Agent Cost MCP Server

An MCP server that gives agents and developers tools to estimate, budget, and compare the cost of LLM work before and during a run — the model-spend counterpart to AWS infrastructure cost tooling.

Agent frameworks decide for themselves how many model calls a task takes, so the cost of a run is usually only visible after the bill arrives. This server answers, from inside your tooling:

• What will this task cost on model A vs model B?
• Which model is cheapest per successful task, not per token?
• Has this run already burned its budget?

The server is self-contained: a maintained pricing snapshot ships with it, no AWS account or API key is needed, all state is a local JSON ledger, and it makes no network calls at runtime.

Tools

Cost per token is the wrong ranking for agent work: a cheap model that fails half its tasks costs more per success than a pricier, reliable one. Pass measured success rates to compare_models_for_task if you have them; models without a supplied rate are ranked on raw cost.

This server supplies the numbers. Enforcing a budget (stopping a run) belongs to the agent framework — see BudgetedModel in strands-agents/samples for that pattern.

Installation

The server installs from GitHub today. A PyPI release is planned — until it lands, uvx agent-cost-mcp-server and pip install agent-cost-mcp-server do not work yet; use the from-GitHub commands below (both verified). Requires Python 3.10+; the uvx path needs uv.

Claude Code

claude mcp add agent-cost -- uvx --from git+https://github.com/karmendra8386/agent-cost-mcp-server agent-cost-mcp-server

Claude Desktop and Cursor

Add to the client's MCP configuration (Claude Desktop: claude_desktop_config.json; Cursor: .cursor/mcp.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "agent-cost": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": [
        "--from",
        "git+https://github.com/karmendra8386/agent-cost-mcp-server",
        "agent-cost-mcp-server"
      ]
    }
  }
}

VS Code

Add to .vscode/mcp.json (VS Code uses a servers key):

{
  "servers": {
    "agent-cost": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": [
        "--from",
        "git+https://github.com/karmendra8386/agent-cost-mcp-server",
        "agent-cost-mcp-server"
      ]
    }
  }
}

pip

pip install git+https://github.com/karmendra8386/agent-cost-mcp-server
agent-cost-mcp-server   # serves over stdio

Example: what a tool call returns

compare_models_for_task for one attempt at a task using 10,000 input and 2,000 output tokens, with example success rates supplied for a few models (substitute your own measured rates; models without a supplied rate are ranked on raw cost):

{
  "input_tokens": 10000,
  "output_tokens": 2000,
  "success_rates": {
    "amazon.nova-micro": 0.2,
    "amazon.nova-lite": 0.6,
    "openai.gpt-5-nano": 0.4,
    "openai.gpt-4o-mini": 0.9,
    "anthropic.claude-haiku-3-5": 0.85,
    "anthropic.claude-sonnet-4-5": 0.95
  }
}

Response, captured from a live run of the server (pricing snapshot v1, 2026-10-20; first 5 of 18 ranked models):

{
  "input_tokens": 10000,
  "output_tokens": 2000,
  "ranked": [
    {
      "model": "amazon.nova-lite",
      "display_name": "Amazon Nova Lite",
      "cost_per_run_usd": 0.00108,
      "success_rate": 0.6,
      "cost_per_success_usd": 0.0018
    },
    {
      "model": "google.gemini-2.5-flash-lite",
      "display_name": "Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite",
      "cost_per_run_usd": 0.0018,
      "success_rate": 1.0,
      "cost_per_success_usd": 0.0018
    },
    {
      "model": "openai.gpt-4o-mini",
      "display_name": "GPT-4o mini",
      "cost_per_run_usd": 0.0027,
      "success_rate": 0.9,
      "cost_per_success_usd": 0.003
    },
    {
      "model": "amazon.nova-micro",
      "display_name": "Amazon Nova Micro",
      "cost_per_run_usd": 0.00063,
      "success_rate": 0.2,
      "cost_per_success_usd": 0.00315
    },
    {
      "model": "openai.gpt-5-nano",
      "display_name": "GPT-5 nano",
      "cost_per_run_usd": 0.0013,
      "success_rate": 0.4,
      "cost_per_success_usd": 0.00325
    }
  ],
  "pricing_snapshot": "v1 (2026-10-20)"
}

Note the flip: Amazon Nova Micro is the cheapest model per run ($0.00063), but at a 20% success rate it ranks fourth per successful task ($0.00315 — roughly five attempts per success). Nova Lite costs 1.7× more per run and is the cheapest per success.

Pricing snapshot

Prices live in src/agent_cost_mcp_server/pricing.json — a versioned snapshot of list prices (USD per 1M tokens) for major Bedrock and OpenAI-compatible models, dated in the file. Prices change; verify against the provider's pricing page before making spending decisions. Updating the snapshot is a one-file change, and the server reads it at startup.

Ledger

record_spend appends to a local JSON ledger at ~/.agent-cost-mcp-server/ledger.json. Set AGENT_COST_LEDGER_PATH to use a different file. Nothing leaves the machine.

Background

The pricing and cost-per-success model are a port of tokenecon, an open-source library for per-task agent cost accounting (paper: doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23195511), including a Strands integration that prices live agent runs. This server exposes the same math over MCP so any agent or IDE can call it.

Proposed for the awslabs/mcp collection in RFC #4772.

Development

uv sync --extra dev   # or: pip install -e ".[dev]"
pytest

Cite

If you use this software in your work, please cite the software itself — and, for the cost model and methods behind it, the companion preprint.

Software

@software{pandey_agent_cost_mcp_server_2026,
  author = {Pandey, Karmendra},
  title = {agent-cost-mcp-server},
  version = {0.1.0},
  doi = {10.5281/zenodo.23680824},
  url = {https://github.com/karmendra8386/agent-cost-mcp-server},
  date = {2026-10-26}
}

Companion preprint

K. Pandey, "Token-Economics for Agentic AI: A Cost Model and Tiered Routing Reference," Zenodo, DOI 10.5281/zenodo.23195511, Oct. 2026.

@misc{pandey_tokeneconomics_2026,
  author = {Pandey, Karmendra},
  title = {Token-Economics for Agentic AI: A Cost Model and Tiered Routing Reference},
  doi = {10.5281/zenodo.23195511},
  url = {https://zenodo.org/records/23195511},
  publisher = {Zenodo},
  date = {2026-10}
}

A CITATION.cff is included for automated citation tooling.

License

Apache-2.0 — see LICENSE.

Copyright 2026 Karmendra Pandey.