Network and Systems Performance Characterization of MCP-Enabled LLM Agents

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the performance and cost implications of using MCP in LLM interactions, highlighting trade-offs and proposing optimizations for efficiency and robustness.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive measurement-based analysis of MCP-enabled LLM interactions, revealing key trade-offs and suggesting practical optimizations.

Findings

MCP interactions increase token usage and costs significantly.

Parallel tool calls and task abort mechanisms improve efficiency.

Trade-offs exist between capability, performance, and cost.

Abstract

Model Context Protocol (MCP) has recently gained increased attention within the AI community for providing a standardized way for large language models (LLMs) to interact with external tools and services, significantly enhancing their capabilities. However, the inclusion of extensive contextual information, including system prompts, MCP tool definitions, and context histories, in MCP-enabled LLM interactions, dramatically inflates token usage. Given that LLM providers charge based on tokens, these expanded contexts can quickly escalate monetary costs and increase the computational load on LLM services. This paper presents a comprehensive measurement-based analysis of MCP-enabled interactions with LLMs, revealing trade-offs between capability, performance, and cost. We explore how different LLM models and MCP configurations impact key performance metrics such as token efficiency, monetary cost, task completion times, and task success rates, and suggest potential optimizations, including enabling parallel tool calls and implementing robust task abort mechanisms. These findings provide useful insights for developing more efficient, robust, and cost-effective MCP-enabled workflows.