Every MCP server you connect costs tokens before it does anything. We measured five browser MCP s...Every MCP server you connect costs tokens before it does anything. We measured five browser MCP s...
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Vishal's avatar
Kloudfirst Nextgen Systems Private Limited logo
Vishal Gupta
pro
• Sep 21
Every MCP server you connect costs tokens before it does anything.
We measured five browser MCP servers reading the same page (one URL, 18 Sep):
• chrome-devtools-mcp: 12,321 tokens • Playwright MCP: 11,119 • read-website-fast: 4,938 • server-puppeteer: 2,871 • mcp-server-fetch: 1,298
The tool list alone costs 5,760 tokens for DevTools and 4,366 for Playwright the moment you connect, before a single call.
Why it matters: those tool definitions sit in context on every turn. Connect three heavy servers "just in case" and you pay for all of them on every message, in cost and in the model's attention.
The rule we now use: • Reading a page: fetch. • Driving a page (clicks, forms, flows): Playwright. • Debugging runtime (console, network): DevTools, connected only for that task.
If you're building agents for clients, this is an easy win to check first: list what's connected, and cut what the task doesn't need.
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