Data · measured 2026-10-26
MCP tool budget: how many tools and context tokens each MCP server loads
Most MCP clients put the tool definitions of every enabled server into the model's context on each request (some newer clients load them on demand). We started 33 official servers from our catalog and counted what they actually load: 563 tools and 157,946 tokens in total, a median of 3,365 tokens per server.
- Heaviest: Grafana MCP (21,140 tokens, 79 tools), MongoDB MCP Server (14,069 tokens, 27 tools), Firecrawl MCP Server (13,575 tokens, 28 tools). Enabling those three alone costs 48,784 tokens before you type anything.
- Most tools: Grafana MCP with 79. 4 servers expose more than 40 tools on their own (Grafana MCP, Microsoft MCP (Azure MCP Server), GitHub MCP Server, Redis MCP Server).
- Wordiest definitions: Shopify Dev MCP Server averages 1,100 tokens per tool; the three lightest servers need 268 tokens or less in total.
| Version · how measured | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grafana MCP Grafana Labs | 79 | 21,140 | 268 | 94,504 | 2.1.1 local stdio, release binary, default tools |
| MongoDB MCP Server MongoDB | 27 | 14,069 | 521 | 62,286 | 3.1.0 local stdio, default config, dummy connection string |
| Firecrawl MCP Server Firecrawl | 28 | 13,575 | 485 | 58,222 | 3.34.1 local stdio |
| Microsoft MCP (Azure MCP Server) Microsoft | 69 | 13,411 | 194 | 68,162 | 3.0.0 local stdio, @azure/mcp v3 stable (v4 is in beta), default mode |
| GitHub MCP Server GitHub | 46 | 11,131 | 242 | 49,361 | 2.0.3 local stdio, release binary, default toolsets |
| Brave Search MCP Server Brave | 8 | 8,282 | 1,035 | 33,175 | 2.1.4 local stdio |
| Redis MCP Server Redis | 53 | 7,487 | 141 | 31,938 | 0.5.1 local stdio |
| Snyk MCP Server (Snyk Studio) Snyk | 14 | 6,713 | 480 | 29,525 | 1.1308.3 local stdio |
| Chrome DevTools MCP Chrome DevTools (Google) | 32 | 6,185 | 193 | 27,709 | 1.12.0 local stdio |
| Pinecone Developer MCP Server Pinecone | 9 | 5,669 | 630 | 23,627 | 0.3.0 local stdio, without API key (docs tools only) |
| Shopify Dev MCP Server Shopify | 5 | 5,502 | 1,100 | 25,754 | 1.17.0 local stdio |
| Sentry MCP Sentry | 9 | 5,492 | 610 | 23,537 | 0.42.0 local stdio, stdio, dummy token |
| Netlify MCP Server Netlify | 10 | 4,882 | 488 | 20,576 | 1.20.0 local stdio |
| Heroku Platform MCP Server Heroku | 33 | 4,737 | 144 | 21,093 | 1.2.12 local stdio |
| Supabase MCP Supabase | 29 | 4,394 | 152 | 18,849 | 0.14.0 local stdio, stdio, default feature groups, dummy token |
| Playwright MCP Microsoft | 25 | 3,745 | 150 | 17,565 | 0.0.83 local stdio |
| AWS MCP Servers AWS Labs | 5 | 3,365 | 673 | 15,448 | 1.2.3 local stdio, AWS Documentation server (one of many AWS servers) |
| Angular CLI MCP Server Google (Angular) | 9 | 3,107 | 345 | 14,014 | 22.2.4 local stdio |
| Hugging Face MCP Server Hugging Face | 4 | 1,918 | 480 | 7,903 | 0.4.31 hosted endpoint, hosted, anonymous |
| Terraform MCP Server HashiCorp | 9 | 1,813 | 201 | 8,594 | 1.4.1 local stdio, release binary, default toolsets |
| Filesystem MCP steering group (reference) | 14 | 1,678 | 120 | 8,042 | 2.0.1 local stdio |
| Tavily MCP Server Tavily | 5 | 1,651 | 330 | 7,688 | 0.2.22 local stdio, local npm package, dummy key |
| Next.js DevTools MCP Vercel | 4 | 1,315 | 329 | 5,687 | 0.4.0 local stdio |
| Git MCP steering group (reference) | 12 | 1,137 | 95 | 4,783 | 2026.10.19 local stdio |
| Context7 Upstash | 2 | 1,060 | 530 | 4,940 | 4.4.4 local stdio |
| Memory (knowledge graph) MCP steering group (reference) | 9 | 965 | 107 | 4,457 | 2.0.0 local stdio |
| Sequential Thinking MCP steering group (reference) | 1 | 864 | 864 | 4,039 | 2.0.0 local stdio |
| ClickHouse MCP Server ClickHouse | 3 | 728 | 243 | 3,282 | 0.7.0 local stdio |
| Microsoft Learn MCP Server Microsoft | 3 | 724 | 241 | 3,802 | 1.0.0 hosted endpoint, hosted, anonymous |
| Exa MCP Server Exa | 2 | 464 | 232 | 2,083 | 3.5.0 hosted endpoint, hosted, anonymous (default tools) |
| Time MCP steering group (reference) | 2 | 268 | 134 | 1,142 | 2026.10.19 local stdio |
| Cloudflare MCP servers Cloudflare | 2 | 249 | 125 | 1,000 | 0.5.0 hosted endpoint, Cloudflare Docs server only (one of many Cloudflare servers) |
| Fetch MCP steering group (reference) | 1 | 226 | 226 | 1,045 | 2026.10.24 local stdio |
Download the data (CSV) · CC BY 4.0, cite “AgentTask Atlas MCP tool budget” · Last updated · re-measured weekly.
