (cost: $0) and escalates 5% to Claude Sonnet via the Smartest pipeline, which distills context to reduce tokens ~70% before the API call. All prices are standard (non-cached, non-batch). Actual costs depend on model choice, caching strategy, and workload pattern. Last verified: March 2026.

Teams & Small Business

Your GPU is already paid for.

Stop paying per conversation. Deploy in 15 minutes. 23 agents, zero API cost.

Deploy Free Now

Enterprise

Every response has an audit trail.

Air-gap deployment. SSO. Full cost transparency. No other platform does this.

Schedule Compliance Review

How much are yourAI agents actually costing?

Calculate Your Savings

Every Response Tells You What It Cost

Three Tiers. You Choose the Cost.

Fast local inference

Local with reasoning

Local draft + Claude review

Already Use the Claude API?Get 3-5x More From It.

Compress conversation context

Pre-process for Claude

One call, many agents

Platform Comparison

Things That Cost $0 on Cohort

100+ Free Web Searches Per Day

Full Webpage Reading & Transcription

24/7 RSS & Content Monitoring

Multi-Agent Conversations

Document Ingestion & Knowledge Base

Executive Briefings & Observability

Agent Training & Benchmarking

Context Compression & Archival

Real Work. Real Numbers.

Website Generation

Content Pipeline

Agent Benchmarks

Sources & Methodology

API Pricing (Calculator Inputs)

Industry Context

Competitor Platform Pricing (Comparison Table)

Your GPU is already paid for.

Every response has an audit trail.

How much are your
AI agents actually costing?

Already Use the Claude API?
Get 3-5x More From It.