Model Context Protocol (MCP)

An open standard, originally developed by Anthropic, for connecting AI models to external tools, files, and data sources through a common protocol instead of one-off integrations per model.

Vendor: Anthropic (open standard)
Category: Agent / Tool-Use Protocol
Pricing Model: Free / open standard
Website: https://modelcontextprotocol.io
Documentation: https://modelcontextprotocol.io/docs
API Available: Yes
Free Tier: Yes

The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open specification for connecting AI models to external tools, files, and data sources through a standardized client-server interface, rather than every application building a custom integration for every model. An MCP server exposes a set of tools, resources, or prompts; any MCP-compatible client (an AI assistant, an IDE, an agent framework) can discover and call them the same way. For website owners and developers building AI-to-AI or agent-to-tool pipelines, MCP is the closest thing the industry has to a common wire format for that communication.