frugal

Tool calls are the new tokens.

For most agentic workloads the tool bill exceeds the model bill. Frugal is an MCP server that routes every tool call your agent makes to the cheapest provider that returns a result — free / local first, paid only as fallback, premium only when you opt in.

Works with any model. One signed Go binary. Your keys. No account. Source-available (BUSL 1.1 → Apache 2.0).

frugal.sh · Strategy

Install

curl -fsSL https://frugal.sh/install | bash
frugal mcp install

The first command drops the binary in your $PATH. The second auto-detects Claude Desktop, Cursor, and Claude Code and merges frugal into each configured MCP server list.

Set your keys

BYOK. Frugal reads provider credentials from your environment:

# Search — frugal__search
export SEARXNG_URL=...           # free, self-hosted (also Marginalia free, no key)
export SERPER_API_KEY=...        # cheap paid
export YDC_API_KEY=...           # premium paid (You.com)

# Extract — frugal__extract (goreadability is free, no key)
export FIRECRAWL_API_KEY=...     # premium paid (JS-rendered pages)

# Browse — frugal__browse
export BROWSERLESS_TOKEN=...     # headless render

That's it. Restart your agent. frugal__search, frugal__extract, and frugal__browse show up in the tool picker (only the tools whose providers are configured get registered).

The rack-rate gap

Tool prices haven't fallen the way model prices have. You.com at $0.005/call is 5× Serper at $0.001/call. SearXNG, running on your own machine, is free.

Capability	Free / local	Cheap paid	Premium paid	Status
Search	SearXNG · Marginalia	Serper $0.001/call	You.com $0.005/call	shipping
Extract	go-readability (local)	—	Firecrawl $0.001/page	shipping
Browse	local Playwright (deferred)	Browserless $0.002/render	Browserbase	partial
Code exec	local Docker	E2B ~$0.10/hr (2 vCPU)	Modal	planned
Embeddings	nomic-embed-text, bge-large	text-embedding-3-small $0.02/1M tok	3-large, Voyage-3, Cohere	planned
Transcription	whisper.cpp	Deepgram Nova $0.0043/min	OpenAI Whisper $0.006/min	planned

Frugal walks the columns left to right. Each tool call goes to the leftmost configured provider that returns a result; you keep the gap.

What ships today

One MCP server, three tools, seven providers:

• frugal__search — routed across SearXNG (free, self-hosted), Marginalia (free, public), Serper ($0.001/call), and You.com ($0.005/call). Supports optional cache_ttl_seconds for lightweight in-process response caching.
• frugal__extract — routed across go-readability (free, pure-Go local Readability) and Firecrawl (~$0.001/page, JS-rendered).
• frugal__browse — Browserless (~$0.002/render, headless Chrome). Local Playwright deferred.
• Stdio + Streamable HTTP transports.
• HTTP transport supports bearer-token auth (FRUGAL_AUTH_TOKEN), per-IP rate limiting, and a /metrics endpoint (Prometheus text: frugal_calls_total{tool=,provider=} etc.).
• frugal mcp install writes the right config into Claude Desktop, Cursor, and Claude Code.

What's coming

• Phase 3 — embeddings, transcription, code execution, local chat models, semantic cache.
• Phase 4 — Frugal Cloud: hosted MCP endpoint for users who don't want to operate the local stack themselves.

Roadmap and rationale in STRATEGY.md.

From source

git clone https://github.com/brainsparker/frugal.git && cd frugal && make build

License

BUSL 1.1 — self-hosting and internal commercial use are permitted. Each release converts to Apache 2.0 four years after publication. Plain-English summary in LICENSE-BUSL-FAQ.md.

Security

Private vulnerability reports via GitHub Security Advisories. Full policy in SECURITY.md.