mcp-checkup
Diagnoses MCP server token costs, finds duplicates, grades efficiency, and generates optimization reports.
README
mcp-checkup
Your MCP servers are eating your context window. Find out how much.
mcp-checkup is an MCP server that analyzes your MCP setup — measuring the token cost of every installed server and tool, finding duplicates, grading efficiency, and generating optimization reports.
Quick Start
npx mcp-checkup
Then ask your AI assistant:
"Run an MCP health check on my setup"
"How many tokens are my MCP servers using?"
"Generate an MCP health report"
Why?
Every MCP tool costs 550–1,400 tokens just for its schema. A server with 50 tools can eat 30,000+ tokens before you type anything. Most developers have no idea how much context window their MCP servers are consuming.
Real examples from the community:
- Adding GitHub MCP increased one user's token usage from 34K to 80K (source)
- One developer found 67,000 tokens consumed by just 4 servers before any conversation (source)
- Context7 (240K weekly downloads) has tool descriptions costing 3x more tokens than necessary (source)
Tools
analyze_servers
Scan your MCP config and measure the token cost of every installed server. Auto-detects config files.
"Which of my MCP servers costs the most tokens?"
analyze_tools
Deep-dive into a specific server — per-tool token costs, grades, bloated descriptions, and optimization suggestions.
"Break down the token cost of my GitHub MCP server"
find_duplicates
Find duplicate tool names across your installed servers. Redundant tools waste context for no benefit.
"Do any of my MCP servers have overlapping tools?"
count_tokens
Count tokens in any text. Useful for estimating context usage.
"How many tokens is this prompt?"
generate_report
Full markdown health report: server grades (A-F), token costs, duplicates, and actionable recommendations.
"Generate a full MCP health report"
Grading System
Per-Tool Grades
| Grade | Tokens | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| A | ≤100 | Excellent — minimal context cost |
| B | ≤300 | Good — reasonable schema size |
| C | ≤600 | Fair — could be optimized |
| D | ≤1000 | Poor — bloated schema |
| F | >1000 | Failing — severely impacts context window |
Per-Server Grades
| Grade | Total Tokens | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| A | ≤500 | Lean and efficient |
| B | ≤1500 | Reasonable |
| C | ≤3000 | Getting heavy |
| D | ≤6000 | Significant context cost |
| F | >6000 | Major context window drain |
Installation
Claude Desktop / Claude Code
{
"mcpServers": {
"mcp-checkup": {
"command": "npx",
"args": ["-y", "mcp-checkup"]
}
}
}
Cursor
Add to .cursor/mcp.json with the same format.
Auto-Detection
mcp-checkup automatically finds your MCP config in these locations:
.mcp.json(current directory)- Claude Desktop config (Windows/macOS/Linux)
.cursor/mcp.json
Or pass a custom path to any tool.
How It Compares
| Tool | Purpose | Approach |
|---|---|---|
| mcp-checkup | Diagnose token costs | Analyze & report — see exactly what each tool costs |
| lean-ctx | Reduce token usage | Compress context at runtime |
| MCP Inspector | Debug MCP servers | Test connections and tool calls |
Use mcp-checkup first to find the problem, then decide how to fix it.
Part of the MCP Toolkit
- webcheck-mcp — Website health analysis
- git-summary-mcp — Git repository intelligence
- mcp-checkup — MCP setup health analyzer
- dev-utils-mcp — Developer utilities
- codescan-mcp — Codebase health scanner
- deadlink-checker-mcp — Dead link detector
License
MIT
Recommended Servers
playwright-mcp
A Model Context Protocol server that enables LLMs to interact with web pages through structured accessibility snapshots without requiring vision models or screenshots.
Magic Component Platform (MCP)
An AI-powered tool that generates modern UI components from natural language descriptions, integrating with popular IDEs to streamline UI development workflow.
Audiense Insights MCP Server
Enables interaction with Audiense Insights accounts via the Model Context Protocol, facilitating the extraction and analysis of marketing insights and audience data including demographics, behavior, and influencer engagement.
VeyraX MCP
Single MCP tool to connect all your favorite tools: Gmail, Calendar and 40 more.
graphlit-mcp-server
The Model Context Protocol (MCP) Server enables integration between MCP clients and the Graphlit service. Ingest anything from Slack to Gmail to podcast feeds, in addition to web crawling, into a Graphlit project - and then retrieve relevant contents from the MCP client.
Kagi MCP Server
An MCP server that integrates Kagi search capabilities with Claude AI, enabling Claude to perform real-time web searches when answering questions that require up-to-date information.
E2B
Using MCP to run code via e2b.
Neon Database
MCP server for interacting with Neon Management API and databases
Exa Search
A Model Context Protocol (MCP) server lets AI assistants like Claude use the Exa AI Search API for web searches. This setup allows AI models to get real-time web information in a safe and controlled way.
Qdrant Server
This repository is an example of how to create a MCP server for Qdrant, a vector search engine.