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Pubmed MCP Server

answering

Pubmed MCP Server is answering right now. Last checked 14 min ago. 3 008 installs a week from npm. It exposes 12 tools. Last commit 3 Nov 2026.

Search PubMed/Europe PMC, fetch articles and full text (PMC/EPMC/Unpaywall), citations, MeSH terms.

Installs per day peak 1 610 · avg 545 · -55% w/w
a month agotoday
Uptime history 91 days of history · worst day 31%
91 days agonow
100.0%
Uptime 24h
91 of 91 checks
12
Tools
read from the server
514 ms
Response time
average over 24h
3 008
Installs / week
npm and PyPI

What changed 90

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

3 Nov 4 tools changed the parameters they ask for pubmed_europepmc_search, pubmed_find_related, pubmed_lookup_mesh and 1 more
3 Nov a tool changed version
26 Oct a tool changed version
25 Oct 3 tools changed the parameters they ask for pubmed_europepmc_search, pubmed_fetch_fulltext, pubmed_search_articles
25 Oct 2 tool descriptions were rewritten pubmed_fetch_fulltext, pubmed_spell_check
25 Oct a tool appeared pubmed_fetch_citation_metrics
25 Oct a tool changed version
23 Oct 2 tool descriptions were rewritten pubmed_fetch_articles, pubmed_spell_check
23 Oct a tool changed the parameters it asks for pubmed_fetch_fulltext
23 Oct a tool changed version
and 73 more, back to 22 August 2026

Nothing serious here today

Today is the operative word: we check Pubmed 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 14 min ago.

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

Available tools 12

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

pubmed
pubmed_convert_ids
Convert between article identifiers (DOI, PMID, PMCID). Accepts up to 50 IDs of a single type per request. Only resolves articles indexed in PubMed Central — for articles not in PMC, use pubmed_search_articles instead.
pubmed_europepmc_fetch
Fetch complete Europe PMC records — including the full, untruncated abstract — addressed as `records: [{ source, epmcId }]`, an array even for one record. Pairs with `pubmed_europepmc_search`, which returns bounded `abstractSnippet` values and flags cut ones with `abstractTruncated: true`; copy each hit's `source` and `epmcId` into `records` here to read the whole abstract. This is the retrieval path for preprint (`PPR`), patent (`PAT`), and Agricola (`AGR`) records, which frequently carry no PMID and no DOI, so `pubmed_fetch_articles` and `pubmed_fetch_fulltext` cannot address them. Up to 25 records per call. Set `maxResponseCharacters` to bound the whole response: records past the ceiling are deferred whole and listed in `deferred.records` for a follow-up call.
pubmed_europepmc_search
Search Europe PMC, a broad open-access biomedical corpus. Surfaces preprints (`source: PPR`), patents (`source: PAT`), Agricola (`source: AGR`), plus everything in PubMed (`MED`) and PMC. Use when additional coverage is needed — preprints and EPMC-only OA records are the typical recovery. Paginate via `cursorMark`. Defaults to `MED`, `PMC`, and `PPR`; pass `sources` to include `PAT` / `AGR`. Abstracts arrive as a bounded `abstractSnippet` with `abstractTruncated` marking the cut ones — pass a hit to `pubmed_europepmc_fetch` as `records: [{ source, epmcId }]` for the complete abstract.
pubmed_fetch_articles
Fetch full article metadata by PubMed IDs. Returns detailed article information including abstract, authors, journal, MeSH terms, linked retraction, erratum, and comment notices, and databank accessions such as trial registration IDs; grants and the members of a collective author are opt-in (`includeGrants`, `includeInvestigators`). Set `maxResponseCharacters` to bound the whole response: articles past the ceiling are deferred whole and listed in `deferred.ids` for a follow-up call.
pubmed_fetch_citation_metrics
Fetch NIH iCite citation metrics for PubMed articles: the Relative Citation Ratio (RCR), NIH percentile, citation count, citations per year, expected and field citation rates, the Approximate Potential to Translate (APT), the human, animal, and molecular/cellular shares of each article's MeSH terms, and how many clinical articles cite it. RCR is a field- and year-normalized citation rate benchmarked to NIH-funded papers, whose median RCR is 1.0; iCite computes none for the most recent papers and marks recent ones provisional. iCite does not flag retractions — a retracted article keeps its metrics — so check pubmed_fetch_articles for retraction notices before relying on a record. Up to 1000 PMIDs per call; the first 200 distinct PMIDs are fetched and the rest returned in `overLimit`. PMIDs iCite has no record for are listed in `unavailablePmids`.
pubmed_fetch_fulltext
Fetch full-text articles from PubMed Central as structured sections — the body, then back matter such as acknowledgments, declarations, and appendices — with tables and references. When PMC misses, transparently falls back to Europe PMC `fullTextXML` (structured JATS for its open-access subset, preprints included), then to Unpaywall — publisher-hosted or institutional open-access copies as HTML-as-Markdown or PDF-as-text. Name articles by `pmcids` (PMC IDs directly), `pmids` (PubMed IDs, auto-resolved), `dois` (DOIs, auto-resolved to PMC via the ID Converter; preprints and EPMC-only OA fall through to the Europe PMC and Unpaywall layers), or any mix of the three — up to 50 distinct identifiers; the first 10 are fetched per call, the rest returned in `overLimit`; an article several of them name is fetched and returned once. Two independent character controls: `maxCharacters` caps body text per article, `maxResponseCharacters` caps the whole response and defers articles past the ceiling whole, listing them in `deferred.ids` for a follow-up call.
pubmed_find_related
Find articles related to a source article — similar content (similar), articles citing this one (cited_by), or articles this one cites (references). Uses NCBI ELink as the primary source; falls back to Europe PMC then OpenAlex when NCBI is unavailable.
pubmed_format_citations
Get formatted citations for PubMed articles in one or more formats (apa, mla, bibtex, ris, vancouver). Pass a single format as a string or multiple as an array. Retractions, errata, and expressions of concern NCBI links to an article come back in `notices`; Vancouver and APA also cite a retraction in the reference itself.
pubmed_lookup_citation
Look up PubMed IDs from partial bibliographic citations. Useful when you have a reference (journal, year, volume, page, author) and need the PMID — deterministic citation matching, more reliable than free-text search for structured references. Each citation must include at least journal or a four-digit year (ECitMatch primary-keys on journal+volume+page; author-only or volume-only inputs guarantee no match); more fields = better match accuracy.
pubmed_lookup_mesh
Search and explore the MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) controlled vocabulary. Returns descriptor records with tree numbers, scope notes, and entry terms, plus pagination via offset for paging past the maxResults cap.
pubmed_search_articles
Search PubMed with full query syntax, filters, and date ranges. Returns PMIDs and optional brief summaries. Supports field-specific filters (author, journal, MeSH terms), common filters (language, species, free full text), and pagination via offset for paging through large result sets.
pubmed_spell_check
Spell-check a PubMed search query against NCBI ESpell and get the corrected query back. Use after a zero-hit or thin `pubmed_search_articles` result, or when a drug, gene, disease, or author name may be misspelled. Corrections are applied in place, so field tags, operators, spacing, and gene symbols stay as written (`alzhiemer diseese treatmnt outcomse` → `alzheimer disease treatment outcomes`). The value of an indexed field — MeSH, publication type, journal, author, language, subset, and the like (`aged[mh]`, `free full text[sb]`, `zhang y[au]`) — is kept as written, misspelled or not, since the ESpell dictionary is not the index that field searches; free-text fields such as `[tiab]`, `[ti]`, and `[tw]` are corrected. Words in all capitals, with digits or non-ASCII letters, or differing only in case are never changed, nor is a single letter swapped for another (`q fever`, the initial in `smith q`), words after a number or symbol ESpell skips are left as written, and `hasSuggestion` is false when no correction was applied. Re-run the search with `corrected`.

