MCP Public APIs

An MCP server that indexes the public-apis catalogue and lets an LLM query it by category, auth type, HTTPS support, CORS, and keyword — without browsing the README manually.

Why

Without this MCP, an LLM recommending a public API has to guess or ask the user to check manually. With it, the LLM can say:

"I need a Books API, HTTPS, no auth, CORS-enabled for your React app." → query_apis(category="Books", no_auth=True, https=True, cors="yes")

Tools

| Tool | Description | |---|---| | list_categories | Returns all available API categories (Animals, Finance, …) | | query_apis | Filters the index by keyword, category, auth, HTTPS, CORS | | update_index | Re-downloads the README and rebuilds the index |

query_apis parameters

| Parameter | Type | Description | |---|---|---| | keyword | str | Substring match on name or description | | category | str | Exact category (case-insensitive) | | auth | str | "apiKey", "OAuth", "" (none), etc. | | no_auth | bool | Shortcut: APIs that need no authentication | | https | bool | True = HTTPS only, False = HTTP only | | cors | str | "yes", "no", "unknown" |

Installation

cd MCP_PUBLIC_APIS
pip install -e .

Running

mcp-public-apis

Or add it to your MCP client config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "public-apis": {
      "command": "mcp-public-apis"
    }
  }
}

Development

pip install -e ".[dev]"
pytest

Data Source

The index is built from the raw README.md of public-apis/public-apis on GitHub, which lists ~1400 public APIs organised into ~80 categories. The schema mirrors the README table exactly:

name · url · description · auth · https · cors · category