OpenBudget MCP Server

Your bank accounts, spending, debts, and investments are available to your AI assistant.

OpenBudget is a hosted Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that gives Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, Codex, and other MCP clients access to your financial data. That includes transactions, balances, net worth, credit cards, loans, mortgages, investment holdings, and investment activity synced from US institutions through Plaid. You can also add physical cash, gift-card balances, real estate, private-company interests, and other assets you track yourself.

You don't run anything. The server is hosted on OpenBudget's infrastructure. You add one URL to your client, sign in once, and start asking.

https://api.openbudget.sh/mcp

• Transport: Streamable HTTP (remote MCP server)

• Auth: OAuth 2.0; sign in with your OpenBudget account

• Plans: Base is $60/year or $9.95 month-to-month. Investor is $99/year or $12.95 month-to-month. Both start with a 7-day free trial.

• Data: your own bank, brokerage, and retirement accounts connected through Plaid, plus assets and activity you add yourself

Plaid connections provide read-only financial data. OpenBudget never stores your financial-institution credentials, and your AI assistant cannot move money or place trades. Every write stays inside your OpenBudget account: categories, notes, rules, manual accounts, custom holdings, and custom activity.

Quick connect

Pick your client below, or see the full step-by-step guides at openbudget.sh/connect-ai.

Claude (claude.ai / Claude Desktop)

1. Customize → Connectors → Add custom connector

2. Name it openbudget.sh, paste https://api.openbudget.sh/mcp

3. Click Connect and sign in with the account you used to link your banks

Full guide: openbudget.sh/connect-ai/claude

Claude Code

claude mcp add --transport http openbudget https://api.openbudget.sh/mcp

Add --scope user to make it available in every project. Then run /mcp inside a session, select openbudget, and choose Authenticate.

Full guide: openbudget.sh/connect-ai/claude-code

ChatGPT (Plus / Team / Enterprise)

1. Settings → Apps → Advanced settings → enable Developer mode

2. Create app, name it OpenBudget, paste the URL, select OAuth

3. Sign in and authorize access

Full guide: openbudget.sh/connect-ai/chatgpt

Cursor

Add to ~/.cursor/mcp.json (global) or .cursor/mcp.json (project):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "openbudget": {
      "url": "https://api.openbudget.sh/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Then enable the server under Cursor Settings → Tools & MCP → Connect.

Full guide: openbudget.sh/connect-ai/cursor

Codex / Codex CLI

codex mcp add openbudget --url https://api.openbudget.sh/mcp
codex mcp login openbudget

Or add to ~/.codex/config.toml:

[mcp_servers.openbudget]
url = "https://api.openbudget.sh/mcp"

Full guides: codex · codex-cli

Any other MCP client

Add a remote / custom MCP server over the Streamable HTTP transport, pointing at https://api.openbudget.sh/mcp. Most clients also accept the mcpServers JSON shape shown in the Cursor section above. The first call opens your browser to sign in and approve access.

Full guide: openbudget.sh/connect-ai/other

Related MCP server: Lunch Flow MCP Server

What you can ask

The server ships with 22 tools, each shown with a live demo at openbudget.sh/tools. You rarely call them by name. Ask in natural language and your client picks the right one.

Base tools

Investor tools

Investor includes every Base tool and adds the tools below.

Transaction results can include pendingTransactionId, which links a posted transaction to its earlier pending record, and a structured location with address, city, region, postal code, store number, latitude, and longitude. These fields make receipt reconciliation reliable when a tip or pre-authorization changes the settled amount.

Example prompts

• "How much did I spend on restaurants last month, and how does it compare to the month before?"

• "What did the Denver trip in March cost me all-in: flights, hotel, food, and rideshares?"

• "Find every subscription I'm paying for and total them per month."

• "What's my net worth across all accounts right now?"

• "What's the APR on each of my credit cards, and when are the next payments due?"

• "Categorize Venmo payments to Elena as childcare and make that a rule."

• "I paid the babysitter $60 in cash tonight; log it as childcare."

• "Track my $200 Amazon gift card and record the $45 I just spent from it."

• "What's my net worth across bank accounts, cards, loans, brokerage and retirement accounts, and property?"

• "Over the last three months, how much did I spend, save, and invest, and what changed month to month?"

• "Add my rental property and record this month's distribution."

More in examples/prompts.md.

Read-only financial connections

Bank, brokerage, and retirement connections go through Plaid with read-only data access. OpenBudget never sees or stores your financial-institution credentials. Your AI assistant cannot move money, initiate transfers, place trades, or modify anything at your institution. Every write stays inside your OpenBudget account: transaction and investment categories, notes, ignored flags, splits, rules, liability overrides, manual accounts, custom holdings, and custom activity. Every tool declares MCP annotations (readOnlyHint, destructiveHint) so clients can show what each call can do.

Privacy & terms

OAuth grants your AI client access to your own financial data in OpenBudget. See the Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, and Security pages.

License

The configuration snippets and documentation in this repository are MIT-licensed.

The OpenBudget MCP service is hosted and governed by its Terms of Service. The MIT license covers the configuration snippets and documentation in this repository. This repository does not contain the server's source code.

Links

• Website: openbudget.sh

• Tool demos: openbudget.sh/tools

• Connect guides: openbudget.sh/connect-ai

• Pricing: openbudget.sh/pricing

• Model Context Protocol: modelcontextprotocol.io