Binary vs JSON for MCP: I Went Looking

Sat, 30 May 2026 13:30:00 +0000

Protobuf beats JSON on CPU and memory. Apache TinkerPop’s GraphBinary, same story over GraphSON - I’m living that migration at work, and we’re already seeing memory pressure ease. The tradeoff is old: text is readable but costs CPU and bytes, and past a certain payload size that cost outweighs the convenience.

I wanted to go looking for that. My first thought was the Language Server Protocol - but LSP is a decade old: settled, widely shipped, and with little appetite for changing the bytes on its wire.

MessagePack on Golden Hex

Binary vs JSON for MCP: I Went Looking