--- title: "Does GSC PAP use fewer tokens than calling the Search Console API directly? · GSC PAP" source: https://gscpap.com/faq/token-usage-vs-search-console-api updated: 2026-10-22 --- [All questions](https://gscpap.com/faq) Limits & Pricing # Does GSC PAP use fewer tokens than calling the Search Console API directly? By the [GSC PAP team](https://gscpap.com/about) · Updated October 22, 2026 Yes, about a third fewer. We measured it on 1,000 real rows from three different properties, serialising the same rows two ways: the shape the Search Console API returns, and the compact format our server sends. The raw API response came to 34,044, 34,535 and 36,237 tokens. The same data from GSC PAP came to 22,933, 23,260 and 23,975. That is 33 to 34% fewer tokens for identical numbers, measured with tiktoken cl100k_base. The saving is smaller than a byte count suggests, and the difference is worth knowing if you are comparing MCP servers. The same payload shrinks 57% in bytes but only 34% in tokens, because JSON's punctuation is nearly free to tokenise while the text inside it costs the same either way. Any comparison quoting a percentage off the response size is overstating what you get back in context. We had this wrong on our own admin dashboard, measured against a pretty-printed baseline, and it showed roughly double the real benefit until we remeasured. Where it matters is the responses big enough to crowd out the conversation itself. At a thousand rows the raw shape costs around 36,000 tokens and ours around 24,000, so a 200,000-token context holds five of those responses instead of eight. The format is a per-tool operator setting rather than something you configure: we default to the shape every client understands, and switch individual tools to a compact one once it has been measured on production traffic. ## Related questions [All questions](https://gscpap.com/faq) [ Limits & Pricing ### Is GSC PAP free? What are the limits? Yes, GSC PAP is completely free during the public preview (v0.x). There is no credit card required, no trial expiration, and no premium feature gate. The only limits are technical ones to protect the service: 60 MCP tool calls per minute and 1,000 per hour per user. These limits are generous - typical AI assistant usage is 5-20 calls per question, so you can ask hundreds of questions per hour without hitting them. ](https://gscpap.com/faq/is-gsc-pap-free)[ Limits & Pricing ### How far back does my data go? Google Search Console itself only retains the most recent 16 months of data. Anything older drops off Google's side and cannot be recovered, even with API access - this is a hard limit Google enforces on every Search Console user, including direct users of the official Google Search Console UI. ](https://gscpap.com/faq/how-far-back-does-my-data-go)[ Setup ### Which AI clients support GSC PAP? GSC PAP is exposed as an MCP (Model Context Protocol) server. Any AI client that speaks MCP can connect. We have setup guides for Claude Desktop, Cursor, Claude Code (the Anthropic CLI), Claude.ai Connectors, OpenAI Codex CLI, VS Code with GitHub Copilot, Gemini CLI, Windsurf, Zed, JetBrains AI Assistant and Continue, plus direct HTTP for custom agents. See /integrations for each one. ](https://gscpap.com/faq/which-ai-clients-are-supported) ### Search Console + GA4 + PageSpeed in chat 36 tools across 9 categories let Claude, Cursor, and Claude Code answer SEO questions inline with whatever you're working on. [Tour the tools](https://gscpap.com/tools) **No GCP project. No Python. No JSON files.** No GCP project, no Python, no JSON files. Sign in with Google to start. [Sign in with Google](https://app.gscpap.com/login) Did this answer your question? If not, email [support@gscpap.com](mailto:support@gscpap.com) and we will revise.