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Top MCPs for Claude Desktop
Claude Desktop was the first widely-available MCP client and remains the reference implementation — every MCP server is built and tested against it first. This is the curated ranking of MCPs for Claude Desktop in 2026, sorted by composite score and filtered to servers verified to load via claude_desktop_config.json.
How MCP works in Claude Desktop
Claude Desktop reads MCP servers from claude_desktop_config.json — open it with Settings → Developer → Edit Config. Each entry needs a command and args; secrets belong in the env block, never in args. After editing, fully quit Claude (not just close the window) and reopen — the hammer icon in the chat bar should show the connected servers.
Top picks for Claude Desktop
The curated starting stack — install these first.
Persistent knowledge graph memory across AI conversations.
Structured step-by-step reasoning for complex problem solving.
Up-to-date library docs pulled directly into your AI context.
Full GitHub API access: repos, PRs, issues, and code search.
Full browser automation: navigate, click, screenshot, and scrape.
All 142 MCPs compatible with Claude Desktop
Ranked by composite score. Top picks above are the curated starting stack; everything below is sorted by popularity, maintenance, and provenance.
Current time and IANA timezone conversion — the first-party MCP that tells an agent what time it actually is.
Persistent memory layer for AI agents — auto-summarised, cross-session recall.
Retrieve web pages and convert them to clean markdown.
Local Git operations: commit, diff, log, branch, and more.
Official Microsoft browser automation across Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit.
Run pre-built browser-automation Actors on managed infrastructure.
Google-published MCP server for databases — one Go binary speaks Postgres, MySQL, BigQuery, Spanner, AlloyDB, Snowflake, ClickHouse, MongoDB, Redis, and more.
Query dashboards, Prometheus/Loki datasources, alerts, and incidents from an AI agent — official.
AI-optimized web search with cleaned, citation-ready results.
Scrape, crawl, extract structured data, and search the web from an AI agent.
Search, scrape, and unblock any public web page from an AI agent — official Web Unlocker MCP.
Run `fly mcp server` to expose flyctl operations to AI agents.
Neural web search and page fetch for AI agents — official remote MCP at mcp.exa.ai/mcp.
Look up Terraform Registry providers and modules, and manage HCP Terraform workspaces from an AI agent.
Query and inspect MongoDB collections from Claude, Cursor, and VS Code.
Inspect AWS resources, read CloudWatch logs, and audit IAM from an AI agent.
Manage Azure resources across 40+ services from an AI agent — Microsoft's official MCP.
Build and validate n8n workflows with an agent that knows all 2,000+ n8n nodes — most-installed n8n MCP.
Search, ask, research, and reason via the official Perplexity MCP.
Inspect keys, run commands, and debug Redis from an AI agent.
Vision-first browser automation built for AI agents.
Drive Azure DevOps repos, pull requests, work items, and pipelines from an AI agent — Microsoft official.
Manage payments, customers, and subscriptions through Stripe.
Read channel messages, post replies, and trigger meetings from MS Teams.
Query GA4 reports, funnels, and realtime data from an AI agent.
Manage Workers, R2 buckets, DNS, and edge policies on Cloudflare.
Drive a live Blender session from an agent — create objects, set materials, run Python, render.
Query ClickHouse and ClickHouse Cloud columnar warehouses from an AI agent.
Manage Bitbucket Cloud repos, pipelines, and pull requests from an AI agent.
Read, write, and manage GCS buckets and objects from an AI agent — official Google MCP, local or remote.
Query Google Ads campaigns, metrics, and account performance with GAQL — Google's official MCP.
Full Supabase access: database, auth, storage, and edge functions.
Inspect Figma designs, components, and variables from an agent.
Hosted, isolated Chromium runtime for AI agents that need a fresh browser per task.
AI-native browser automation: act, observe, and extract in plain English.
Send transactional and broadcast emails via the official Resend MCP.
Search indices, inspect mappings, and run queries against Elasticsearch from an AI agent.
Production-grade Postgres MCP with index advice, EXPLAIN, and health checks.
Open-source vector search with payload filtering, self-hostable or managed.
Official Mapbox MCP — geocoding, directions, isochrones, search, and tiles across the Mapbox API surface.
Scrape any URL, render JavaScript, and reach geo-restricted data — official Oxylabs Web Scraper MCP.
Full GitLab API access: repos, MRs, issues, pipelines, and registries.
Triage errors, inspect traces, and query events from Sentry.
Manage Jira, Confluence, and Compass via the official Atlassian Rovo MCP.
Live SERP, keyword, backlink, and on-page SEO data for an AI agent.
