best of · updated August 2026
The 15 best open-source MCP servers
The 15 open-source MCP servers worth your time, out of 3,557 licensed ones we track. Ranked on monthly installs, GitHub stars, and commit recency. Checked nightly.
Every server here carries a real open-source license, so you can read the code before you trust it with your data, fork it when you need a private variant, and pin the exact version you audited. License terms differ: the page for each server names its license, and the table below shows which licenses dominate.
Which licenses dominate
Across all 3,557 licensed servers we track:
Quick answers
Which license do most open-source MCP servers use?
MIT, by a wide margin: 2,646 of the 3,557 licensed servers we track use it, followed by Apache-2.0 (663). 3,333 carry permissive licenses overall.
Can I use these MCP servers in a commercial product?
Most carry permissive licenses (MIT, Apache-2.0, BSD) that generally allow commercial use with attribution. Copyleft licenses (GPL, AGPL) add conditions. Each server's page names its exact license; check it before you ship.
How this list is ranked
Ranked from live registry + GitHub data: monthly installs, GitHub stars, and commit recency, recomputed nightly. A server with no declared license, or only a NOASSERTION stub, is not listed here regardless of popularity. No pay-to-rank, ever. Full recipe: how we verify.