I think different people will have different experiences so there's no generalization that can be made. The truth about therapy is that it's really an art form, not science. That means how you are affected by your therapist is more important than the form of therapy for most people. You need buy-in for it to work. But from my own experience, the two are really for different purposes, and group therapy isn't usually useful unless the group includes only people who have similar problems. Therapists who run groups need people in them and too often put very dissimilar people together. Individual therapy is just you and a trained psychologist, or perhaps a lesser trained certified therapist. A group is led by a trained person but the therapy is mostly listening to people like you and isn't as directed as individual therapy to how you are thinking and living and techniques for you specifically to use to fix it. The group can make you feel less isolated, and for some problems, such as drug abuse or PTSD can be a good adjunct and supportive but to me at least don't replace that one on one with someone with a lot of training. I was in a group once for what was at the time a relatively minor depression and anxiety that I couldn't really define and nobody defined for me but I was put in a group with people who suffered from bipolar disorder or other really severe problems and I felt really stupid complaining about my then minor problems so I just stopped going. That's why I say, if you have a phobia problem and can miraculously find a group where you live that is just made up of other phobia sufferers, it would probably be more useful. Peace.