Agentic Index
Cosine vs Poolside (2026)
This is the sovereign AI engineering matchup. Both deliver coding agents inside your security perimeter for regulated and defense grade buyers. Cosine is lighter and self serve, from 20 dollars a seat, with Genie plus Lumen models and air gapped options. Poolside is the heavyweight: full model weights delivered to your environment, a governed agent console, and IL5 deployability, sold enterprise only through embedded engineers.
| At a glance | Cosine | Poolside |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Coding agent | Coding agent |
| Entry price | Hobby $20/seat/mo (5M credits) · Professional $200/seat/mo (60M credits) · credits per task; top-ups available · BYO Claude/OpenAI/Copilot uses your own subscription · enterprise air-gapped custom | Enterprise pricing is custom and not public, deployed in your environment through Forward Deployed Research Engineers. Poolside models are also available usage based in Amazon Bedrock. The Laguna XS.2 open weight model is free under Apache 2.0. |
| Free / trial | No free tier surfaced; entry is the $20/seat Hobby plan. Note: running Genie on your own Claude/OpenAI/Copilot subscription via the CLI incurs no extra Cosine model billing. | No public self serve trial of the enterprise platform; access starts with a sales conversation. A free path exists through the open weight Laguna XS.2 model, which runs locally under an Apache license, and through Amazon Bedrock usage based access. |
| Pricing confidence | public exact | contact only |
| Feature |
C
Cosine
|
P
Poolside
|
|---|---|---|
| Action & orchestration | ||
|
Integrations & Tool Calling Ability to connect agents to real systems through native integrations, OAuth-authenticated actions, custom tools, APIs, webhooks, or MCP-compatible tools. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
|
Workflow Orchestration Ability to sequence, branch, retry, route, and combine deterministic workflow nodes with autonomous agent steps. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
|
Triggers & Channel Coverage How agents wake up and where they work: schedules, webhooks, message events, CRM events, inbox events, chat, email, voice, and collaboration tools. |
Full / Explicit | Partial |
| Knowledge & context | ||
|
Knowledge Grounding & RAG Ability to ground agent behavior in company data through document ingestion, retrieval, external knowledge APIs, semantic search, or RAG layers. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
|
Memory & State Persistence Ability to persist context across a run, conversation, workflow, user, team, or longer-term memory layer. |
No / Not documented | No / Not documented |
| Control & trust | ||
|
Human Oversight & Guardrails Approval steps, consent checkpoints, escalation rules, structured guardrails, policy constraints, and pause/resume controls. |
Partial | Full / Explicit |
|
Security, Identity & Governance RBAC, SSO, auditability, encryption, least-privilege tool access, compliance posture, and data handling policy. |
Partial | Full / Explicit |
|
Observability & Auditability Traces, logs, execution histories, metrics, audit events, and debugging detail for production agent behavior. |
Partial | Full / Explicit |
|
Deployment & Data Residency Deployment modes and options, including SaaS, dedicated cloud, VPC, on-prem, hybrid, local runtime, and self-hosting. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
| Solution readiness | ||
|
Prebuilt Agents, Templates & Packs Ready-made workflows, packaged employees, templates, blueprints, industry solutions, and role-specific agents that reduce time-to-value. |
No / Not documented | Partial |
| Platform extensibility | ||
|
Model Flexibility & Routing Ability to work across multiple foundation models, route tasks to different models, or let buyers bring their own providers and keys. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
|
APIs, SDKs & MCP Extensibility Composability layer: stable APIs, SDKs, MCP tool consumption/serving, custom tools, and integration into internal systems. |
Partial | Partial |
|
Testing, Debugging & Optimization Testing, debugging, scoring, retries, fallbacks, quality gates, and optimization loops for improving agent workflows before and after deployment. |
Partial | Partial |
| Specialist automation | ||
|
Browser & Computer Use Browser, desktop, or remote/local computer control for workflows that cannot be handled through stable APIs alone. |
Partial | Partial |
Pricing snapshot
Sourced from the Index pricing dataset · open each vendor's profile for full detail.
| Pricing |
C
Cosine
|
P
Poolside
|
|---|---|---|
|
Entry price Lowest public entry point |
Hobby $20/seat/mo (5M credits) · Professional $200/seat/mo (60M credits) · credits per task; top-ups available · BYO Claude/OpenAI/Copilot uses your own subscription · enterprise air-gapped custom | Enterprise pricing is custom and not public, deployed in your environment through Forward Deployed Research Engineers. Poolside models are also available usage based in Amazon Bedrock. The Laguna XS.2 open weight model is free under Apache 2.0. |
|
Pricing confidence How public the numbers are |
Public — exact | Contact only |
|
Billing Primary billing axis |
Seat-based subscription with a monthly Cosine Credit pool per seat (credits consumed when the agent reads, plans, or writes code); additional seats add users and credits; top-ups available; enterprise/air-gapped via custom agreements. BYO model subscription path bills model usage to your own provider. | Enterprise deployment is a custom contract sized to the environment and developer count, delivered with Forward Deployed Research Engineers. Poolside models are also available usage based in Amazon Bedrock, priced per token. The Laguna XS.2 model is free to run locally under an Apache license. |
|
Variable cost Workload / overage exposure |
High variable cost | Medium variable cost |
|
Free tier / trial Try before you buy |
No free tier
|
Free tier
|
|
Buying motion Self-serve vs sales call |
Self-serve | Sales call |
Choose Cosine if
- You want sovereign capability without an enterprise procurement cycle; plans start at 20 dollars a seat.
- Legacy language coverage through Lumen is directly relevant to your codebase.
- Running the agent on your existing model subscriptions fits your current spend.
Choose Poolside if
- You require full weight delivery and air gapped operation up to government grade, including IL5.
- Fine tuning foundation models on your own code and docs is part of the plan.
- Forward deployed engineers embedding with your team suits your adoption model.