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NeedAnAI Now Works Inside Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor and VS Code: A Free MCP Server and API for 15,000+ AI Tools

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Connect any AI assistant to the NeedAnAI catalogue with one command. Search, compare and get task recommendations with pricing, freshness dates and a rationale, free and without an account.

You can now ask your AI assistant to search NeedAnAI. The catalogue of more than 15,000 AI tools, each re-checked by our scanner and stamped with the date its site was last confirmed alive, is available as an MCP server and as a plain JSON API. Reads are free and need no account.

This is the same data the website shows, delivered in the shape an assistant can use: structured fields, freshness labels, and a written reason for every ranked pick.

One command to connect

If you use Claude Code, this is the whole setup:

claude mcp add --transport http needanai https://mcp.needanai.com/mcp

Other hosts take the same URL, https://mcp.needanai.com/mcp, with no authentication:

  • claude.ai and Claude Desktop: Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector.
  • Cursor: the "Add to Cursor" button on the developers page, or ~/.cursor/mcp.json.
  • VS Code: the "Install in VS Code" button, or .vscode/mcp.json with "type": "http".
  • ChatGPT: Settings → Connectors → Create, in developer mode.
  • Gemini CLI: ~/.gemini/settings.json with httpUrl.
  • Hosts that only speak stdio: npx -y @needanai/mcp.

The complete snippets, with copy buttons, are on needanai.com/developers.

What your assistant can do with it

The server exposes fourteen tools. The ones you will use most:

  • search_tools searches by text, pricing, category or task, and returns facets and freshness labels.
  • get_tool returns a full profile: pricing with the date it was checked, pricing history, pros, cons, FAQs, status and alternatives.
  • find_alternatives ranks alternatives to a tool and says why each one made the list.
  • compare_tools puts two to five tools side by side, attribute by attribute.
  • recommend_for_task takes a task in plain words, such as "remove image backgrounds", plus a budget, and explains every pick.
  • check_status answers whether a tool's site is alive, when it was last checked, and how fresh the listing is.

A free API key, created under Profile → API Keys on the site, adds three more: watch_tool sends a webhook or email when a tool's status or pricing changes, submit_tool suggests a new tool for review, and export_tools hands back up to 2,000 matching rows as JSON or CSV behind a signed link.

Try a prompt like this once the server is connected:

I need a free tool that turns a meeting recording into notes. Compare the top three and tell me which sites were verified this month.

The assistant calls recommend_for_task, then compare_tools, and answers with the freshness date for each site.

Every answer says how fresh it is

An AI directory is only useful if it admits what it does not know. Every tool in every answer carries a freshness label: fresh when the site was confirmed alive within 30 days, aging within 90, stale beyond that, and unknown when it was never checked. The label comes with the date and with whether it rests on a full verification or a reachability check.

Sponsored placements, when any exist, arrive in a separate block with a disclosure. They are never mixed into ranked results, and the block is present on every answer so an assistant can always tell the two apart.

No SDK required

Every MCP tool is also a REST route with the same inputs:

curl "https://api.needanai.com/v1/tools?query=video%20editing&pricing=free,freemium"
curl "https://api.needanai.com/v1/tools/claude"
curl "https://api.needanai.com/v1/recommendations?task=create%20a%20logo&budget=free"

The OpenAPI 3.1 document lives at https://api.needanai.com/openapi.json. Errors are RFC 9457 problem documents, and every response carries rate-limit headers and a request id.

Tool pages answer as data too. Append .json or .md to any tool URL, for example https://needanai.com/tool/claude.json or https://needanai.com/tool/claude.md, and you get the same profile without going through the gateway.

Limits, and what it costs

Nothing. Anonymous clients get 300 requests a day at five per second, which covers every read tool. A free key raises that to 3,000 a day and unlocks watches, submissions and exports. If commercial tiers ever exist they will be announced on the developers page first, and the anonymous tier stays.

In the browser

On Chrome builds that expose a model context, every page of needanai.com registers search_tools, get_tool, compare_tools and open_tool_page for the browser's own agent through WebMCP. Tool pages also offer an on-device summary, questions and answers, and translation when Chrome's built-in models are present. Nothing leaves your machine, and other browsers see the pages unchanged.

Where to start

  • Setup for every host, a live "try it" call, the full tool reference, limits and error codes: needanai.com/developers.
  • The server card: https://mcp.needanai.com/.well-known/mcp/server-card.json.
  • A site map written for language models: needanai.com/llms.txt.

If something is wrong, every error carries an X-Request-Id. Send it with the request you made and we can find the exact log line.