How much does a custom MCP server cost in 2026? | Portkeel
A custom MCP server costs $2,000 to build and $250 per month to maintain for an internal system with up to eight tools. A remote, OAuth-secured product server with up to fifteen tools is $4,500 plus $700 per month. Multi-system, SSO or compliance builds start at $8,000 plus $1,000 per month. I checked every agency I could find; almost none publish a number, which is why numeric answers to this question get cited so heavily.
The short answer, with numbers
Two figures anchor everything: a one-time build fee, and a monthly retainer. The build buys a scoped, tested server. The retainer buys someone who migrates it when the spec revises, which since 2026-07-28 is not optional.
What drives the price
| Adder | Rough add |
|---|---|
| Each write tool | $350 |
| Each extra read tool | $180 |
| OAuth 2.1 + multi-tenant | $900 |
| Deploy to your infra | $600 |
The 24-month total
The number that matters for a decision is not the build fee, it is the two-year total, because the retainer compounds and the migrations are real work. A product server runs about $21,300 across 24 months with migrations included. A contractor rebuild each revision runs about $6,400 per rebuild, and the revisions do not ask your permission.
What “cheap” costs later
The cheapest build is the one nobody maintains, and it is also the most expensive, because it fails silently inside a tool your customers trust. If you are weighing doing it yourself, the build-vs-buy framework has the honest version, and the “is MCP dead” post covers whether it is worth building at all this year.
The full rate card, the adders and the terms are on the pricing page.