{"type":"post","id":"mcp-vs-cli-vs-skills-what-each-costs-f3de5f","slug":"mcp-vs-cli-vs-skills-what-each-costs-f3de5f","title":"MCP vs CLI vs Skills: What Each Costs in Context","description":"OpenRouter compared a GitHub CLI, a skill, and MCP tools on a repository lookup task, measuring input tokens and billed cost across several models.","retrieval_nugget":"OpenRouter compared a GitHub CLI, a skill, and MCP tools on a repository lookup task, measuring input tokens and billed cost across several models. The results show that tool definitions and oversized tool responses can make an MCP workflow much more expensive than a CLI, while selective loading and compact outputs can narrow the gap.","published_at":"2026-11-12","updated_at":"2026-11-12","record_date":"2026-11-12","date_kind":"published_at","topics":["mcp","github","gemini"],"entities":["OpenRouter","GitHub CLI","Model Context Protocol","Tool Search","Claude Sonnet 5.5","GPT-6 Luna","Gemini 3.8 Flash"],"related_patterns":["agent-economics-moves-to-completed-work"],"novelty_label":"new_fact","what_changed":"OpenRouter quantifies token costs for MCP, CLI, and skills on a GitHub task, finding the MCP setup used 59,417 input tokens versus 1,421 for the CLI on Sonnet 5.5.","prior_refs":[],"source_url":"https://openrouter.ai/blog/insights/mcp-vs-cli-vs-skills","source_urls":["https://openrouter.ai/blog/insights/mcp-vs-cli-vs-skills"],"schema_version":"newruntime-agent-readable-v0.2","stable_id":"post:mcp-vs-cli-vs-skills-what-each-costs-f3de5f","status":"published","visuals":[],"editor":{"role":"editor","name":"Andrey Reshetnikov","profile":"https://newruntime.com/owner-profile.md","profile_json":"https://newruntime.com/owner-profile.json","same_as":["https://www.linkedin.com/in/reshetnikov1/","https://t.me/lapetuse"]},"routes":{"html":"https://newruntime.com/posts/mcp-vs-cli-vs-skills-what-each-costs-f3de5f/","markdown":"https://newruntime.com/posts/mcp-vs-cli-vs-skills-what-each-costs-f3de5f.md","json":"https://newruntime.com/posts/mcp-vs-cli-vs-skills-what-each-costs-f3de5f.json"},"markdown_url":"https://newruntime.com/posts/mcp-vs-cli-vs-skills-what-each-costs-f3de5f.md","next_reads":[{"type":"topic","path":"/topics/mcp/","url":"https://newruntime.com/topics/mcp/","title":"Mcp","reason":"Explore the mcp topic hub.","media_type":"text/html","markdown_url":"https://newruntime.com/topics/mcp.md","json_url":"https://newruntime.com/topics/mcp.json"},{"type":"topic","path":"/topics/github/","url":"https://newruntime.com/topics/github/","title":"Github","reason":"Explore the github topic hub.","media_type":"text/html","markdown_url":"https://newruntime.com/topics/github.md","json_url":"https://newruntime.com/topics/github.json"},{"type":"topic","path":"/topics/gemini/","url":"https://newruntime.com/topics/gemini/","title":"Gemini","reason":"Explore the gemini topic hub.","media_type":"text/html","markdown_url":"https://newruntime.com/topics/gemini.md","json_url":"https://newruntime.com/topics/gemini.json"},{"type":"collection","path":"/posts/","url":"https://newruntime.com/posts/","title":"Field Notes","reason":"Open the latest editorial analysis.","media_type":"text/html","json_url":"https://newruntime.com/posts.json"},{"type":"collection","path":"/sources/","url":"https://newruntime.com/sources/","title":"Sources","reason":"See the original sources this archive cites.","media_type":"text/html"}]}