Inspect and manage Kubernetes clusters through kubectl-equivalent tools, with a non-destructive mode.
Read, write, and search across Notion pages, databases, and blocks.
Read and write notes in your local Obsidian vault.
Local-first agent memory as plain Markdown — a semantic knowledge graph you and the agent can both read.
2,800+ apps and managed OAuth via Pipedream's hosted MCP at mcp.pipedream.com.
In-process analytical SQL over files and Parquet from an AI agent.
Manage Droplets, App Platform, Kubernetes, and Spaces from an AI agent.
Score npm, PyPI, Go, and Maven dependencies for supply-chain and vulnerability risk before an agent installs them.
Managed vector database for semantic search and retrieval in AI agents.
Manage Heroku apps, dynos, add-ons, and Postgres from an AI agent.
Ad-free, high-quality web search and page-to-markdown extraction from an AI agent.
Official Salesforce MCP — SOQL queries, metadata deploy/retrieve, Apex tests, and org management from AI clients.
Real-time web search with privacy-focused results.
Ask natural-language questions across Microsoft 365 Copilot data.
Run read-only MySQL queries and inspect schemas from an AI agent.
Send messages and read channel history from a Telegram bot in an agent.
Official Plaid MCP — developer sandbox tooling and dashboard diagnostics, not a live bank-data connector.
Open-source agentic browser automation that handles login walls and CAPTCHAs.
Outlook mail and calendar, Teams, OneDrive and Excel through one Graph API server.
Official Xero MCP — invoices, contacts, bank transactions, and accounting from an agent.
Geocoding, place search, directions, and travel times from Google Maps.
AI-driven task management and decomposition for long-running agent projects.
Manage Mailgun messaging, domains, webhooks, and analytics from an AI agent.
Turn Make.com on-demand scenarios into agent-callable tools — official MCP.
Send transactional email from an AI agent — verified deliverability, audit-friendly.
Query webpages with structured natural language — selectors written for you.
Inject secrets from Doppler into agent workflows without exposing values in chat.
Read and send Slack messages, manage channels and threads.
Read and post to Discord channels — community management for AI agents.
Embedded and hosted vector database for AI agents — open source, zero-ops.
Manage subscriptions, transactions, products, prices, and financial reports on Paddle — official MCP.
Process payments and manage orders, catalog, inventory, and bookings on Square — official MCP.
Read and create events in Apple Calendar via CalDAV from any MCP client.
Read dynamic and static secrets from HashiCorp Vault inside agent workflows.
Trigger Make scenarios and inspect runs from an AI agent.
Capture context and decisions across sessions — durable agent memory in markdown.
Open-source SAST scanning against custom rules from an AI agent.
Hosted Chromium with proxies and anti-bot evasion for AI agents.
Pipedrive MCP — search deals, contacts, organizations, and activities across the Pipedrive REST API.
Backlinks, keyword research, and rank tracking from the official Ahrefs remote MCP.
Read, create, and manage events across Google Calendar — via Google's official remote MCP or a self-hosted community server.
Send email and inspect deliverability via SendGrid from an AI agent.
Local SQLite database access with full read/write support.
Send SMS, WhatsApp, and voice calls from an AI agent via Twilio.
Query Google BigQuery datasets from Claude, Cursor, and VS Code.
Route one prompt across 300+ LLMs with a single API key.
Read products, orders, and inventory from your Shopify store.
Anthropic's reference Postgres MCP — archived July 2025 and superseded by Postgres MCP Pro or the Supabase MCP.
Run QuickBooks Online accounting from an agent — invoices, bills, payments, and financial reports.
Inspect deployments, logs, and project state on Vercel from an AI agent.
Create invoices, capture orders, issue refunds, and track disputes on PayPal — official MCP.
Built-in MCP for Inngest functions, events, runs, and docs — zero auth, zero config.
Fire IFTTT applets via webhooks from an AI agent. Community MCP wrapper archived; IFTTT itself is unaffected.
Turn a vague goal into a dependency-tracked task graph an agent can execute step by step.
Expose 8,000+ Zapier integrations as tools your AI agent can call.
Register and manage Name.com domains via the official MCP, auto-generated from their OpenAPI.
Inspect schemas and run SQL against a Snowflake account from an AI agent.
Inject 1Password secrets into an AI agent's tool calls without exposing them in chat.
Official Foursquare Places MCP — POI search, GeoTagging, and rich place metadata across 100M+ places.
Official Attio MCP — natural-language CRM control across records, lists, and notes via OAuth.
