The Experiment
We analyzed 500 pull requests across 12 projects. Half were reviewed by human developers only. Half were reviewed by our AI Code Review Agent first, then by a human.
Speed
AI reviews were completed in an average of 4 minutes. Human-only reviews took an average of 2.3 hours. The AI + human combination averaged 47 minutes total, which is 65% faster than human-only.
Consistency
The AI agent flagged security vulnerabilities in 23% of PRs that human reviewers missed. It also caught 18% more style inconsistencies and naming convention violations.
Where Humans Still Win
Architecture-level feedback. Understanding business context. Suggesting alternative approaches that require domain knowledge. Humans caught 31% of issues that required understanding the “why” behind the code, not just the “what.”
The Best of Both Worlds
The verdict: neither AI nor human code review alone is optimal. The combination of AI for speed, consistency, and coverage, plus human for architecture and context, delivered the best results by a wide margin.