The MCP directory keeps growing — what the most-starred servers tell us

Our MCP server directory now catalogs around 2,500 servers at the time of writing. That number moves, so treat it as a snapshot and check the live count at /mcp. What is more interesting than the total is the distribution — sort the catalog by GitHub stars and a clear picture of where the ecosystem's attention sits emerges.

Development dominates

By category, one bucket dwarfs the rest. Of the servers we track, roughly 2,000 are tagged "Development" — an order of magnitude more than the next categories (Search & Web, Other, Databases, and AI & ML each sit in the low hundreds or fewer). Browse the breakdown at /mcp or jump straight to the Development category.

The most-starred servers reinforce it. Near the top of the list you'll find infrastructure and developer tooling like Netdata (real-time monitoring), Context7 (docs/context for coding agents), Chrome DevTools MCP, playwright-mcp, the official GitHub server, Metabase, PostHog, and Serena. These are the tools developers reach for when wiring an agent into an actual engineering workflow.

What the star ranking signals

Stars are a proxy for developer interest, not quality or fitness — but the pattern is still telling:

• Agents are being pointed at code and infrastructure first. Monitoring, browser automation, test tooling, analytics, and source control lead the pack.
• Web scraping and search are a strong second theme. High-ranking servers like Scrapling and various search servers show how much agent work is really "go find and read things on the web."
• Long-tail sprawl is real. Behind the headline names sit thousands of niche and single-purpose servers. A high star count is a useful first filter when the catalog is this deep.

How to use the directory

A few practical notes for reading the catalog:

• Sort by stars to triage, then read the details. Transport (stdio vs http), auth, and official vs community status matter more than popularity once you've shortlisted.
• Prefer official servers where they exist for anything touching credentials or production data.
• Match transport to your platform. Whether a server ships as stdio or remote HTTP determines how — and whether — your platform can connect it.

New to the protocol? Start with What is MCP?, then how to connect an MCP server.

Key takeaways

• The directory tracks ~2,500 servers at the time of writing — check the live figure at /mcp.
• Development is by far the largest category (~2,000 servers); the most-starred entries are developer and infra tooling.
• Stars are a triage signal, not a quality score — verify transport, auth, and official status before you wire one in.
• Browse by category, e.g. Development, to narrow the long tail.