mcpbeat Sign in

Inaturalist MCP Server

answering

Inaturalist MCP Server is answering right now. Last checked 11 min ago. 554 installs a week from npm. It exposes 10 tools. Last commit 1 Nov 2026.

Search iNaturalist sightings, identification threads, phenology, and look-alike species.

Installs per day peak 401 · avg 44 · +41% w/w
a month agotoday
Uptime history 49 days of history · worst day 93%
49 days agonow
100.0%
Uptime 24h
91 of 91 checks
10
Tools
read from the server
563 ms
Response time
average over 24h
554
Installs / week
npm and PyPI

What changed 49

Every tool that appeared, vanished or quietly changed what it asks for. Recorded since 22 September 2026. No other catalogue keeps this.

1 Nov 7 tools changed the parameters they ask for10 times that day inaturalist_find_places, inaturalist_get_histogram, inaturalist_get_leaderboard and 4 more
1 Nov 5 tool descriptions were rewritten inaturalist_find_places, inaturalist_get_histogram, inaturalist_get_similar_species and 2 more
1 Nov a tool changed version2 times that day
26 Oct 9 tools changed the parameters they ask for inaturalist_find_places, inaturalist_get_histogram, inaturalist_get_leaderboard and 6 more
26 Oct 2 tool descriptions were rewritten inaturalist_get_observation, inaturalist_list_reference
26 Oct a tool changed version
8 Oct a tool changed version
24 Sep 5 tool descriptions were rewritten inaturalist_get_histogram, inaturalist_get_observation, inaturalist_get_similar_species and 2 more
24 Sep 5 tools changed the parameters they ask for inaturalist_get_histogram, inaturalist_get_observation, inaturalist_get_similar_species and 2 more
24 Sep a tool changed version
and 12 more, back to 22 September 2026

Nothing serious here today

Today is the operative word: we check Inaturalist MCP Server every 15 minutes and re-read its code on every release. Watch it and you find out the day that stops being true.

Three servers free · no card

Connect this server

Endpoint below is the one we actually reach during checks — not the one copied from a README. Last verified 11 min ago.

run in your terminal
claude mcp add inaturalist-mcp-server --transport http https://inaturalist.caseyjhand.com/mcp
Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector, then paste this address
https://inaturalist.caseyjhand.com/mcp
~/.codex/config.toml
[mcp_servers.inaturalist-mcp-server]
url = "https://inaturalist.caseyjhand.com/mcp"
.cursor/mcp.json
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "inaturalist-mcp-server": {
      "url": "https://inaturalist.caseyjhand.com/mcp"
    }
  }
}
.vscode/mcp.json
{
  "servers": {
    "inaturalist-mcp-server": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://inaturalist.caseyjhand.com/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Available tools 10

Read directly from the server with tools/list, grouped by what they act on. If a tool disappears, we record the date.

inaturalist
inaturalist_find_places
Resolve a place name to a place id, or list places covering a map area. Pass q to match a display-name prefix or all analyzed query terms within it, or all four of nelat, nelng, swlat and swlng for a map area — exactly one of the two, never both. Each result carries its bounding box, place type, and containment chain. Upstream serves at most 20 places per list and may omit more.
inaturalist_get_histogram
Build a phenology histogram for a taxon in an area — which months, weeks, or years it is recorded in. The default month_of_year interval answers "when does this bloom or appear here" in twelve buckets; absolute intervals (year, month, week, day, hour) bucket real dates and disclose their window start. An area is given in exactly one form: place_id, the lat/lng/radius triple in kilometres, or a four-corner bounding box. Omit taxon_id to chart every taxon in the area. Narrow to one life stage or reproductive state with an annotation pair (term_id and term_value_id, e.g. Life Stage = Larva, or Flowers and Fruits = Flowers), or to broad groups with iconic_taxa. Defaults to research-grade, wild-only records and echoes those defaults back.
inaturalist_get_leaderboard
Rank the most active observers or identifiers for an area, period, and taxon — who knows this place or this group. kind selects which: observers are ranked by how many observations they recorded, identifiers by how many identifications they made. An area is given in exactly one form: place_id, the lat/lng/radius triple in kilometres, or a four-corner bounding box. Both endpoints rank only the top 500 entries, so page multiplied by per_page must stay at or below 500 — narrow the area, period, or taxon to bring someone further down into reach. For the most-recorded species rather than the most active people, use inaturalist_get_species_counts.
inaturalist_get_observation
Fetch up to 10 distinct observations by id with their community identification thread — who identified what, whether each identification agrees, and the consensus taxon the community landed on. The whole attempted batch costs one upstream request. Records come back in requested order; remaining distinct ids are deferred for another call with the same include. Missing attempted ids appear in unresolved; the call fails only when nothing resolved and no deferred work remains. Long threads and observation-field lists share a response budget across resolved records — up to 40 entries per array for one record, 4 for a full batch — and every record reports the size of each array beside what it kept.
inaturalist_get_similar_species
List related taxa ranked by observations carrying current identifications of both taxa. This is co-identification evidence, not a directional correction count or an exhaustive list of visually similar organisms. Scope it to an area in exactly one form (place_id, the lat/lng/radius triple in kilometres, or a four-corner bounding box), or leave the area off for global results. The taxon must be a genus or finer (genus, species, or below). Resolve the organism name to a taxon id with inaturalist_resolve_name first.
inaturalist_get_species_counts
Rank leaf taxa recorded in an area and period, most-observed first. Includes hybrids and coarser identifications; subspecies roll up to their species. An area is given in exactly one form: place_id, the lat/lng/radius triple in kilometres, or a four-corner bounding box. Narrow to a clade by passing taxon_id, e.g. the birds of a park, or to one observer or one project by user_id, user_login, or project_id. Defaults to research-grade, wild-only records and echoes those defaults back. For the most active people rather than the most recorded taxa, use inaturalist_get_leaderboard.
inaturalist_get_taxon
Fetch a taxon profile: the taxonomic path, per-authority conservation listings, the encyclopedia summary, the photo gallery, immediate children, and observation counts. Resolve a name to a taxon id with inaturalist_resolve_name first. The upstream record is 95 KB for a common species, so it is projected before anything else happens; a taxon that still overflows comes back as an outline of its sections with their byte sizes, and naming those sections in a re-call returns only those. The valid section names are summary, taxonomy, children, conservation, photos, and encyclopedia.
inaturalist_list_reference
Look up annotation attributes/values, quality grades, licences, ranks, iconic taxa, and conservation codes before filtering; unknown values can silently return nothing. Conservation codes are the normalised csi filter, distinct from authority-specific taxon status text. With topic controlled_terms and taxon_id, also return observed annotation usage and counts.
inaturalist_resolve_name
Resolve organism, place, project, or observer names to identifiers. Taxon lookup matches word starts within a name, not only its beginning; other types use cross-kind search with limited spelling tolerance. Without page, candidates retain relevance order. Explicit taxon pages browse name matches in ascending taxon-ID order; this can differ from autocomplete matching across languages. A miss returns found false with recovery guidance.
inaturalist_search_observations
Search georeferenced wildlife sightings by area, date, taxon, quality grade, annotation, conservation status, observer, project, and licence. Returns a projected record per sighting with coordinates, licence, first photo, and identification counts. An area is given in exactly one form — place_id, the lat/lng/radius triple in kilometres, or a four-corner bounding box — and defaults to research-grade, wild-only records, which are echoed back on every call. Identifications and comments are deliberately not expandable here (one thread is 28 KB); fetch them for specific records with inaturalist_get_observation. page walks the first 10,000 results under any ordering; past 10,000, order by id descending (order_by "id", order "desc") and pass each page’s next_cursor as cursor.

