The official MCP Registry is the protocol project's central metadata store for public MCP servers, meant to be read by downstream marketplaces and private registries rather than directly by host applications, as documented by the vendor. The MCP project expects downstream aggregators to pull registry metadata on a regular but infrequent schedule, for example once per hour (modelcontextprotocol.io).
The MCP project calls the registry "the official centralized metadata repository for publicly accessible MCP servers", backed by contributors such as Anthropic, GitHub, PulseMCP and Microsoft (modelcontextprotocol.io). The registry accepts open-source and closed-source servers, as long as the install method (for example an npm package or a public Docker image) or the remote server itself is publicly reachable (modelcontextprotocol.io). The registry docs say it "is not intended to be directly consumed by host applications"; hosts should read downstream registries that implement its OpenAPI spec (modelcontextprotocol.io).
The registry defines an OpenAPI spec that other MCP registries, public or private, can implement so host applications get one interface (modelcontextprotocol.io). The registry codebase "is not designed for self-hosting", and its maintainers do not support forks (modelcontextprotocol.io). The registry was still labelled a preview on 5 Nov 2026, with a warning that breaking changes or data resets may occur before general availability (modelcontextprotocol.io).
Products and plans
Official MCP Registry: products read on 5 November 2026, with the price where the page gave one
Product
What it does
Price
MCP Registry API
Public REST API and OpenAPI spec for server metadata.