Use SearchAPI as an MCP server for AI assistants

SearchAPI ships with a built-in MCP (Model Context Protocol) server powered by fastapi-mcp. Every FastAPI route is automatically exposed as an MCP tool at the /mcp endpoint — no additional configuration is required on the server side. When you run SearchAPI, the MCP server is ready at http://localhost:8000/mcp, and the root endpoint confirms this with {"mcp server": "/mcp"}.

Available MCP tools

All nine search tools are exposed automatically from the FastAPI routes.

Tool	Description
`web_search`	General web search — returns a list of URLs
`search_by_engine`	Search via a specific engine: bing, brave, duckduckgo, google, mojeek, yandex, yahoo, wikipedia
`search_papers`	Search academic papers via Crossref — returns DOIs
`search_books`	Search for books — returns URLs
`search_news`	Search news articles — returns URLs
`search_pdfs`	Search for PDF documents — returns URLs
`search_filetype`	Search for files of a given type (pdf, docx, pptx, and more)
`search_repositories`	Search GitHub and GitLab repositories — returns URLs
`search_wiki`	Search Wikipedia and Wikimedia sites — returns URLs

Connect a client

Choose the client you want to connect to SearchAPI.

Claude Desktop
Cursor
VS Code Copilot

Claude Desktop supports MCP servers over HTTP (for deployed instances) and via stdio (for local scripts).

Open the Claude Desktop configuration file

Find and open your claude_desktop_config.json file:

macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json

Add the SearchAPI MCP server

Add the following entry to the mcpServers object, pointing to the /mcp endpoint of your running SearchAPI instance.

claude_desktop_config.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "searchapi": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "http://localhost:8000/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Replace http://localhost:8000 with the base URL of your deployed instance if it is not running locally.

Restart Claude Desktop

Save the config file and restart Claude Desktop. The SearchAPI tools will appear in the MCP tools panel.

Cursor supports MCP servers via its settings panel.

Open Cursor settings

Go to Cursor → Settings → MCP (or press Cmd+Shift+J on macOS, Ctrl+Shift+J on Windows/Linux).

Add a new MCP server

Click Add MCP Server and fill in the fields:

Name: searchapi
Type: http
URL: http://localhost:8000/mcp

Or edit your ~/.cursor/mcp.json file directly:

mcp.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "searchapi": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "http://localhost:8000/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Verify the connection

Open a new Composer session. You should see the SearchAPI tools listed in the tool picker.

VS Code with the GitHub Copilot extension supports MCP servers through workspace or user settings.

Open settings

Open your VS Code settings JSON file (Cmd+Shift+P → Preferences: Open User Settings (JSON)).

Add the MCP server configuration

Add the following block to your settings.json:

settings.json

{
  "github.copilot.chat.mcp.servers": {
    "searchapi": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "http://localhost:8000/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Reload the window

Run Developer: Reload Window from the command palette. Copilot Chat will pick up the new MCP server on the next session.

Example: ask Claude to search for papers

Once connected, you can ask Claude to use the search_papers tool directly in natural language. For example:

Search for papers on “transformer architecture” and return the top 5 DOIs.

Claude will call the search_papers MCP tool, which hits GET /search/paper?query=transformer+architecture&limit=5 and returns a list of DOIs. You can then ask Claude to summarize, compare, or fetch the papers.

User: Search for papers on "transformer architecture" and list the top 5 DOIs.

Claude: I'll use the search_papers tool to find relevant academic papers.

[Calling search_papers with query="transformer architecture", limit=5]

Here are the top 5 DOIs for papers on transformer architecture:

1. 10.48550/arXiv.1706.03762 — "Attention Is All You Need"
2. 10.48550/arXiv.1810.04805 — "BERT: Pre-training of Deep Bidirectional Transformers"
...

The MCP endpoint is confirmed at /mcp. You can verify this by calling the root endpoint: GET http://localhost:8000/ returns {"mcp server": "/mcp"}.

Get Started

Guides

Use SearchAPI as an MCP server for AI assistants

Available MCP tools

Connect a client

Example: ask Claude to search for papers

Build docs developers (and LLMs) love

Get Started

Guides

Documentation Index

​Available MCP tools

​Connect a client

​Example: ask Claude to search for papers

Build docs developers (and LLMs) love

Available MCP tools

Connect a client

Example: ask Claude to search for papers