Model Context Protocol (MCP)

You can build and deploy Model Context Protocol (MCP) ↗ servers on Cloudflare.

What is the Model Context Protocol (MCP)?

Model Context Protocol (MCP) ↗ is an open standard that connects AI systems with external applications. Think of MCP like a USB-C port for AI applications. Just as USB-C provides a standardized way to connect your devices to various accessories, MCP provides a standardized way to connect AI agents to different services.

MCP Terminology

• MCP Hosts: AI assistants (like Claude ↗ or Cursor ↗), AI agents, or applications that need to access external capabilities.
• MCP Clients: Clients embedded within the MCP hosts that connect to MCP servers and invoke tools. Each MCP client instance has a single connection to an MCP server.
• MCP Servers: Applications that expose tools, prompts ↗, and resources ↗ that MCP clients can use.

Remote vs. local MCP connections

The MCP standard supports two modes of operation:

• Remote MCP connections: MCP clients connect to MCP servers over the Internet, establishing a long-lived connection using HTTP and Server-Sent Events (SSE), and authorizing the MCP client access to resources on the user's account using OAuth.
• Local MCP connections: MCP clients connect to MCP servers on the same machine, using stdio ↗ as a local transport method.

Get Started

Go to the Getting Started guide to learn how to build and deploy your first remote MCP server to Cloudflare.