MCP Connectors

Vital signs

Why it's on the table

On the table, MCP Connectors (Mc) is seat 12 of 58, in the Agents & Automation family. It is an emerging element — the job is real and here to stay, but the leaderboard still changes quarterly. Choose for this quarter, hold loosely, and watch the changelog. It is marked essential: a company that leaves this seat empty is running with a gap that compounds. The price of entry is zero, which makes trying it a decision that needs no meeting.

MCP Connectors: the top 5 — v2026.Q3

Edition v2026.Q3 · ranking, pricing and status verified 2026-08-06.

1. 1MCP RegistryMCP project / Agentic AI Foundation (Linux Foundation)

   Free · open API · Apache-licensed codebase

   Best for Publishing your server once and being discoverable everywhere — the canonical metadata layer every marketplace and client syncs from.

   The only index with standing: backed by Anthropic, GitHub, PulseMCP and Microsoft, namespace-verified via DNS/GitHub OIDC, and designed as a meta-registry that downstream aggregators (Smithery, Glama, PulseMCP, GitHub) consume hourly. Since MCP's donation to the Linux Foundation's Agentic AI Foundation (Dec 9, 2025) it is neutral infrastructure, not a vendor catalog.

   Watch Still 'preview' as of Aug 2026 — no durability guarantees, breaking changes allowed. It solves discovery, not trust: no security scanning (delegated downstream), and CI/CD re-publishing bloated it to tens of millions of duplicate version entries over ~1,700 unique packages (SafeDep, Dec 2025). Deliberately machine-facing — humans browse the aggregators instead.

   Launched in preview Sep 8, 2025; still flagged preview with possible breaking changes as of Aug 2026 [src] · ~3,012 first-party server entries; only 8.5% use OAuth, 53% static API keys (Mar 2026) [src] · 64.7M registry entries for ~1,691 unique underlying packages — CI/CD duplication bloat (Dec 20, 2025) [src]
   Site →Docs →

2. 2SmitheryClavia, Inc.

   Hobby free (50k RPCs/mo, 3 namespaces) · Pay-as-you-go from 100k RPCs · Custom w/ SLA; publishing always free

   Best for Developers who want the app-store experience — hosted remote servers, managed OAuth/credentials/sessions, plus a growing catalog of reusable agent skills.

   The most complete developer surface in the category: 13,942+ MCPs with live per-server metrics (call volume, uptime, success rate), one-click hosted remotes, and the 2026 pivot that matters — a skills catalog layered on top of servers, tracking where the agent ecosystem is heading. Its credential layer 'removes the most technically demanding parts of agent integration' (AgentAya, Jul 2026).

   Watch Smaller catalog than Glama or PulseMCP, and built by-and-for developers — non-technical users hit a steep curve. Corporate trail is muddy: the site operates as Clavia, Inc. but the smithery-cli repo now lives under the arcadeai-labs GitHub org — worth watching for consolidation.

   13,942+ MCPs listed; top server Context7 at 57.5k uses (Aug 2026) [src] · Hobby free tier 50k RPCs/mo; publishing free on all tiers; rated 3.9/5 (AgentAya review, updated Jul 10, 2026) [src] · smithery-cli: 814 stars, AGPL-3.0, hosted under arcadeai-labs org (Aug 2026) [src]
   Site →Docs →

3. 3GlamaGlama.ai

   Starter $9/mo (3 hosted servers) · Pro $26 (10) · Business $80 (30) · open-source servers hosted free

   Best for Vetting before installing — the widest lens on the ecosystem, with A–F maintenance grades, an inspector, a gateway, and cheap hosting in one place.

   The coverage king: 68,932 servers tracked as of Aug 6, 2026 — roughly 5x Smithery and 3x PulseMCP — with useful slicing (29,560 remote-capable, language filters) and quality grades that answer the question the official registry refuses to: should I trust this? Free hosting for open-source servers quietly makes it the default deploy target for hobbyist authors.

