CostBench MCP Server

by costbench Your server? Claim it

answering

CostBench is answering right now. Last checked 10 min ago. It exposes 9 tools. Last commit 25 Aug 2026.

Verified pricing, hidden costs, negotiation data, price changes & TCO for 3,390+ software products.

Uptime history 90 days of history · worst day 96%

90 days agonow

100.0%

Uptime 24h

91 of 91 checks

Tools

read from the server

148 ms

Response time

average over 24h

Stars

last commit 25 Aug 2026

What changed 13

Every tool that appeared, vanished or quietly changed what it asks for. Recorded since 25 August 2026. No other catalogue keeps this.

13 Oct 8 tools changed the parameters they ask for calculate_tco, compare_software, discover_software and 5 more

13 Oct a tool description was rewritten discover_software

13 Oct a tool changed version

25 Aug a tool appeared get_price_changes

25 Aug a tool changed the parameters it asks for get_price_changes

25 Aug a tool changed version

Nothing serious here today

Today is the operative word: we check CostBench every 15 minutes and re-read its code on every release. Watch it and you find out the day that stops being true.

Connect this server

Endpoint below is the one we actually reach during checks — not the one copied from a README. Last verified 10 min ago.

Claude Code Claude Desktop Codex Cursor VS Code

run in your terminal

claude mcp add mcp --transport http https://costbench.com/mcp

Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector, then paste this address

https://costbench.com/mcp

~/.codex/config.toml

[mcp_servers.mcp]
url = "https://costbench.com/mcp"

.cursor/mcp.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "mcp": {
      "url": "https://costbench.com/mcp"
    }
  }
}

.vscode/mcp.json

{
  "servers": {
    "mcp": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://costbench.com/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Available tools 9

Read directly from the server with tools/list, grouped by what they act on. If a tool disappears, we record the date.

price

get_price_changes

Recent software pricing changes CostBench detected against vendor pricing pages (increases, decreases, plan restructures) — dated, with before/after price bands and a source link. Filter by product slug, category, or lookback window. The "what changed lately" answer; each item links to the sourced record.

get_price_history

Dated per-quarter snapshots of a product's pricing page. Returns observations, NOT a trend figure — CostBench does not publish one, because diffing snapshots across renamed/restructured plan lineups is ~90% measurement artifact.

calculate

calculate_tco

Total cost of ownership for a product and team size: sourced line items (licenses with price escalation, benchmark implementation), year-one + multi-year totals, effective per-seat cost. The defensible "true cost for an N-person team" answer.

compare

compare_software

Side-by-side pricing comparison of 2–4 products (starting price, enterprise tier, median annual cost, free tier, ratings).

discover

discover_software

Find software products by name search or criteria (category, max price, free tier). Returns matching slugs to look up — use "query" to find the slug for a product name.

estimate

estimate_llm_cost

Estimate the cost of an LLM/API workload (input + output tokens) for a usage-priced provider (OpenAI, Anthropic, AWS Bedrock…) from its real rate card.

hidden

get_hidden_costs

The documented hidden/implementation/add-on costs of a product (uplifts, onboarding fees, overages), each with a sourced quote + date. The "what they don't tell you" answer.

negotiation

get_negotiation_tips

Sourced negotiation tactics for a product with success-likelihood (how to get a discount).

pricing

get_pricing

Full sourced pricing record for a software product: tiers, hidden costs, contract terms, market data, sentiment, negotiation tips, TCO scenarios, price history — every claim with its sources + a confidence/verification envelope.

Endpoints

URL	Transport	State	Latency	Checked
https://costbench.com/mcp	streamable-http	answering	110 ms	10 min ago

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CostBench — questions

Answers built from our own checks of this server.

What can CostBench do?

It exposes 9 tools, read directly from the server on our last check. Among them: calculate_tco, compare_software, discover_software, estimate_llm_cost, get_hidden_costs, get_negotiation_tips and 3 more. The full list with descriptions is on this page — we take it from the server itself via tools/list, not from a README. How MCP servers expose tools in the first place →

Is CostBench working right now?

We send a real MCP handshake every 15 minutes. Over the last 24 hours 91 of 91 checks got a reply (100.0%), average response time 148 ms. The bar chart above shows every period we have measured.

How do I connect CostBench?

Copy the ready config from this page. We generate it for Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Codex, Cursor and VS Code, each in the form that client actually reads. It is a remote server, so there is nothing to install — the client connects to the address.

Does CostBench need an API key?

No. CostBench completed a full MCP handshake with us as an anonymous client and listed its tools without asking for anything. All 9 of them are readable on this page. This is what we observed, not what the docs claim.

How fast is CostBench?

It answers our handshake in 148 ms on average, which is faster than 83% of all working MCP servers we measure. That puts it in the quick quarter of the ecosystem. The comparison comes from our own checks across the whole registry, every 15 minutes.

Is CostBench open source?

The code is open source: it is published under the MIT licence, written in JavaScript and 0 stars on GitHub. The licence covers the code in the repository, not the hosted service at costbench.com, which runs on its operator's own terms.