Endpoints

URLTransportStateLatencyChecked
https://inaturalist.caseyjhand.com/mcp streamable-http answering 656 ms 11 min ago

Alternatives to Inaturalist MCP Server

same job, measured the same way
Inaturalist MCP
by mrfentmen

Search species and recent observations from iNaturalist. No key required.

102 installs/wk local only
Pawlisty Pet Listings
by pawlisty

Search live Pawlisty pet listings by species, breed, location, and price.

4 tools answering
Pride MCP
by mrfentmen

Proteomics identifications database: search mass-spec projects and read their methods and metadata.

173 installs/wk local only
FTIR.fun Spectral Search
by jxbaoxiaodong

FTIR spectral search and material identification for AI agents via MCP.

119 installs/wk answering
Cards
by mycardfolio

Sports card database: card search, full set checklists, parallel lookup, card identification.

7 tools answering
AI Dictionary MCP
by donjguido

Look up, search, cite, discuss, and track AI phenomenology terms

279 installs/wk local only
MCP Factcheck
by carlisia

An MCP server that validates content against MCP specification using semantic search and AI

local only
Porefind
by cloudcorprecords

Search lab-filtration products by specification, with prices and lead times.

228 installs/wk local only

Inaturalist MCP Server — questions

Answers built from our own checks of this server.

What can Inaturalist MCP Server do?
It exposes 10 tools, read directly from the server on our last check. Among them: inaturalist_find_places, inaturalist_get_histogram, inaturalist_get_leaderboard, inaturalist_get_observation, inaturalist_get_similar_species, inaturalist_get_species_counts and 4 more. The full list with descriptions is on this page — we take it from the server itself via tools/list, not from a README. How MCP servers expose tools in the first place →
Is Inaturalist MCP Server working right now?
We send a real MCP handshake every 15 minutes. Over the last 24 hours 91 of 91 checks got a reply (100.0%), average response time 563 ms. The bar chart above shows every period we have measured.
How do I connect Inaturalist MCP Server?
Copy the ready config from this page. We generate it for Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Codex, Cursor and VS Code, each in the form that client actually reads. It is a remote server, so there is nothing to install — the client connects to the address.
Does Inaturalist MCP Server need an API key?
No. Inaturalist MCP Server completed a full MCP handshake with us as an anonymous client and listed its tools without asking for anything. All 10 of them are readable on this page. This is what we observed, not what the docs claim.
How fast is Inaturalist MCP Server?
It answers our handshake in 563 ms on average, which is faster than 20% of all working MCP servers we measure. That is on the slow side — worth knowing if the tool sits inside an interactive loop. The comparison comes from our own checks across the whole registry, every 15 minutes.
How many people use Inaturalist MCP Server?
The npm package @cyanheads/inaturalist-mcp-server was installed 554 times in the last week. Week over week that is +41%. We show installs rather than GitHub stars on purpose: a star is a bookmark, an install is someone actually running it.
Is Inaturalist MCP Server open source?
The code is open source: it is published under the Apache-2.0 licence, written in TypeScript, 2 stars on GitHub and 6 open issues. The licence covers the code in the repository, not the hosted service at inaturalist.caseyjhand.com, which runs on its operator's own terms.