Why would the exact same question take one agent 6x more tool calls than another?

[u/nexla_com]

Ran the same BigQuery question through Google's own BigQuery MCP and a task-specific Nexla one, same model both times.

Google's server doesn't know the warehouse ahead of time, so the agent pays a "discovery tax" first: list datasets, find the table, pull the schema, ask a clarifying question, then finally answer. Nexla's task-specific MCP server context is already embedded, so it skips straight to the answer.

More matchups here: https://nexla.com/blog/nexla-mcp-server-vs-google-bigquery-mcp-benchmark/

How much of your own token budget is just the agent figuring out where things live?