PubMed / MEDLINE Literature Search MCP Server

by olyport Your server? Claim it

answering

PubMed / MEDLINE Literature Search is answering right now. Last checked moments ago. It exposes 5 tools.

Search biomedical literature, get article details, find related articles, and explore MeSH terms

Uptime history 91 days of history

91 days agonow

100.0%

Uptime 24h

92 of 92 checks

Tools

read from the server

541 ms

Response time

average over 24h

open, no key

Access

streamable-http

Nothing serious here today

Today is the operative word: we check PubMed / MEDLINE Literature Search every 15 minutes and re-read its code on every release. Watch it and you find out the day that stops being true.

Connect this server

Endpoint below is the one we actually reach during checks — not the one copied from a README. Last verified 0 min ago.

Claude Code Claude Desktop Codex Cursor VS Code

run in your terminal

claude mcp add pubmed --transport http https://mcp.olyport.com/pubmed/mcp

Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector, then paste this address

https://mcp.olyport.com/pubmed/mcp

~/.codex/config.toml

[mcp_servers.pubmed]
url = "https://mcp.olyport.com/pubmed/mcp"

.cursor/mcp.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "pubmed": {
      "url": "https://mcp.olyport.com/pubmed/mcp"
    }
  }
}

.vscode/mcp.json

{
  "servers": {
    "pubmed": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://mcp.olyport.com/pubmed/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Available tools 5

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

article

get_article_detail

Get full details of a PubMed article by its PMID. Returns title, all authors, complete abstract, MeSH terms, publication types, journal info, and DOI. Args: pmid: PubMed ID (e.g. '39142850').

cited

get_cited_by

Find articles that cite a given PubMed article. Useful for tracking the impact and follow-up research of a key publication. Args: pmid: PubMed ID of the article to find citations for. limit: Maximum citing articles to return (default 20, max 100).

mesh

search_mesh

Search the MeSH vocabulary for standardized medical terms. Find MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) descriptors to use in precise PubMed searches. Returns MeSH IDs, preferred terms, and scope notes. Args: term: Search term (e.g. 'diabetes', 'heart failure', 'opioid'). limit: Maximum results (default 10).

pubmed

search_pubmed

Search PubMed for biomedical literature. Find research articles, reviews, and clinical studies matching your search terms. Supports PubMed query syntax including MeSH terms, field tags, and boolean operators. Args: query: Search terms (e.g. 'diabetes prevention exercise', 'breast cancer[MeSH] AND immunotherapy', 'COVID-19 vaccine efficacy'). limit: Maximum results (default 20, max 100). sort: Sort order - 'relevance', 'date', or 'author' (default 'relevance').

find_related_articles

Find articles related to a given PubMed article. Uses NCBI's computed similarity to find conceptually related papers. Useful for literature review expansion. Args: pmid: PubMed ID of the source article. limit: Maximum related articles to return (default 10, max 50).

Endpoints

URL	Transport	State	Latency	Checked
https://mcp.olyport.com/pubmed/mcp	streamable-http	answering	532 ms	0 min ago

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PubMed / MEDLINE Literature Search — questions

Answers built from our own checks of this server.

What can PubMed / MEDLINE Literature Search do?

It exposes 5 tools, read directly from the server on our last check. Among them: find_related_articles, get_article_detail, get_cited_by, search_mesh, search_pubmed. 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 / MEDLINE Literature Search working right now?

We send a real MCP handshake every 15 minutes. Over the last 24 hours 92 of 92 checks got a reply (100.0%), average response time 541 ms. The bar chart above shows every period we have measured.

How do I connect PubMed / MEDLINE Literature Search?

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 / MEDLINE Literature Search need an API key?

No. PubMed / MEDLINE Literature Search completed a full MCP handshake with us as an anonymous client and listed its tools without asking for anything. All 5 of them are readable on this page. This is what we observed, not what the docs claim.

How fast is PubMed / MEDLINE Literature Search?

It answers our handshake in 541 ms on average, which is faster than 22% 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.