Query Search Console clicks, impressions, and queries from an AI agent.
Create records, update deals, and run Zoho CRM actions from an AI agent — official Zoho MCP.
Manage leads, contacts, opportunities, and tasks in Close from an AI agent — official scoped MCP.
Pull keyword, backlink, traffic, and competitor data into an AI agent — official Semrush MCP.
Search conversations, contacts, companies, and help articles in Intercom from an AI agent — official MCP.
Search, inspect, and run Hugging Face models and datasets from an agent.
Run any open-source model on Replicate from inside an AI agent.
Scan code and dependencies for vulnerabilities from an AI coding assistant. Standalone MCP package archived; Snyk itself remains current via its IDE integrations.
Trigger and manage n8n workflows from an AI agent. Community MCP wrapper archived; n8n itself is unaffected.
Open-source workflow automation — trigger and manage from an AI agent. Community MCP wrapper archived; Activepieces itself is unaffected.
Self-hosted Git server — manage repos, issues, and PRs from an AI agent.
Search and read Google Drive files from an AI agent (archived reference implementation).
Browse, search, and Q&A across Box content from an AI agent — official remote MCP.
Official HubSpot MCP server — CRM contacts, deals, and meeting scheduling from Claude or Cursor.
Spin up Railway projects, services, and deploys via remote MCP with OAuth.
Send, read, search, and label Gmail from an AI agent — community MCP with auto-OAuth.
Cross-repo code search, navigation, and Deep Search via the official Sourcegraph MCP.
Enterprise iPaaS — trigger Workato recipes from an AI agent.
Official Fireflies remote MCP — query meeting transcripts, AI summaries, and action items via OAuth or API key.
Official Fathom remote MCP — access meeting recordings, transcripts, summaries, and webhooks from any MCP client.
Manage Linear issues, projects, and cycles from AI context.
Manage Porkbun domains, DNS, DNSSEC, and SSL — read-only by default. Community MCP repository archived; Porkbun itself is unaffected.
Official Cal.com hosted MCP — AI agents book, reschedule, and query availability across 34 tools via OAuth 2.1, no local install.
Anthropic-verified Fellow Connector — query meeting notes, transcripts, action items, and calendar events from Claude.
Secure cloud sandboxes for executing AI-generated code — npm MCP package archived; vendor recommends the hosted E2B platform.
Self-hosted Slack alternative — read and post from an AI agent.
Vector database with first-class hybrid (vector + keyword) and modular embeddings (MCP server archived — package no longer published).
Multi-model orchestration — let Claude consult Gemini, GPT, and o-series as sub-agents. Upstream community repository archived; no further maintenance.
Deploy and manage Render web services, static sites, cron jobs, and Postgres from an AI agent. Official MCP server is archived; Render platform is unaffected.
Real-time and forecast weather data via the OpenWeatherMap API.
Official hosted MCP for booking-link scheduling — share availability without exposing the raw calendar.
FAQ: MCP in Claude Desktop
Which MCP should I install first in Claude Desktop?
Filesystem. It is the canonical starting point: it lets Claude read and write files in directories you allow, which unlocks the "use Claude with my codebase" workflow that most people want from MCP. Add Memory and Sequential Thinking next — they are zero-config and immediately useful across every conversation.
How do I add an MCP to Claude Desktop?
Open Settings → Developer → Edit Config. Add the server under mcpServers (each MCP detail page on this site has a copy-paste snippet pre-formatted for Claude Desktop). Save the file, then fully quit and reopen Claude — Reload Window is not enough.
Why are my MCP servers not showing up after I edit the config?
Three common causes. (1) You did not fully quit Claude — quit the app, do not just close the window. (2) The JSON is malformed — paste it into a linter; a single missing comma breaks the whole config. (3) The MCP failed to start — check Settings → Developer → "Open Logs" for the actual error from the server process.
Can Claude Desktop use remote (HTTPS) MCP servers?
Yes. Claude Desktop supports both stdio and remote-HTTP MCP transports. Stdio is the default for community MCPs; remote is how official integrations like Notion, Linear, and Sentry connect. Both kinds are configured in the same claude_desktop_config.json — just check each MCP's detail page for the right transport.
Is MCP support the same in Claude Desktop and Claude Code?
The protocol is identical, but the configuration paths differ. Claude Desktop reads claude_desktop_config.json (per-user, GUI-managed). Claude Code reads .mcp.json (per-project, CLI-managed) plus ~/.claude.json (per-user CLI). An MCP that works in one will work in the other; the only thing that changes is where you put the config.







