3.7When MCP Token Cost Is Justified

MCP's higher token cost buys you:

1. Structured page understanding — The accessibility tree gives the agent semantic knowledge about what's on the page (role, labels, relationships)
2. Iterative exploration — The agent can repeatedly query page structure to find elements
3. Rich error context — MCP returns structured errors with element state information
4. Session continuity — MCP maintains browser session state on the server side

For exploratory testing where you don't know what you're looking for, this is valuable. For scripted test automation where you know the selectors and flow, it's waste.