# CostBench Muse connector

From musedirectory.ai, the independent directory of Meta Muse connectors. Not affiliated with Meta.

## CostBench

Compare software pricing, uncover hidden costs, and find negotiation tactics for 3,390+ products.

- Record: https://musedirectory.ai/connector/costbench
- Category: Finance & Bills
- Developer: CostBench (https://costbench.com)
- Muse status: Extra setup. Not in Muse's Connectors list yet. Muse can still use it: its page gives you a request to paste into Muse.
- Health: Working, 2305ms, checked 2026-09-28T07:45:57Z
- Endpoint: https://costbench.com/mcp
- Auth: No account needed; Pricing: unknown
- Screening: Screened, no issues found (2026-09-24T12:25:52Z)
- Source: Found in the official MCP Registry (com.costbench/mcp) https://registry.modelcontextprotocol.io/v0/servers?search=com.costbench%2Fmcp

CostBench provides verified pricing data, hidden costs, contract terms, and total cost of ownership calculations for software products. Get sourced negotiation tips, price history, and side-by-side comparisons to make informed purchasing decisions.

Example request: "Show me the hidden costs and negotiation tips for Salesforce so I can understand the true cost before signing a contract."

How to connect: Not in Muse's Connectors list yet, but Muse can still use it. Paste this into Muse: "Use CostBench to help me. It is a free service with an MCP server at https://costbench.com/mcp. It does not need an API key. Ask me before you share anything with it." Muse asks before it shares anything with the app's site. Meta does not review apps used this way, so only use ones you trust. We tested this in the Muse app on September 24, 2026: Muse used an app's link directly this way and returned a live answer.

Tools:
- get_pricing: Full sourced pricing record for a software product: tiers, hidden costs, contract terms, market data, sentiment, negotiation tips, TCO scenarios, price history — every claim with its sources + a confidence/verification envelope.
- get_hidden_costs: The documented hidden/implementation/add-on costs of a product (uplifts, onboarding fees, overages), each with a sourced quote + date. The "what they don't tell you" answer.
- get_negotiation_tips: Sourced negotiation tactics for a product with success-likelihood (how to get a discount).
- get_price_history: Dated per-quarter snapshots of a product's pricing page. Returns observations, NOT a trend figure — CostBench does not publish one, because diffing snapshots across renamed/restructured plan lineups is ~90% measurement artifact.
- compare_software: Side-by-side pricing comparison of 2–4 products (starting price, enterprise tier, median annual cost, free tier, ratings).
- discover_software: Find software products by criteria (category, max price, free tier). Returns matching slugs to look up.
- calculate_tco: Total cost of ownership for a product and team size: sourced line items (licenses with price escalation, benchmark implementation), year-one + multi-year totals, effective per-seat cost. The defensible "true cost for an N-person team" answer.
- estimate_llm_cost: Estimate the cost of an LLM/API workload (input + output tokens) for a usage-priced provider (OpenAI, Anthropic, AWS Bedrock…) from its real rate card.
- get_price_changes: Recent software pricing changes CostBench detected against vendor pricing pages (increases, decreases, plan restructures) — dated, with before/after price bands and a source link. Filter by product slug, category, or lookback window. The "what changed lately" answer; each item li

Screening checks:
- MCP handshake: pass (Answered in 225ms)
- Domain against threat feeds (Cloudflare security DNS): pass (costbench.com not flagged)
- Published packages against the OSV malicious-package database: n/a (No npm or PyPI package published)
- Hidden instructions or invisible characters in tool text: pass (9 tools read, nothing found)
- Inputs asking for passwords, card numbers or seed phrases: pass (None found)
- Domain and redirects: pass (Domain registered 244 days ago)
- AI review of purpose and tool behavior: pass (No concerns)