Method
- Each server is started the way its official docs describe (local package over stdio, or the hosted endpoint over Streamable HTTP) and queried as an MCP client:
initialize, then every page oftools/list. Client: @modelcontextprotocol/sdk Client, initialize + paginated tools/list, Node v22.23.4. - No real credentials are used. Where a server refuses to start without one, we pass a fake value; hosted servers are only measured if they answer
tools/listanonymously. Default configuration unless the table says otherwise (some servers expose more tools with extra flags or once signed in). - Per tool we serialize
{name, description, inputSchema}as compact JSON. Characters is its length; tokens is the o200k_base (js-tiktoken) token count (the GPT-4o tokenizer). Other models' tokenizers and each client's own wrapping differ, so treat tokens as a close approximation, not a bill. - Version is the package or release that ran (latest on npm, PyPI or the vendor's releases at measurement time), or the version the hosted server reports. Numbers come straight from a script (
scripts/mcp-tool-budget.mjs) and are never typed by hand; servers that could not be measured are listed below with the reason.
What about Cursor's “40 tool limit”?
Cursor's MCP documentation does not publish a number. The “40 tools” figure is widely repeated; on Cursor's forum, Cursor staff described 40 as a warning threshold with an actual limit of 80 (April 2025) and later said “We've increased this limit to 80” (August 2025). Either way, the budget fills fast: by our count the measured servers expose 563 tools together, and you can switch individual tools off in Cursor's MCP settings to stay under it.
Not measured (34)
- Apify MCP Server: hosted server requires account sign-in (OAuth) before tools/list
- Asana MCP Server (V2): hosted server requires account sign-in (OAuth) before tools/list
- Atlassian Rovo MCP Server: hosted server requires account sign-in (OAuth) before tools/list
- Auth0 MCP Server: local server needs an Auth0 device-authorization login before it starts
- Azure DevOps MCP Server: hosted endpoint did not answer tools/list anonymously (Streamable HTTP error: Error POSTing to endpoint: {"error":"BadRequest","message)
- Buildkite MCP Server: hosted server needs OAuth; local Go binary needs a Buildkite API token
- CircleCI MCP Server (hosted): hosted server requires account sign-in (OAuth) before tools/list
- Datadog MCP Server: hosted server requires account sign-in (OAuth) before tools/list
- Docker MCP Gateway: gateway for other servers via Docker Desktop; tool count depends on what you enable
- Elasticsearch MCP Server (deprecated): deprecated by Elastic
- Figma MCP Server: hosted server requires account sign-in (OAuth) before tools/list
- GitLab MCP Server: hosted server requires account sign-in (OAuth) before tools/list
- JetBrains IDE MCP Server (built-in): runs inside a JetBrains IDE
- LaunchDarkly MCP Server (hosted): hosted server requires account sign-in (OAuth) before tools/list
- Linear MCP Server: hosted server requires account sign-in (OAuth) before tools/list
- Mapbox MCP Server: hosted server requires account sign-in (OAuth) before tools/list
- MCP Toolbox for Databases: refuses to start without a reachable, credentialed database (checked with --prebuilt=postgres)
- monday.com MCP: hosted server requires account sign-in (OAuth) before tools/list
- Neon MCP Server: hosted server requires account sign-in (OAuth) before tools/list
- Notion MCP (hosted): hosted server requires account sign-in (OAuth) before tools/list
- Okta Open Source MCP Server: local server exited before answering tools/list (no real credentials/config given)
- Perplexity API Platform MCP Server: hosted server requires account sign-in (OAuth) before tools/list
- PostHog MCP Server: hosted server requires account sign-in (OAuth) before tools/list
- Postman MCP Server: hosted server requires account sign-in (OAuth) before tools/list
- Prisma MCP Server: hosted server requires account sign-in (OAuth) before tools/list
- Railway MCP Server: proxied through the Railway CLI with a Railway login
- Render MCP Server (hosted): hosted server requires account sign-in (OAuth) before tools/list
- Resend MCP Server: hosted server requires account sign-in (OAuth) before tools/list
- Slack MCP Server: hosted server requires account sign-in (OAuth) before tools/list
- SonarQube MCP Server: ships as a Docker image and needs a SonarQube token
- Stripe MCP / Agent Toolkit: local server did not answer tools/list in time without real credentials
- Upstash MCP Server: hosted server requires account sign-in (OAuth) before tools/list
- Vercel MCP: hosted server requires account sign-in (OAuth) before tools/list
- Zapier MCP: hosted server requires account sign-in (OAuth) before tools/list
See also: best MCP servers by task · add an MCP server to Cursor · all 67 MCP servers