# What Claude Code's multi-agent code review costs and finds

By Steven Van · 2026-10-21

Sonnet 5.5's max code review matched 23 of 27 serious issues in 56 minutes, while a single agent matched 21 in 40 seconds.

Quickchat has published a benchmark of Claude Code's local /code-review command, comparing its one-agent and multi-agent settings with Quickchat Review, the reviewer the company built. The test used 20 pull requests from Martian's [Code Review Bench](<https://quickchat.ai/post/claude-code-multi-agent-code-review>), and the Claude Code agents ran on Sonnet 5.5.

## What was tested

The post tested Claude Code 2.1.303's local command, not Anthropic's managed Code Review service. It ran headless in a Docker sandbox with no GitHub token. The high setting starts one agent. The max setting fans out to about ten finder agents, a verifier agent per candidate, then a sweep. To keep max affordable, every subagent was forced onto Sonnet 5.5, each review was capped at $30 and given 90 minutes. The author notes that none of these is a shipped default.

The 20 PRs came from Sentry, Grafana, Cal.com, Discourse and Keycloak. They were the ones where Quickchat Review on two other models had done worst, a selection the author expects to favour every other reviewer. Scoring used Martian's pipeline with one LLM judge, GPT-6.1 Sol.

## Results for one agent and the fan-out

- **Serious issues matched:** 23 of 27 for max, 21 for high. The author says a two-issue gap is about the scoring noise and cannot say whether it would repeat.

- **All answer-key issues matched:** 47 of 65 for both.

- **Unmatched claims per PR:** 23.9 for max, 11.9 for high.

- **Time per finished review:** 56 minutes for max, 40 seconds for high.

- **Recorded cost per finished review:** $20.95 for max (19 of 20 finished), $0.11 for high.

Cost did not track PR size. Finished max reviews cost $15.17 to $26.09 each. Five of the 19 launched no verifier, and four of those named the budget line in their context as the reason.

## Behaviour on one small PR

On browser-use #857, which has five defects in the answer key, high on Opus 5.5 found all five in 70 seconds for 32 cents. max with Opus 5.5 on every agent had spent $40.64 by the author's recount when the 30-minute limit stopped it, and printed nothing because Claude Code prints the review only when it finishes. With Sonnet 5.5 forced onto every agent, max cost $13.31 and found all five. With Haiku 5.5 it cost $0.53 and also found all five. Each was a single run.

## Comparison with Quickchat Review

Two AI judges compared the reviews head to head. On Opus 5.5, their ratings did not separate Quickchat Review from the fan-out. It cost $4.61 and took 8.2 minutes per pull request, which the post puts at under a quarter of the fan-out's price per finished review and about a seventh of its wall-clock time under the author's concurrency and rate limits.

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[Original source](<https://quickchat.ai/post/claude-code-multi-agent-code-review>)

[Read What Claude Code's multi-agent code review costs and finds on Creators Toolbox](<https://creatorstoolbox.com/blog/quickchat-what-claude-code-s-multi-agent-code-review-costs-and-finds>)

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