# Context7 MCP Context7 4.4.4: our test log

Canonical: https://theagenticweekly.com/tests/context7-mcp · Last verified: 2026-10-25 · Published: 2026-10-25 · Author: Agentic Weekly (operated independently from Texas, US) · Evidence: Tested by us on 2026-10-25. Local open-weight model, not the vendor's hosted models. A smoke test on a CPU-only box, not a benchmark.

> Context7 MCP 4.4.4 started locally in 462 ms but its tool calls go to a hosted API: resolve-library-id took about 1.2 s per call and returned React documentation matches.

## Result at a glance

Table: Context7 MCP test record

| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Result | Passed |
| Version tested | Context7 4.4.4 |
| Date and time | 2026-10-25, 22:39 CDT (America/Chicago) |
| Task | A small Python client written with the official MCP Python SDK (2.3.0) spawns the server as a child process over stdio, times the initialize handshake (cold start: spawn to initialize result), times one tools/list, then times 3 sequential tools/call requests (the count differs per test; this one used 3) and reports the median and 95th percentile. Numbers are milliseconds on the rig described on the methodology page. |
| Model used | none (no language model involved) |
| Hardware | Linux x86_64 virtual machine (Debian 13), 8 vCPU (Intel Xeon, 1 thread per core), 15 GiB RAM, no GPU |
| resolve-library-id (hosted lookup) | cold start 462 ms; tools/list 5.9 ms (2 tools); 3 x resolve-library-id: median 1201.3 ms, p95 1201.3 ms |

## What we found

- The local package is the thin client: it advertises 2 tools and forwards them to Upstash's hosted service, so the 1201.3 ms median (3 calls) includes a network round trip and the service's own work. This is not a local-only tool; documentation lookups leave your machine.
- The call resolved the library name 'react' with the query 'useEffect cleanup' and returned a list that began with the official React docs (Context7 library ID /reactjs/react.dev). We did not evaluate the quality of the documentation snippets themselves.

## What we ran, step by step

Table: Commands run, wall-clock time and exit code

| Step | Wall time | Exit code | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| npm install on Node 20.19.2 (cold) | 3.3 s | 0 | Resolved 4.4.4; 63 MB in 115 packages; load 3.16. |
| npm install on Node 24.22.1 (cold) | 2.8 s | 0 | Resolved 4.4.4; 63 MB in 115 packages; load 2.17. |
| Latency run: resolve-library-id (hosted lookup) | n/a | 0 | Context7 4.4.4 (protocol 2025-11-25). cold start 462 ms; tools/list 5.9 ms (2 tools); 3 x resolve-library-id: median 1201.3 ms, p95 1201.3 ms. Load 1.54. |

Exact commands (paths shortened)

```
# npm install on Node 20.19.2 (cold)
npm install --no-audit --no-fund --cache /tmp/npmcache @upstash/context7-mcp

# npm install on Node 24.22.1 (cold)
npm install --no-audit --no-fund --cache /tmp/npmcache @upstash/context7-mcp

# Latency run: resolve-library-id (hosted lookup)
node work/npm/context7-mcp/node_modules/.bin/context7-mcp
```

## Raw output (excerpts)

Output of the timed call (resolve-library-id (hosted lookup)), first 300 characters

```
resolve-library-id({"libraryName": "react", "query": "useEffect cleanup"})
Available Libraries:

- Title: React
- Context7-compatible library ID: /reactjs/react.dev
- Description: React.dev is the official documentation website for React, a JavaScript library for building user interfaces, providing guides, API references, and tutorials.
- Code Snippets: 4410
- Source Reput
```

## Gotchas and things that broke

- Unlike the other servers in our MCP tests, results depend on a third-party service and will vary with network and service state. No API key was used; rate limits for anonymous use were not tested.

## What we did not test

- Remote (HTTP) transport, authentication and concurrent clients: only local stdio with one client was measured.
- Large payloads: calls used tiny inputs, so these latencies are protocol and process overhead, not throughput.
- Anything about answer quality: no model was involved in the latency numbers.
- These are single smoke-test runs; it is not a benchmark. The machine was shared with other jobs.
- The second tool (fetching documentation by library ID) and API-key behaviour.

## Reproduce it

Versions change. These commands install whatever is latest on the day you run them unless a version is pinned, so expect different results later. The version we measured is in the table above.

```
npm install @upstash/context7-mcp
node node_modules/.bin/context7-mcp
```

## How to read this test

Every number on this page was measured on this one machine, which also ran other jobs, so timings are indicative and vary run to run. A pass means our small task worked once or as stated, a fail means it did not work as we ran it; neither says how the tool behaves with a vendor's frontier model, on a GPU, or at scale. Where a tool could not run without an account or a GPU, we say so instead of guessing.

See the [testing rig](https://theagenticweekly.com/methodology#testing-rig) for the hardware, the local model and the rules we follow, and the [test hub](https://theagenticweekly.com/tests) for every other test.

## Sources

- [Context7 repository](https://github.com/upstash/context7) (fetched 2026-10-25)

## Related

- [All test logs](https://theagenticweekly.com/tests)
- [Methodology and testing rig](https://theagenticweekly.com/methodology#testing-rig)
- [Study: MCP server startup and call latency over stdio](https://theagenticweekly.com/research/mcp-servers-latency-and-failures)
- [Context7 facts and sources](https://theagenticweekly.com/tools/context7)

## How to cite

Agentic Weekly, "Context7 MCP Context7 4.4.4: our test log", last updated 2026-10-25, https://theagenticweekly.com/tests/context7-mcp