MCP is having its moment. Every agent framework is wiring tools through it, and for good reason: standardized tool registration, composable servers, a protocol that doesn't force you to reinvent the plugin system every project. I get the appeal.
What I didn't see coming was the token bill.
Here's the number that stopped me cold: for a simple SerpApi search, an MCP agent used 6,047 tokens per call. A CLI script doing the exact same job used 351 tokens. That's 17x overhead, for the same search result.
I went looking for other data points after that. The range is wider than I thought.
The number that started this: 17x tokens per call
