Five MCP servers, 22,185 tokens: server count is now a context budget line

The only figure in that post you can rebuild yourself is the first one. The author measures a single `search_files` definition at 347 characters, about 87 tokens, and 255 tools at 87 tokens each is 22,185, which is exactly the number quoted ^[3][5][1]. The worked example and the total agree. That is the number to plan against.

Above it, the ledger stops closing. The extras the post itemises are server status messages at about 200 tokens each, listing headers at about 50 per server, and error handling schemas at about 100 per tool ^[6]. For five servers and 255 tools that is 26,750 tokens, which brings the running total to 48,935 and leaves 42,065 of the 91,000 headline unexplained ^[2]. The author says the counts are measured rather than estimated ^[12], but the itemisation supplied does not reach the headline.

The cost table is measuring something else again. At $3 per million input tokens and 20 conversations a day, the post gives $7.80 to $15.00 daily and $1,872 to $3,600 a year, excluding output ^[9]. Work backwards and the low end implies 130,000 input tokens per conversation and the high end 250,000 ^[4]. Those are conversations with content in them, not bare setups. The schema block on its own costs about 6.7 cents per conversation at that rate ^[7]. That is the honest line item, and it assumes the schemas are re-sent every time, which is precisely what the author's proxy claims to remove by injecting them once ^[10].

Then there is the awkward part. The same post counts the schemas for the same 255 tools at 22,185 tokens in one place and 2,034 in another, a factor of about 10.9 ^[5]. The advertised 97 percent reduction, 62 tokens against 2,034, is measured against the smaller of the two ^[11]. Against 22,185 it would be a larger saving, which is the odd thing about the discrepancy: it undersells the pitch while undermining the audit.

What survives is the unit of purchase. Five servers averaged 4,437 tokens of window each before anyone typed, roughly 1.3 cents per conversation per server ^[3]. A server is 30 to 60 tools in the author's experience ^[4], so the decision you are making is not "add an integration", it is "add four to five thousand tokens of permanent preamble". The post notes that the original MCP examples showed three to five tools, while real setups run to 255 ^[14], and its own consumer advice includes limiting how many servers you connect ^[13]. That advice does not require the 91,000 figure to be right. It only requires the 22,185 that checks out.