A practical guide to choosing between a free tier, per-call pricing and a subscription for a paid MCP server, and how to test a price before you commit. No made-up benchmarks: the numbers you need come from your own costs and usage.
Before picking a model, work out what one tool call costs you: hosting, upstream APIs, model tokens, data. If a call costs real money, every pricing model has to cover it with margin. If calls are nearly free, you have room for a generous free tier and simple flat pricing.
Most MCP servers today are free, and a free tier is how users find out whether yours is worth paying for. Make it useful on its own: a monthly call cap, or a subset of tools. Size the cap from your costs so free users can't run you into the ground. A per-key monthly quota enforces the cap; over the limit, the server returns a clear "over quota" error the user can act on.
For a first paid version: a free tier with a monthly cap, plus one paid plan with a higher cap. Add per-call overage or extra tiers only once you see real usage. Changing prices is easier when each customer has their own key, because you can move one key to a new quota without touching anyone else.
Plug your expected calls and price into the revenue calculator to see creator take under 85/15 (Stevens Keys' planned rate), 80/20 or your own split. Marketplaces typically keep 15–20%; see the monetization FAQ for published splits.
Gate your server with one validation call (code for your stack in the snippet generator), then follow Sell API access with per-key billing in 10 minutes.
Honest status: Stevens Keys is in preview (test mode). Keys, quotas, metering and revocation work today. Taking payments and payouts (Stripe Connect) are not live, so for now you collect payment yourself. New accounts are verified manually during early access.
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