mcp-proxy

What it is and what it does

mcp-proxy is a transport adapter for the Model Context Protocol that allows clients and servers to communicate across incompatible network protocols. It operates in two modes: forwarding stdio connections from local clients (like Claude Desktop) to remote MCP servers over SSE or Streamable HTTP, or exposing local stdio-based MCP servers as remote SSE endpoints. This is useful when a client natively supports only stdio but needs to reach a remote server, or when a local server needs to be accessible over HTTP.

The tool is built on httpx-auth, mcp, and uvicorn, and is designed to be configured either as a command-line invocation or through configuration files. It supports optional authentication via API tokens or OAuth2, custom headers, CORS policies, and environment variable injection for spawned servers. The package is actively maintained, supports modern Python versions (3.10–3.14), and carries no known security vulnerabilities.

Use it for:

• Enable Claude Desktop to connect to remote MCP servers that expose only SSE endpoints, bridging the stdio-to-SSE gap.
• Expose a local stdio-based MCP server to remote LLM clients over HTTP without modifying the server itself.
• Route MCP traffic through an authentication layer (OAuth2 or bearer tokens) for secure remote access.
• Run multiple named MCP servers behind a single proxy endpoint with dynamic server selection.
• Deploy MCP servers in containerized environments where stdio-only communication is impractical.

Worth the install?

AI-flagged interpretation of the facts on this page — verify before relying

mcp-proxy bridges Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers and clients across different transports, converting between stdio and SSE/Streamable HTTP protocols to enable remote communication.

Yes. mcp-proxy solves a real transport compatibility problem for MCP ecosystems with low install friction, active maintenance, permissive licensing, and no known vulnerabilities. Install it if you need to bridge stdio and HTTP-based MCP communication or expose local servers remotely.

Install

mcp-proxy on PyPI

pip install mcp-proxy

uv add mcp-proxy

poetry add mcp-proxy

Installing mcp-proxy

Before you install

Low friction: pure Python wheel with only three runtime dependencies (httpx-auth, mcp, uvicorn). Active maintenance with recent commits and 2707 GitHub stars. Supports Python 3.10 through 3.14.

License in practice

MIT License permits unrestricted use, modification, and distribution with minimal restrictions—suitable for commercial and open-source projects alike.

Quickstart

pip install mcp-proxy

# Mode 1: Proxy stdio to remote SSE server
mcp-proxy http://example.io/sse

# Mode 2: Expose local stdio server over SSE
mcp-proxy --sse-port 8080 'local-command'

Requires Python 3.10 or later. For mode 2, the local MCP server command must be specified after the proxy arguments.

Verify before relying

• Whether OAuth2 authentication (--client-id, --client-secret, --token-url) is fully tested and production-ready.
• Performance characteristics under high-concurrency SSE connections.
• Compatibility with all MCP server implementations beyond the documented examples.

Package facts

Evidence: mcp_proxy-0.12.0-py3-none-any.whl

Tags

More Python Modules packages