Does it need an API key or account?

No. The Time server runs locally over stdio and computes everything from the host system clock and the IANA timezone database. There is no API key, no network call, and no account to create.

How do I tell it which timezone to use?

Pass an IANA timezone name such as America/New_York, Europe/London, or Asia/Tokyo. If you omit it, get_current_time uses the auto-detected system timezone. You can override the default at launch with the --local-timezone argument.

Does it handle daylight saving time correctly?

Yes — conversions use the IANA timezone database, which encodes DST rules per zone. This is the main reason to use it instead of letting the model do offset arithmetic, which gets DST boundaries wrong.

Is this an official server?

Yes. Time is one of the active first-party reference servers in the modelcontextprotocol/servers repository maintained by Anthropic, alongside Fetch, Filesystem, Git, Memory, and Sequential Thinking.

With uv installed, run uvx mcp-server-time (no separate install step). Or pip install mcp-server-time and run python -m mcp_server_time. Then add it to your client config as an stdio server.

Time

Name: Top MCPs — curated MCP directory
Creator: Top MCPs
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Current time and IANA timezone conversion — the first-party MCP that tells an agent what time it actually is.

Score 96(?)Anthropic (modelcontextprotocol)MIT 84kVerified Jun 16, 2026Top MCPs for Maps, Location & Weather →

Install View on GitHub

Quick answer

What it does

Exposes two tools — get_current_time (current time for a given IANA timezone, or the auto-detected system zone) and convert_time (convert a 24-hour time from a source IANA zone to a target zone). Timezones are passed as IANA names (e.g. America/New_York, Asia/Tokyo).

Best for

Giving an agent the current time
Cross-timezone meeting math
Travel arrival-time reasoning
Stamping "now" into logs or notes

Not for

Recurring-event scheduling
Holiday/business-hours calendars

Setup recipe

Pick your client, then follow the three steps.

Install

claude_desktop_config.jsonjson

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "time": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": [
        "mcp-server-time"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Paste under mcpServers. Fully quit and reopen Claude after editing.

CLI or .mcp.jsonshell

claude mcp add time -- uvx mcp-server-time

Run from your repo. Commit .mcp.json to share with your team.

.cursor/mcp.jsonjson

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "time": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": [
        "mcp-server-time"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Global path: ~/.cursor/mcp.json. Reload window after editing.

.vscode/mcp.jsonjsonc

{
  "servers": {
    "time": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": [
        "mcp-server-time"
      ]
    }
  }
}

VS Code uses the "servers" key (not "mcpServers").

~/.codeium/windsurf/mcp_config.jsonjson

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "time": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": [
        "mcp-server-time"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Open via Cascade → hammer icon → Configure.

cline_mcp_settings.jsonjson

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "time": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": [
        "mcp-server-time"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Open via the Cline sidebar → MCP Servers → Edit.

~/.continue/config.jsonjson

{
  "experimental": {
    "modelContextProtocolServers": [
      {
        "transport": {
          "type": "stdio",
          "command": "uvx",
          "args": [
            "mcp-server-time"
          ]
        }
      }
    ]
  }
}

Continue uses modelContextProtocolServers with a transport block.

~/.codex/config.tomlshell

# ~/.codex/config.toml
[mcp_servers.time]
command = "uvx"
args = [
  "mcp-server-time",
]

Codex uses TOML. Each server is a [mcp_servers.<name>] subtable.

~/.config/zed/settings.jsonjsonc

{
  "context_servers": {
    "time": {
      "command": {
        "path": "uvx",
        "args": [
          "mcp-server-time"
        ]
      }
    }
  }
}

Zed calls them "context_servers". Settings live-reload on save.

ChatGPT → Apps directorynone

Time doesn't ship a hosted HTTPS endpoint today. ChatGPT supports remote MCP servers only — to use this server in ChatGPT you'll need to deploy it to a public HTTPS URL first (e.g. via Cloudflare Workers or Vercel) or wait for an official remote build.

2
Set required secrets
No credentials required — this MCP runs over stdio without authentication.
3
Try a minimum working prompt
Find a meeting slot that works across timezones
Use the time MCP. It is 9:00 AM in America/Los_Angeles. What time is that in Europe/Berlin and Asia/Tokyo? Then suggest a single 30-minute slot in the next few hours that falls within 9am-6pm local time for all three.
Tested with: Claude Desktop, Cursor.

Tools & permissions

Tool	Description	Args	Side effects
`get_current_time`	Get the current time in a specific IANA timezone (or the auto-detected system timezone).	timezone?: string	Read
`convert_time`	Convert a 24-hour time from a source IANA timezone to a target IANA timezone.	source_timezone: string, time: string, target_timezone: string	Read

Security & scope

Access scope: Read-only
Sandbox: Local stdio process. Reads the host system clock and the bundled IANA timezone database. No filesystem writes, no network access, no credentials.
Gotchas: Returns the host machine clock — if the host clock is wrong, the answer is wrong. It is not an NTP time-sync service.
Timezone names must be valid IANA identifiers; abbreviations like "EST" or "PST" are not accepted.

Agent prompt pack

— copy into Claude, Cursor, or ChatGPT.

Paste into Claude, Cursor, or ChatGPT. Edit the [brackets] before sending.

Recommend the best MCP servers for [task: e.g. maps, location & weather work] in [client: Claude].

Constraints:
- Prefer tools that are [official | open-source | read-only] — pick what matters for my use case.
- Exclude MCPs that require [e.g. a paid plan, OAuth-only flows, remote-only transport].
- Return at most 3 picks, ranked.

For each pick include:
1. One-sentence rationale.
2. The ready-to-paste install snippet for my client.
3. Any required secrets I need to create before installing.

Cross-check the top-mcps.com listing: https://top-mcps.com/top-mcps-for-maps-location-weather

Compare Time against a real alternative. Swap the second MCP in [brackets] if you want a different match.

Compare Time MCP vs [Google Maps MCP] for the following job: [describe the job, e.g. "let an agent create GitHub issues on bug triage"].

Judge them on:
- Setup time and complexity (what a new user hits first).
- Auth model (none / API key / OAuth 2.1) and credential risk.
- Transport (stdio / Streamable HTTP / SSE) and where the server runs.
- Required secrets and the blast radius if they leak.
- Operational risk in an unattended agent loop.
- Which one is "good enough" for a weekend prototype vs. production.

End with one sentence: which should I pick for my scenario, which is: [my scenario].

References:
- https://top-mcps.com/mcp/time
- top-mcps.com listing for Google Maps

Asks the agent to install and verify. Works inside Claude Code, Cursor Agent, Codex CLI.

Install the Time MCP server for my [client: Claude] at the default config path for that client.

Use the exact install snippet published at https://top-mcps.com/mcp/time (fetch https://top-mcps.com/mcp/time.json for the canonical server.json if you can read URLs).

Before finishing:
1. Create the required secrets () and put them in the appropriate env block — do not hard-code them.
2. Restart or reload the client so it picks up the new server.
3. Verify the server is connected (green / running state) and at least one tool is listed.
4. If anything fails, read the client's MCP logs and report the exact error — do not silently retry.

Confirm when done and list the tools the server now exposes.

Frequently asked questions

What changed

— 2 updates tracked.

Jun 16, 2026
Refreshed install snippets and fact sheet; verified for 2026.
Dec 5, 2024
Initial directory listing.

More Maps, Location & Weather MCPs

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