About Stay Cost Brain
Stay Cost Brain is an MCP server that calculates tourist and hotel taxes for stays using dated information from official sources. It helps travelers and assistants estimate the tax for specific dates, guests, and places without presenting unresearched figures as facts.
Key features
- 01Night-by-night tax calculations
- 02Official sources and check dates
- 03Place-specific rates and exemptions
- 04Tax rules by season and stay type
- 05Links to live lodging prices
Use cases
- 01Estimate taxes for a planned hotel stay
- 02Check child exemptions or seasonal rules
- 03Review separate taxes in a destination
- 04Find lodging prices for travel dates
MCP support
Exposes tools to MCP clients for place coverage, stay tax calculations, local rules, and lodging-price links. The hosted Streamable HTTP endpoint requires no authentication.
Configuration
Remote servers need no local install. Pick your client, then copy the config or install in one click.
https://staycostbrain.com/mcpclaude mcp add --transport http com-staycostbrain-stay-cost-brain https://staycostbrain.com/mcp{"mcpServers":{"com-staycostbrain-stay-cost-brain":{"type":"http","url":"https://staycostbrain.com/mcp"}}}Open in Cursor{"servers":{"com-staycostbrain-stay-cost-brain":{"type":"http","url":"https://staycostbrain.com/mcp"}}}Open in VS Code{"mcpServers":{"com-staycostbrain-stay-cost-brain":{"type":"http","url":"https://staycostbrain.com/mcp"}}}{"mcpServers":{"com-staycostbrain-stay-cost-brain":{"serverUrl":"https://staycostbrain.com/mcp"}}}Run commands in a terminal; paste JSON into the client’s MCP config and restart. Servers that need sign-in will prompt on first connect.
Tools
Details
From the project README
Stay Cost Brain MCP server
Tourist and hotel taxes, for AI assistants. What a stay really adds on top of the room price: the tourist, city, occupancy or hotel tax, taken from each tax authority's own pages, regulations or official gazette, with the source and the date it was checked, and worked out night by night for the dates and guests.
Free. No API key. No login. Read-only.
MCP endpoint (streamable HTTP):
https://staycostbrain.com/mcp
Website: staycostbrain.com · Full data summary for AI readers: llms-full.txt
Why it exists
Booking sites show the room price. The tax on top is often charged at the hotel, differs by star rating, season and age, and in many places is stacked from state, regional and city parts. Stay Cost Brain keeps sourced, dated tables for 71 places in 18 countries (including 27 in the US) and answers with the amounts, so an assistant can say what a stay will really cost.
Tools
| Tool | What it answers |
|---|---|
get_capabilities | What is covered, how figures are sourced and dated, what it does not do |
list_places | Every researched place: headline rate, check date, re-check date, towns with their own tax |
tourist_tax | The tax for one stay, night by night: each tax separately, amount or range, nights charged, how it is paid, announced changes, source and date |
place_rules | Every rule for one place: rates by type of stay, seasons, caps, exemptions, status, sources |
hotels_link | A link to live hotel and rental prices for the dates and guests, where the person books (Stay22; Stay Cost Brain may earn a commission) |
Towns that haven't been researched return researched: false and no figure: nothing is estimated and presented as fact.
Example questions
- "How much hotel tax will I pay in New York City for 2 nights if the room costs $600 in total?"
- "What is the tourist tax for 3 nights in a 4-star hotel in Barcelona for 2 adults?"
- "Do children pay the tourist tax in Lisbon?"
- "Who is exempt from the tourist tax in Venice?"
- "Find hotels in Lisbon for 20 to 23 November for 2 adults."
Connect
Claude Code (this repository is a plugin)
/plugin marketplace add jimiwalters-cmyk/stay-cost-brain-mcp
/plugin install stay-cost-brain@stay-cost-brain
Or add the server directly:
claude mcp add --transport http stay-cost-brain https://staycostbrain.com/mcp
Claude (claude.ai / Claude Desktop)
Find Stay Cost Brain in the connectors directory, or Customize → Connectors → Add custom connector → URL
https://staycostbrain.com/mcp, no authentication.
Cursor
One click with Cursor installed: Add to Cursor (the button on that page). Or add to
mcp.json (this repository's mcp.json is the same entry):
{ "mcpServers": { "stay-cost-brain": { "url": "https://staycostbrain.com/mcp" } } }
Cline
Hosted server, nothing to clone or build. In Cline: MCP Servers → Remote Servers → name stay-cost-brain, URL
https://staycostbrain.com/mcp. Or in cline_mcp_settings.json:
{
"mcpServers": {
"stay-cost-brain": { "type": "streamableHttp", "url": "https://staycostbrain.com/mcp" }
}
}
Any other MCP client
{
"mcpServers": {
"stay-cost-brain": { "type": "http", "url": "https://staycostbrain.com/mcp" }
}
}
The same answers are available as plain JSON at https://staycostbrain.com/api/v1/<tool>.
Data and privacy
No account, nothing personal requested. The server receives only the tool arguments (place, dates, party size, room price). Privacy: staycostbrain.com/privacy · Terms: staycostbrain.com/terms · Support: [email protected]
Rate limit: 30 requests per 10 seconds per IP.
Licence
The files in this repository are Apache-2.0 (see LICENSE and NOTICE). The Stay Cost Brain name, logo, server, code and data are not covered.
Part of the Brain family: Car Rental Brain (car hire) and Airfare Brain (flight extras).
Comments
New to MCP?
From what the protocol is to installing your first server, these answers cover most first questions.
An open protocol that defines how AI applications connect to external tools and data in a uniform way. Clients talk to the model; MCP servers provide tools, resources and prompt templates. They exchange standard messages, so one server can be reused by many clients.