Endpoints

URLTransportStateLatencyChecked
https://pubmed.caseyjhand.com/mcp streamable-http answering 267 ms 14 min ago

Alternatives to Pubmed MCP Server

same job, measured the same way
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Openlex MCP
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Lex-Ray
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Structured EU and UK legislation: public metadata, free sample articles, and entitled full text.

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Pubmed MCP Server — questions

Answers built from our own checks of this server.

What can Pubmed MCP Server do?
It exposes 12 tools, read directly from the server on our last check. Among them: pubmed_convert_ids, pubmed_europepmc_fetch, pubmed_europepmc_search, pubmed_fetch_articles, pubmed_fetch_citation_metrics, pubmed_fetch_fulltext and 6 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 Pubmed 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 514 ms. The bar chart above shows every period we have measured.
How do I connect Pubmed 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 Pubmed MCP Server need an API key?
No. Pubmed MCP Server completed a full MCP handshake with us as an anonymous client and listed its tools without asking for anything. All 12 of them are readable on this page. This is what we observed, not what the docs claim.
How fast is Pubmed MCP Server?
It answers our handshake in 514 ms on average, which is faster than 23% 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 Pubmed MCP Server?
The npm package @cyanheads/pubmed-mcp-server was installed 3 008 times in the last week. Week over week that is -55%. We show installs rather than GitHub stars on purpose: a star is a bookmark, an install is someone actually running it.
Is Pubmed MCP Server open source?
The code is open source: it is published under the Apache-2.0 licence, written in TypeScript, 167 stars on GitHub and 7 open issues. The licence covers the code in the repository, not the hosted service at pubmed.caseyjhand.com, which runs on its operator's own terms.