   Watch Auto-indexing is the point and the problem — the long tail is abandoned repos and duplicates, so the headline number overstates usable servers. Small team; the gateway/hosting/chat bundle spreads focus across three products.

   68,932 MCP servers tracked, page updated 2026-08-06; 29,560 remote-capable [src] · Hosting from $9/mo (3 servers, +$4/extra); free for open-source servers (Aug 2026) [src] · A–F maintenance/quality grades displayed per listing (Aug 2026) [src]
   Site →Docs →

4. 4ComposioComposio (Composio, Inc.)

   Free 20k tool calls/mo · $29/mo 200k · $229/mo 2M · Enterprise (SOC-2, VPC); pricing changes Aug 15, 2026

   Best for Wiring an agent to your actual SaaS stack — one managed MCP endpoint over 1,000+ apps with OAuth, sandboxing, and per-user auth handled.

   The 'just make it work' answer to this element's job: a single managed MCP Gateway over 1,000+ integrations (Gmail, Slack, Salesforce, GitHub, Linear...), with delegated auth, just-in-time tool resolution, and sandboxed execution — the plumbing every team otherwise rebuilds badly. Plugs straight into Claude, Cursor, and the major agent runtimes.

   Watch It's a proprietary dependency in a category whose whole point is an open standard — you're trading lock-in for convenience. Usage pricing bites at agent-scale call volumes, and a repricing lands Aug 15, 2026. Overlaps Zapier/n8n territory; some stacks won't need both.

   1,000+ app integrations behind one managed MCP endpoint (Aug 2026) [src] · Free 20k calls/mo; $29/mo for 200k; $229/mo for 2M; page warns pricing changes Aug 15, 2026 [src]
   Site →Docs →

5. 5Docker MCP Catalog & ToolkitDocker

   Included in Docker plans: Personal free · Pro $9/mo · Team $15 · Business $24; needs Docker Desktop ≥4.48

   Best for Teams that read the CVE list — curated, containerized MCP servers (Stripe, Elastic, Grafana...) run sandboxed, with credentials stored once in Docker and shared across clients.

   The credible answer to MCP's install-quality problem: instead of `npx`-piping unaudited code into your shell — the exact pattern behind CVE-2025-6514's 9.6-severity RCE — servers ship as verified containers on Docker Hub with one-click wiring into Claude, VS Code, Cursor, and Goose. Auth once, use everywhere, sandbox always.

   Watch Curation cuts both ways: 220+ tools is two orders of magnitude below Glama's catalog, so the long tail isn't here. Requires Docker Desktop, which some enterprises license-audit and some laptops resent.

   220+ containerized MCP tools; one-click integration with Claude, VS Code, Cursor, Goose (Aug 2026) [src] · Included in all Docker tiers incl. free Personal; requires Docker Desktop 4.48+ (Aug 2026) [src] · Context: mcp-remote npm package RCE, CVSS 9.6 (CVE-2025-6514) — the un-sandboxed install path it replaces [src]
   Site →Docs →

MCP Connectors: the top 8 compared

Edition v2026.Q3 · ranking, pricing and status verified 2026-08-06.

How to choose your mcp connectors

If you're shipping an MCP server for others to use

Publish to the official MCP Registry first — namespace-verified, free, and every aggregator (Smithery, Glama, PulseMCP, GitHub) syncs from it hourly. Then containerize for Docker's catalog if you want enterprise reach.

If you want your agent connected to your SaaS stack this afternoon, auth included

Composio (deepest agent-native tooling, 1,000+ apps) or Zapier MCP if you already pay Zapier — 9,000+ apps at zero marginal cost, two tasks per call.

If you're evaluating an unknown server before letting it near your data

Check it on Glama (A–F maintenance grade, source inspection) and prefer a containerized or hosted-remote version — 15.4% of registry servers have no public source at all (NimbleBrain, Mar 2026).

