MCP Clients

Which apps read MCP servers, where each keeps its config, and — the part no list tells you — how many of our 19 589 tracked servers actually work with each one. Support is what we can verify; app descriptions we leave to their authors.

ClientConfigLocalRemoteOAuthServers

Claude CodeAnthropic run in your terminalcli yes yes yes 18 3915 184 need no key CursorAnysphere .cursor/mcp.jsonjson yes yes yes 18 3915 184 need no key VS CodeMicrosoft .vscode/mcp.jsonjson yes yes yes 18 3915 184 need no key CodexOpenAI ~/.codex/config.tomltoml yes yes yes 18 3915 184 need no key Claude DesktopAnthropic ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.jsonjson yes yes yes 18 3915 184 need no key

What differs between them

the parts that actually break a setup

Claude Code

Adds servers by command, so nothing to edit by hand. Handles both local processes and remote endpoints, including OAuth logins.

terminal, macOS · Linux · Windows · claude mcp add

Cursor

Config sits in the project folder, so servers can differ per repository — useful when one project needs database access and another must not have it.

macOS · Windows · Linux · edit .cursor/mcp.json

VS Code

Works through GitHub Copilot's agent mode. Like Cursor, the config is per workspace rather than global.

macOS · Windows · Linux · edit .vscode/mcp.json

Codex

The only client here that uses TOML rather than JSON, so a config copied from elsewhere will not work as is.

terminal · edit ~/.codex/config.toml

Claude Desktop

One global config for everything, so a server added here is available in every conversation.

macOS · Windows · edit claude_desktop_config.json

These read MCP servers too

no page of their own — we would have to guess the config path

OpenCode terminal coding agent, open source

Gemini CLI Google's command-line agent

JetBrains AI Assistant built into IntelliJ, PyCharm and the rest of the family

Cline autonomous coding agent living inside VS Code

Windsurf agentic editor from Codeium

Microsoft Copilot Studio hosted platform for building assistants

LibreChat self-hosted chat interface for many models

Amazon Q CLI AWS coding assistant for the terminal

Goose open-source agent for software work

Augment Code coding platform for VS Code and JetBrains

Zed editor built for speed, with prompt templates

Sourcegraph Cody code assistant with repository-wide context

Roo Code fork of Cline with its own tool handling

Claude.ai the web app, for remote servers only

Kiro agentic IDE from AWS

Trae AI editor from ByteDance

Warp terminal with an agent built in

Emacs mcp client for those who never left

Continue open-source assistant for VS Code and JetBrains

TypingMind front end for several model providers

5ire cross-platform desktop assistant

Msty Studio local and hosted models in one desktop app

BoltAI native macOS chat client

Witsy desktop assistant with MCP as a tool source

oterm terminal client for Ollama

Tome desktop app for local models

Not clients — tools for checking a server

for when it will not connect, rather than for working in

Postman send a handshake to an endpoint by hand and read what comes back it also publishes its own MCP server →

MCP Dock keeps one set of servers in sync across several clients

Apify MCP Tester connects to a server over SSE and lists what it exposes