Apify MCP Server

The Apify MCP Server is an open-source Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that bridges AI agents with Apify's ecosystem of ready-made scrapers, crawlers, and automation tools. It is available as a hosted endpoint at mcp.apify.com and as an npm package (@apify/actors-mcp-server) for local stdio use. The project is maintained by Apify, a Prague-based company founded in 2015, and is licensed under MIT.

What It Is

The Apify MCP Server implements the Model Context Protocol to expose Apify Actors as callable tools for AI assistants and agents. An Actor is a containerized, ready-made automation task — examples include scrapers for Google Maps, Instagram, Facebook, and Google Search, as well as a RAG Web Browser for general web retrieval. The server dynamically loads an Actor's input schema and presents it as a structured MCP tool, so the AI agent knows exactly what arguments to pass and what output to expect. The hosted server at mcp.apify.com supports OAuth and Streamable HTTP transport, making it connectable from clients like Claude.ai, Cursor, VS Code, ChatGPT, and Grok simply by pasting the URL.

Tool Architecture and Dynamic Discovery

The server ships with a default tool set and supports dynamic expansion at runtime:

• search-actors — searches Apify Store for relevant Actors
• fetch-actor-details — retrieves input schema, README, pricing, and output schema for a specific Actor
• call-actor — executes any Actor and returns run results
• get-actor-run / abort-actor-run — inspect or stop running Actor jobs
• get-dataset-items / get-key-value-store-record — retrieve structured output from Actor runs
• search-apify-docs / fetch-apify-docs — search and fetch Apify platform documentation

By default the server pre-loads the actors category, the docs category, and the apify/rag-web-browser Actor. Operators can narrow or expand the tool set via URL query parameters (hosted) or CLI flags (stdio), for example ?tools=apify/my-actor to expose only a single Actor with no discovery overhead.

Deployment Model

The server supports two deployment paths:

• Hosted (recommended): Connect any MCP-compatible client to https://mcp.apify.com using OAuth or a Bearer token. Supports the latest features including output schema inference for structured Actor results and rental Actors from Apify Store.
• Local stdio: Run npx @apify/actors-mcp-server with an APIFY_TOKEN environment variable. Suitable for Claude Desktop and command-line integrations. Note that rental Actors and some hosted-only features are not available in stdio mode.

The server also supports a UI mode (?ui=true) that enables interactive MCP Apps widget rendering in tool responses.

Agentic Payments

The server supports three payment paths for agents that operate without a pre-configured Apify account:

• AGI (agi.apify.com): The recommended path. An agent pays once via x402 or MPP and receives a prepaid, spend-capped Apify API token usable against any Actor.
• Direct x402: Pays with USDC on the Base blockchain per request, handled automatically by the mcpc CLI client. Limited to Pay Per Event Actors.
• Skyfire: Pays with PAY tokens via a Skyfire account. The agent passes a payment token in the Actor's input properties. Also limited to Pay Per Event Actors.

Update: v0.14.1

The latest release is v0.14.1, published on July 31, 2026. The repository (2,420 stars, 206 forks as of the last update) is actively maintained with pushes as recent as August 2026. A notable recent change is the removal of the legacy SSE transport (/sse endpoint) in favor of Streamable HTTP — clients previously using https://mcp.apify.com/sse must migrate to https://mcp.apify.com. The v2 configuration introduced a unified tools parameter that supersedes the older actors parameter while preserving backward compatibility.

MCP Client Compatibility

The server is tested against Claude Desktop, Claude.ai (web), Claude Code, ChatGPT, VS Code (Genie), Cursor, OpenCode, Kiro, and the Apify Tester MCP Client. A one-click .mcpb bundle file is available for clients that support the MCP bundle format. Docker Hub integration is also maintained via the docker/mcp-registry repository.