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Merge pull request #20 from Joffref/majoffre/add-mcp-transport-comparison
Add MCP Hosting WG Transport comparison document
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# MCP Transports Pros/Cons
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> This document is intended as a preliminary proposal and does not represent an official statement for the MCP standard.
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> Date: Apr 18, 2025
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This document aims to provide a basis for evaluating the inclusion of new standard MCP transports by listing the advantages and disadvantages of each.
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## STDIO Transport
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| Category | Pros | Cons |
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|----------|------|------|
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| Client/Server Connection Management | Universal, language-agnostic subprocess APIs make spawning and wiring up stdin/stdout trivial. | Requires clients to manage lifecycle and crash recovery, adding complexity. |
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| Observability | stderr separation enables clean logging without polluting protocol data. | Lacks out-of-the-box tooling for stream capture and correlation without custom adapters. |
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| Authorization | Implicit local trust boundary via pipes means no exposed network port. | No built-in auth or ACLs; must implement custom authorization logic. |
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| Scalability | | Not suited for distributed or multi-tenant scenarios without an external dispatcher. |
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| Complexity within a Large-Scale Architecture | Deterministic startup/shutdown simplifies orchestration for CLI-first tools | Integration with observability and service discovery tools requires additional adapters. Plus, the overhead of spinning a process per client is huge. |
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## HTTP Stream Transport
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| Category | Pros | Cons |
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|----------|------|------|
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| Communication | Simplify client-server communication Handles 90% of the MCP use case with tools/list and tool/calls | |
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| Deployment | Can be deployed on the cloud easily. Compatibility with serverless functions | |
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| Flexibility | Choose between two modes. Best of both worlds | Implementation complexity on the server side |

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