Eliminating MCP Token Costs in Claude

MCP is a great way to let AI connect to other tools. It’s like an API, but slightly easier.

The problem with MCP is that each MCP costs tokens — and they add up. It’s normal for MCPs to cost 10k+ tokens when you have them configured.

The second problem is MCPs may not get used. But you’re charged for them regardless. With Claude tightening their purse strings on usage limits, such unnecessary token costs are even more pronounced.

But we don’t have to stop using MCPs because of this limitation.

Removing MCP Token Usage on Sonnet and Opus

If you use Claude Code, you can enable MCP lazy loading via Tool Search. This will reduce the MCP token costs to 0 until they are loaded.

{
  "env": {
    "ENABLE_TOOL_SEARCH": "true"
  }
}

Ask Claude to enable it for you — it’ll save the above code in the right file so you don’t have to worry about configuring it manually.

Note: This works on Sonnet and Opus only. Haiku loads all MCP tools regardless because Tool Search is not available to Haiku.