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MCP Goes Stateless and Lets Small Servers Run on Cloudflare Workers Free Tier

The July 28, 2026 spec removes server sessions and moves client data into per-request metadata, simplifying hosting for read-only MCP endpoints on Cloudflare Workers.

Overview

  • The Model Context Protocol published a stateless revision on July 28, 2026 that removes sessions, the Mcp-Session-Id header, and the initialize handshake so every request is self-contained.
  • Cloudflare updated its documentation to deprecate the McpAgent Durable Object pattern and now recommends stateless request handlers, aligning platform guidance with the new spec.
  • Independent measurements show read-only MCP servers can fit well under Cloudflare Workers’ 10 ms CPU-per-request free limit with worst measured CPU around 2 ms because Cloudflare excludes network wait time from CPU accounting.
  • Tools that do real computation such as templating or heavy parsing quickly exceed the free CPU cap and typically require the Workers Paid plan, which raises per-request CPU limits and adds larger monthly quotas.
  • Developers have released proof-of-concept servers and clients like mcp-explorer and datasette-mcp that validate the stateless design and highlight that MCP offers a more auditable, restricted tool surface than giving agents full shell or internet access.