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Connect to an MCP server

Connecting an MCP client to a server published in the hub takes three things: the server's URL, a credential, and a config block your client understands. The server page gives you all three.

Subscribe

If the server has subscription plans, subscribe before you connect:

  1. Open the server from MCP Servers in the sidebar.
  2. Click Subscribe in the header, or go to the Subscription plans panel in the sidebar.
  3. Click Subscribe on the plan you want.

The subscription is created immediately and a dialog shows your subscription token. Copy it before closing—send it as the Subscription-Key header when calling the server.

Subscriptions to MCP servers work exactly as they do for APIs: one per server, switchable between plans without changing the token, suspendable, and manageable from Subscriptions in the sidebar. See Manage Subscriptions.

Servers with no plans need no subscription. Connect with whatever authentication the server itself expects.

Get a bearer token

The configuration snippet expects an OAuth2 access token in an Authorization: Bearer header. Get one the same way you would for an OAuth2-secured API:

  1. Create an application in the portal.
  2. Link a client ID from your key manager to it under Manage Keys.
  3. Generate an access token from the Generate Token tab, or with the ready-made command on the cURL tab.

Consume an API Secured with OAuth2 walks through the whole sequence.

Note

The portal's API Keys pages don't cover MCP servers—the button never appears on a server page, and there's no MCP equivalent of the API Keys screen. MCP server keys exist only through the Management API. For everything driven from the UI, use an OAuth2 bearer token.

Configure your client

The sidebar on every server page holds an MCP Server Configuration block, pre-filled with the server's name and URL:

{
  "servers": {
    "travel-assistant-mcp": {
      "url": "https://your-mcp-host.example.com",
      "type": "http",
      "headers": {
        "Authorization": "Bearer ${token}"
      }
    }
  }
}
  1. Click the copy button on the block.
  2. Paste it into your MCP client's configuration.
  3. Replace ${token} with the access token you generated, or wire it to wherever your client reads secrets from.

  4. If the server has subscription plans, add your subscription token as a second header:

    "headers": {
  "Authorization": "Bearer ${token}",
  "Subscription-Key": "${subscriptionToken}"
}

The type is http, so the client speaks streamable HTTP to the URL rather than launching a local process.

Important

The snippet uses the server's URL exactly as the publisher registered it. The MCP Playground doesn't—it appends /mcp to that URL unless it already ends that way. If the snippet's URL doesn't connect, try it with /mcp on the end, and check the URL the playground reports.

Check the connection

Before wiring the server into an agent, confirm the credentials work: open the server's Documentation page and use the MCP Playground. It connects with a bearer token you supply and invokes the server's tools. A successful call there confirms the token and the server, for that one request—it doesn't prove your client is configured correctly, so check your client's URL, transport, headers, and how it interpolates the token separately.