CostBench

com.costbenchPublished by costbench.comOfficial publisherv1.1.0Updated Oct 25, 2026

Verified pricing, hidden costs, negotiation data, price changes & TCO for 3,390+ software products.

VerifiedStreamable HTTPWeb executableData & AnalyticsBusiness & Commerce

Overview

AI-generated overview

A remote, read-only MCP server that gives an assistant sourced software pricing data: tiers, hidden costs, negotiation tips, price history, comparisons and TCO.

What you can do
Look up a product's full sourced pricing record, including tiers, contract terms and market data, or just its documented hidden and add-on costs and negotiation tactics with success likelihood. Compare two to four products side by side on starting price, median annual cost, free tier and ratings. Find products by name, category, maximum price or free-tier availability to get their slugs. Calculate total cost of ownership for a given team size and term, and estimate LLM/API workload costs from a provider's rate card. Check recent dated pricing changes, filtered by product, category or lookback window.
When to use it
Useful when comparing software vendors, budgeting a purchase or renewal, preparing a negotiation, or estimating the true cost of a tool for a team of a given size. Also handy for checking what changed in a vendor's pricing lately or costing an LLM API workload.
Requirements
Nothing to install: it is a hosted remote endpoint using streamable HTTP, with no API key, account or signup. Clients that only speak stdio can bridge to it through the published npm package, which needs Node.js; a Docker option also exists. Network access to the hosted endpoint is required, and the upstream URL can be overridden with the COSTBENCH_MCP_URL environment variable.
Before you install
All tools are read-only and the server writes nothing, so the main risk is acting on the data itself: figures are sourced and dated, and should be cited with the returned source link rather than as bare numbers. Some third-party market-data medians are marked restricted and not licensed for commercial redistribution. Requests are rate limited per IP at 60 per minute.

Installation

In SourceWeft

  1. Open CostBench in the dashboard and add it to a workspace.
  2. Enable the server for the chats that should use its tools.

Web executable via Streamable HTTP. Remote servers run from the web runtime once configured in a workspace.

Use with an agent

Paste this prompt into Claude Code, Codex, Cursor or another agent — or into SourceWeft chat. The agent reads this server's install guide, shows you its publisher, endpoint and sign-in, and adds it to your client once you agree. Keys never go into a command.

Read https://sourceweft.com/mcp/com.costbench%2Fmcp/install.md and connect the MCP server it describes to my client. Before changing any config, show me its publisher, endpoint and sign-in method and wait for my OK. Never put an API key in a command or in a file I would commit; ask me where it should come from.

Read the install guide the agent follows

Other MCP clients

Add this to your client's mcpServers config.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "costbench": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://costbench.com/mcp"
    }
  }
}

README

CostBench MCP Server

Verified software-pricing intelligence for any MCP client — true costs, hidden fees, negotiation data, price history, side-by-side comparisons, a dated price-change feed, and total cost of ownership for 3,390+ products. Read-only, free, no API key, no signup.

Powered by CostBench.com. Every figure the server returns carries its source and date — the data is only as trustworthy as its provenance, so CostBench publishes the provenance with each number. Responses include an attribution field and per-entity links back to the sourced page.

Tools

ToolDescription
get_pricingFull sourced pricing record for a product: tiers, hidden costs, contract terms, market data, sentiment, negotiation tips, TCO scenarios, and price history — each claim with its sources. Args: slug, optional depth (summary|full).
get_hidden_costsThe documented hidden / implementation / add-on costs (uplifts, onboarding fees, overages), each with a sourced quote + date. Args: slug.
get_negotiation_tipsSourced negotiation tactics with success-likelihood. Args: slug.
get_price_historyPer-quarter price snapshots + trend — has the price changed? Args: slug.
compare_softwareSide-by-side pricing for 2–4 products (starting price, median annual cost, free tier, ratings). Args: slugs (array).
discover_softwareFind products by category, maxPrice, hasFreeTier. Returns matching slugs to look up.
calculate_tcoTotal cost of ownership for a product and team size: sourced line items, year-one + multi-year totals, effective per-seat cost. Args: slug, seats, optional tier, termYears.
estimate_llm_costCost of an LLM/API workload (input + output tokens) for a usage-priced provider, from its real rate card. Args: slug, inputTokens, outputTokens, optional model.
get_price_changesRecent pricing changes CostBench detected against vendor pricing pages — dated, before/after bands, source link. Args: optional slug, category, days (default 30), limit (default 25). Same data as the public feed at https://costbench.com/data/pricing-changes.json.

All tools are read-only (readOnlyHint: true). Products are addressed by slug (e.g. salesforce, microsoft-teams, openai-api); use discover_software if you don't know one.

Option 1 — Remote endpoint (recommended, no install)

The server is hosted at https://costbench.com/mcp using streamable HTTP transport (MCP spec 2025-03-26). If your client supports remote MCP servers, point it straight at the endpoint:

json
{  "mcpServers": {    "costbench": {      "type": "streamable-http",      "url": "https://costbench.com/mcp"    }  }}

Claude Code:

bash
claude mcp add --transport http costbench https://costbench.com/mcp

Option 2 — Local stdio server (this package)

For clients that only speak stdio, this package bridges stdio ↔ the hosted endpoint:

json
{  "mcpServers": {    "costbench": {      "command": "npx",      "args": ["-y", "github:aadilr/costbench-mcp"]    }  }}

Or clone and run directly:

bash
git clone https://github.com/aadilr/costbench-mcp.gitcd costbench-mcpnpm installnode index.js

Option 3 — Agent Skill / Claude Code plugin

This repo doubles as an Agent Skill and Claude Code plugin.

