How Much Does MCP Cost for a Small Team?
A small team’s MCP bill is three lines: assistant seats (Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor), the shared catalog (ToolRouter from $29/seat), and usage on paid skills (from $0.005 when a paid tool works). Free catalog tools never charge. Failed paid calls do not charge. The surprise bill almost always comes from image and video, not from “having MCP.”
Prices below were checked against toolrouter.com/pricing on 31 August 2026. Assistant prices change; confirm on Anthropic and OpenAI before you forecast.
The three invoices people mix up
| Invoice | What it pays for | Who bills you |
|---|---|---|
| Claude Team / ChatGPT seats | The assistant itself | Anthropic / OpenAI |
| Cursor / Copilot seats | The IDE | Cursor / Microsoft |
| ToolRouter Team $29/seat or Business $59/seat | Shared specialist catalog, pooled credits, spend caps. Audit log on Business | ToolRouter |
| Usage | Paid catalog skills, floor $0.005 per successful paid call | ToolRouter credits |
ToolRouter does not replace Claude Team. For teams says so in the FAQ. If a founder asks “can we drop ChatGPT Team if we buy ToolRouter,” the answer is no.
Self-hosted MCP still has a cost: engineer time, keys in mcp.json, and no shared bill. GitGuardian counted 24,008 unique secrets in public MCP configs. That is not a line item. It is a cleanup cost.
ToolRouter team numbers (today)
From the live pricing page:
| Plan | Seat price | Included credits / seat / month | Seats | Audit log |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Team | $29 | $20 | Up to 25 | No |
| Business | $59 | $45 | Up to 100 | Yes |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom | Unlimited | Yes |
- Free tools stay free.
- Paid tools start at $0.005.
- Team members draw from one credit pool. Admins set per-member limits.
- Individual Lite is $9/month and Plus is $19/month if you are not on a team plan yet.
A five-person Team plan is $145/month in seats plus $100 of included credits (5 × $20). That is the catalog line, not Claude.
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What actually burns credits
| Work | Typical pattern | Cost shape |
|---|---|---|
| SEO audit, scrape, search, stock quote | Many skills are free or cheap | Often $0 |
| Image generation | Paid per image | Hits the $0.005 floor or the model price, whichever is higher |
| Image to video | Paid per clip, slower | The line item that empties a pool if nobody capped it |
| Transcription | Paid audio skill | Minutes of audio, not seats |
Ask the team to call list_models (or ask the assistant to check cost) before a video run. How to turn an image into video.
Cap the intern. Do not cap the catalog off.
Compared with “everyone brings their own keys”
Five people each putting an OpenAI or fal key into Cursor looks free. It is five cards, five surprise invoices, and five files that GitGuardian’s report says people commit by accident.
A shared catalog is one card and one offboarding. BYOK is still allowed on ToolRouter if a specialist insists on their own key. Default is the team pays once.
Zapier MCP meters tasks (two tasks per MCP call on their current public pricing). Composio meters tool calls on paid plans. Those are the right bills when the job is SaaS apps. They are the wrong comparison when the job is a specialist catalog. Best MCP tools for teams is the honest split.
A starter budget you can defend
For a 6-person startup that already pays Claude Team:
- Keep the Claude seats.
- Add ToolRouter Team: 6 × $29 = $174/month, $120 included credits.
- Set a per-person cap so video cannot spend the whole pool.
- Move to Business ($59/seat, audit log) when a customer asks who ran which tool, or when you pass ~10 people.
Setup: How to manage MCP for a team. Claude owners: How to add MCP on Claude Team.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is MCP itself free?
**The protocol is free.** Hosts, servers, and model calls are not. Your cost is seats plus usage.
Do free ToolRouter tools stay free on a team plan?
**Yes.** The seat pays for sharing, caps, and (on Business) the audit log. Free skills do not start charging because you added a teammate.
What if we only have two people?
**You can stay on individual Lite/Plus** until you want one bill and one offboarding switch. Team starts to win when the third person would have created a third key file.
Will video blow the budget?
**It can.** Cap the member, require a cost check, and keep image-to-video as an explicit allow. The catalog default can stay on; the spend cap is the brake.