If security review keeps blocking `npx`-installed local servers

Docker MCP Toolkit for sandboxed local, or a gateway (Composio, Glama, TurboMCP self-hosted) so credentials never live in a plaintext .env — the pattern behind most of MCP's 7 CVEs.

If you're building a remote server and choosing where it lives

Cloudflare Workers or Vercel functions — the 2026-07-28 stateless spec removed sessions precisely so MCP servers run behind ordinary load balancers and serverless platforms with no sticky-session gymnastics.

MCP Connectors: the whole field

16 more tools tracked in this category, including 2 dead, renamed, or sunsetting — a reference that hides the graveyard isn't one. Verified 2026-08-06.

MCP Connectors: the category in numbers

Edition v2026.Q3 · ranking, pricing and status verified 2026-08-06.

• Anthropic donated MCP to the Linux Foundation's new Agentic AI Foundation on Dec 9, 2025 — 8 platinum members (AWS, Anthropic, Block, Bloomberg, Cloudflare, Google, Microsoft, OpenAI); 10,000+ public servers and 97M+ monthly SDK downloads at donation [src]
• SDK downloads ~5x'd in seven months: 97M+/mo (Dec 2025) → ~500M/mo across Tier 1 SDKs (Jul 2026); TypeScript and Python SDKs each passed 1B total [src]
• The 2026-07-28 spec is MCP's largest revision ever: stateless core (no initialize handshake, no session IDs), MRTR replaces server-initiated requests, CIMD replaces DCR, header-based routing — built so servers run on plain load-balanced/serverless HTTP; 12-month deprecation window for the old way [src]
• The trust gap is the story of 2026: 64.7M official-registry entries over ~1,691 unique packages (SafeDep, Dec 2025); 7 CVEs in 12 months incl. a CVSS 9.6 RCE in mcp-remote; only 8.5% of registry servers use OAuth; 15.4% ship no public source (NimbleBrain, Mar 2026) [src]
• Catalog fragmentation is by design — official registry ~3k verified entries feeds sub-registries that diverge wildly: Glama 68,932, PulseMCP 22,080+, Smithery 13,942+, Docker 220+ curated (all Aug 2026) [src]
• AAIF launched a 2026 events program anchored by AGNTCon + MCPCon North America and Europe — a spec with its own conference circuit is table stakes, not an experiment [src]

MCP Connectors: method & sources

Count conflicts resolved: 'how many MCP servers exist' has no single answer — we cite the official registry's ~3,012 first-party entries (NimbleBrain, Mar 2026) for verified publishers, AAIF's 10k+ (Dec 2025) for active public servers, and Glama's 68,932 (Aug 6, 2026, self-reported, auto-indexed and duplicate-heavy) for the tracked universe; aggregator articles citing Glama at 21k or PulseMCP at 7k are recycling 2025 snapshots — we used each vendor's own live count. Smithery's pricing detail comes from a Jul 2026 third-party review because smithery.ai/pricing didn't render tier numbers to our fetch — re-verify before quoting. Smithery ownership is murky (operates as Clavia, Inc.; CLI repo under arcadeai-labs org) — no acquisition announcement found either way. Composio pricing changes Aug 15, 2026 — nine days after this dossier. mcp.run's rebrand to TurboMCP is inferred from a live 302 redirect plus the new product page; no press release found. The official registry remains 'preview' per its own docs despite the ecosystem treating it as canonical. Adjacent elements: Zapier/n8n/Make workflow automation → Wf; agent frameworks that consume MCP (LangGraph, CrewAI) and server-authoring SDKs (FastMCP) → Ag; agent-to-agent protocols and orchestration → Or; MCP-speaking coding agents → Ca. Ranking criteria: verified commercial traction, independent satisfaction surveys, agent benchmarks, and founder-fit (price floor, lock-in, surfaces). Editorial, never paid — the charter. Machine-readable twin: mc.json.

Our take

MCP went from spec to table stakes in eighteen months. Every element you add should answer: does it speak MCP?

Combines with

Appears in compounds

The Agent Stack

Guides

MCP connectors: where to start (2026)