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Sub-agent costs are too high and too opaque #12488
Description
WTF!
I’m seeing unexpectedly high costs whenever sub-agents are used in Codex CLI. The feature is useful, but the current cost behavior makes it hard to use safely in normal development workflows.
Main issues:
- Sub-agent usage can multiply spend very quickly.
- Cost impact is not clearly shown before launching sub-agents.
- It is hard to predict final cost from the prompt or plan.
- There are not enough guardrails to prevent accidental overspend.
- I am easily $350 over my Pro Plan for a week.
What I need:
- A global session budget that hard-stops execution well before you all tell me, "Sorry we have to screw up your job and tell you to buy credits" on Day 2 of the week for a Pro User.
- A post-run cost breakdown by sub-agent , because I have no way to manage that unless I totally turn off the feature.
Bottom Line
- You are showing off sub agents while draining pro users, and pretty much everyone, while claiming they are cheaper. Yes, they really are cheaper, but you put the onus of managing that on us without cost controls.
I want to keep using sub-agents, but right now the pricing transparency and controls are not sufficient for practical day-to-day use. Please prioritize cost visibility and budget controls.
Activity
github-actions commentedon Feb 22, 2026
Potential duplicates detected. Please review them and close your issue if it is a duplicate.
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MrLightspeed commentedon Feb 22, 2026
NO
6639835 commentedon Feb 22, 2026
Hey, how did you count your costs? Afaik OAI uses credits instead of dollars
etraut-openai commentedon Feb 22, 2026
Subagent token usage are not charged differently from other (main agent) tokens. Subagents allow you to do more in parallel, which will increase utilization. If you use the same model for subagents, the increase should scale linearly with the number of subagents you create. Are you observing something different? Depending on your use case, you may be able to use a smaller (and therefore cheaper) model for your subagents.
Can you clarify what you're asking for in this feature request? You mentioned a "global session budget". Can you explain more about how that would work?
etraut-openai commentedon Mar 29, 2026
Closing for lack of response. There is some overlap with #14642.