Any skills-capable agent (Claude Code, Codex CLI, Cursor, Gemini CLI, Copilot, and more):

bash
npx skills add aadilr/costbench-mcp

Claude Code plugin (bundles the MCP server + the skill):

/plugin marketplace add aadilr/costbench-mcp/plugin install costbench@costbench

The software-pricing skill prefers the MCP tools when connected and otherwise falls back to a bundled script (skills/software-pricing/scripts/pricing.sh) that talks to the hosted endpoint over plain HTTPS — no MCP client required.

Option 4 — Docker

bash
docker build -t costbench-mcp .docker run -i --rm costbench-mcp

Quick test

bash
# List the toolscurl -X POST https://costbench.com/mcp \  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"tools/list","params":{}}'
# Get pricing for a productcurl -X POST https://costbench.com/mcp \  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"tools/call","params":{"name":"get_pricing","arguments":{"slug":"salesforce","depth":"summary"}}}'

The get_pricing call above returns a record like:

json
{  "slug": "salesforce",  "name": "Salesforce",  "category": { "slug": "crm", "name": "CRM" },  "priceRange": { "low": 0, "median": 100, "high": 550, "currency": "USD" },  "priceUnit": "user/month",  "tiers": [    { "name": "Starter Suite", "priceMonthly": 25, "priceAnnual": 300, "priceUnit": "user/month" },    { "name": "Pro Suite", "priceMonthly": 100, "priceAnnual": 1200, "priceUnit": "user/month" }  ],  "attribution": "Source: CostBench (https://costbench.com) — verified, sourced software pricing intelligence."}

What's in the data

Products3,390+
Categories255
Comparisons5,850+
CoverageTiers, hidden costs, contract terms, negotiation data, price history, TCO, LLM rate cards

Each field carries a license marker (owned | restricted): CostBench's own sourced research is owned; a small number of third-party market-data medians are restricted — surfaceable to a user but not licensed for commercial redistribution.

Environment variables

VariableDefaultPurpose
COSTBENCH_MCP_URLhttps://costbench.com/mcpOverride the upstream endpoint

Privacy & limits

  • No authentication or account required. All tools are read-only — the server never writes anything.
  • Per-IP rate limiting: 60 requests/minute.
  • Data is sourced and dated; cite the links.page URL a response returns, not the bare number.

License

MIT

Source: README.md at commit 2ba307c

Tools

9

get_pricing

Full sourced pricing record for a software product: tiers, hidden costs, contract terms, market data, sentiment, negotiation tips, TCO scenarios, price history — every claim with its sources + a confidence/verification envelope.

Parametersslugrequireddepth

get_hidden_costs

The documented hidden/implementation/add-on costs of a product (uplifts, onboarding fees, overages), each with a sourced quote + date. The "what they don't tell you" answer.

Parametersslugrequired

get_negotiation_tips

Sourced negotiation tactics for a product with success-likelihood (how to get a discount).

Parametersslugrequired

get_price_history

Dated per-quarter snapshots of a product's pricing page. Returns observations, NOT a trend figure — CostBench does not publish one, because diffing snapshots across renamed/restructured plan lineups is ~90% measurement artifact.

Parametersslugrequired

compare_software

Side-by-side pricing comparison of 2–4 products (starting price, enterprise tier, median annual cost, free tier, ratings).

Parametersslugsrequired

discover_software

Find software products by name search or criteria (category, max price, free tier). Returns matching slugs to look up — use "query" to find the slug for a product name.

ParameterslimitquerycategorymaxPricehasFreeTier

calculate_tco

Total cost of ownership for a product and team size: sourced line items (licenses with price escalation, benchmark implementation), year-one + multi-year totals, effective per-seat cost. The defensible "true cost for an N-person team" answer.

ParametersslugrequiredtierseatsrequiredtermYears

estimate_llm_cost

Estimate the cost of an LLM/API workload (input + output tokens) for a usage-priced provider (OpenAI, Anthropic, AWS Bedrock…) from its real rate card.

ParametersslugrequiredmodelinputTokensoutputTokens

get_price_changes

Recent software pricing changes CostBench detected against vendor pricing pages (increases, decreases, plan restructures) — dated, with before/after price bands and a source link. Filter by product slug, category, or lookback window. The "what changed lately" answer; each item links to the sourced record.

Parametersdayssluglimitcategoryinclude_suspect

Version history

1
  1. v1.1.0LatestSep 16, 2026

Score

100% of the applicable checks met

How complete this listing is, computed from the registry entry, the endpoint and public sources. Not a rating of the server and not a statement that it is safe or working today: reachability is a dated check, and no installs or reviews go into the score.

  • Reached in the last 30 daysRequired25 pts
  • Auth declaredRequired10 pts
  • Tools listedRequired15 pts
  • DescriptionRequired15 pts
  • Logo10 pts
  • Documentation15 pts
  • License10 pts