MCP Time server mcp-time 2026.10.19: our test log

The MCP Time server 2026.10.19 started in 483 ms and answered get_current_time in 0.8 ms median.

By Agentic Weekly, operated independently from Texas, US · Published Oct 25, 2026 · Last updated Oct 26, 2026 (America/Chicago) · How we work

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.

Result at a glance

MCP Time server test record
Field	Value
Result	Passed
Version tested	mcp-time 2026.10.19
Date and time	2026-10-25, 22:37 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 30 sequential tools/call requests 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
get_current_time	cold start 483 ms; tools/list 2.3 ms (2 tools); 30 x get_current_time: median 0.8 ms, p95 2.2 ms

What we found

It exposes 2 tools (get_current_time, convert_time).

What we ran, step by step

Commands run, wall-clock time and exit code
Step	Wall time	Exit code	Notes
Install with uv (cold, no cache)	1.8 s	0	mcp-server-time 2026.10.19; 35 MB on disk; load 3.91.
Latency run: get_current_time	n/a	0	mcp-time 2026.10.19 (protocol 2025-11-25). cold start 483 ms; tools/list 2.3 ms (2 tools); 30 x get_current_time: median 0.8 ms, p95 2.2 ms. Load 2.38.

Exact commands (paths shortened)

# Install with uv (cold, no cache)
uv venv -q -p 3.13 work/pymcp/mcp-server-time && VIRTUAL_ENV=work/pymcp/mcp-server-time uv pip install --no-cache -q mcp-server-time

# Latency run: get_current_time
work/pymcp/mcp-server-time/bin/mcp-server-time

Raw output (excerpts)

Output of the timed call (get_current_time), first 300 characters

get_current_time({"timezone": "America/Chicago"})
{
  "timezone": "America/Chicago",
  "datetime": "2026-10-25T22:37:51-05:00",
  "day_of_week": "Sunday",
  "is_dst": true
}

Gotchas and things that broke

Python-based reference servers started in roughly 480 to 530 ms here against 150 to 360 ms for the Node ones; both include interpreter or runtime start.

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.

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.

VIRTUAL_ENV=.venv uv pip install mcp-server-time
.venv/bin/mcp-server-time

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 for the hardware, the local model and the rules we follow, and the test hub for every other test.

Notion MCP server: Notion MCP server 2.5.2 (@notionhq/notion-mcp-server) started over stdio in a median 316 ms and listed 24 tools in a median 16 ms; we did not make any authenticated call.
Playwright MCP: Playwright MCP 0.0.83 exposed 25 tools and navigated a headless Chrome to a local page in 40.5 ms median (cold start 383 ms).
Sentry MCP server: Sentry MCP server 0.42.0 (@sentry/mcp-server) started over stdio in a median 1134 ms and listed 9 tools in a median 13 ms; we did not make any authenticated call.
Supabase MCP server: Supabase MCP server 0.14.0 (@supabase/mcp-server-supabase) started over stdio in a median 468 ms and listed 19 tools in a median 363 ms; we did not make any authenticated call.
Chrome DevTools MCP: Chrome DevTools MCP 1.12.0 exposed 32 tools and opened a page in headless Chrome in 136.6 ms median; our first navigate_page call was rejected for a missing pageId.
Context7 MCP: 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.

All test logs · How we test

Sources

MCP reference servers repository (fetched 2026-10-25)

Markdown version for agents: /tests/mcp-server-time.md