GitHub MCP Server Costs 26k Tokens Per Session Before Any Work
THEDEVRELMARKUS · reddit · 2026-09-02
After observing rapid token consumption, the author measured the overhead of MCP servers. GitHub MCP with all toolsets enabled consumes 26,644 tokens at session start, before any user prompt is processed. Even default toolsets cost over 14k tokens. While CLI tools have zero cost, adding a SKILL.md description file for the agent raises the cost to 12.7k tokens. The post highlights this significant "token tax" that degrades agent performance and provides detailed methodology.
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