Significance Cells cooperate to sense the direction of a chemical gradient by communicating with each other, which may be important when clumps of cancer cells metastasize or embryos develop. However, because each cell is distinct, we find these clumps are biased toward cells that are “loud”—sending inappropriately large signals. Cell clusters can reduce this bias by rearranging themselves so loud cells change their locations. This means the mechanical dynamics of the cluster matter—fluid, squishy clumps of cells are better at sensing than solid ones. If a single cell’s motion gets noisier, it will make the cluster more fluid—so adding noise can actually make a cluster of cells a better sensor.