@pipeworx/ebid

eBid MCP — listings, ended-listing search, bid history and categories from the eBid.net online marketplace and auction site, via the official eBid Trading API v2. eBid runs 20+ country sites (us, uk, ca, au, de, fr, …); it is a small marketplace next to eBay, so treat it as a secondary listings/price source.

Part of Pipeworx — an MCP gateway connecting AI agents to 1573+ live data sources.

Tools

• ebid_search(keyword?, site?, category_id?, min_price?, max_price?, condition?, buy_now_only?, closed?, username?, country?, search_descriptions?, sort?, start?, rows?) — search live listings, or ended ones with closed: true (where realized sale prices live). Max 75 rows/page (API cap).

• ebid_listing(listing_id, site?, ship_to?) — one listing in full, with shipping calculated to ship_to.

• ebid_listing_bids(listing_id, site?) — bid history; on an ended auction the highest bid is the realized price.

• ebid_categories(category_id?, site?) — category tree with per-category item counts.

Related MCP server: mcp-gsa-auctions

Auth

• BYO only: every eBid API command — including the documented no-login read commands — is rejected upstream without an AppId/AppKey pair (error 003). Register free at the eBid developer portal https://ebid.3scale.net/, then pass both as one argument: _apiKey: "AppId:AppKey".

• Registering is not the same as being able to call. eBid issues an application's AppId and AppKey at signup but activates the application separately, so a freshly minted pair authenticates and still answers nothing: error 116 application is not active on every command. Pipeworx holds such a pair (fleet #1284, minted 2026-09-07) and the pack therefore stays BYO-only — PLATFORM_EBID_KEY is deliberately NOT declared until a live call succeeds, because a declared key that cannot answer makes the router keep choosing a pack that is guaranteed to fail.

Telling the four credential failures apart

eBid reports all of them at HTTP 200, and three share code 116. Probed live 2026-09-07 against api.ebid.net/trading:

The pack maps each to its own message. Only the first one tells the caller to pass a key — the other three mean they already did, and the fix is elsewhere.

Data sources

• https://api.ebid.net/trading — eBid Trading API v2; single endpoint, JSON POST with the command in the body. Docs: https://ebid.3scale.net/doc-json.

• Failures come back as HTTP 200 with an Error array; the pack surfaces the upstream code and description rather than the status line.

Quick Start

Add to your MCP client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, etc.):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "ebid": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/ebid/mcp"
    }
  }
}

What this endpoint actually serves

tools/list at https://gateway.pipeworx.io/ebid/mcp returns the tools in the table above plus the shared Pipeworx meta-tools — ask_pipeworx, discover_tools, search_within, remember/recall and the rest of the gateway-wide set. So the tool count you see is larger than this table: a single-pack endpoint currently lists roughly 30 shared tools alongside the pack's own. The connection's initialize response states its exact scope, and is the authoritative answer for a given day.

This is deliberate, not multiplexing by accident. The meta-tools are what let a scoped connection answer a question this pack does not cover — via ask_pipeworx, which routes across the whole catalog — without you adding a second MCP server. There is currently no way to mount a pack endpoint without them; if the extra schemas cost you more context than the routing is worth, connect to the full gateway once rather than to several pack endpoints.

Or connect to the full Pipeworx gateway to get every pack's tools listed directly, instead of just this one's:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "pipeworx": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Both URLs reach the same gateway and the same 1573+ data sources. The only difference is which pack's tools are listed directly; ask_pipeworx reaches all of them from either one.

Standalone (no gateway account)

This package also runs as a local stdio MCP server — no Pipeworx account, no gateway round-trip:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "ebid": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@pipeworx/mcp-ebid"]
    }
  }
}

Or run it directly to confirm it starts:

npx -y @pipeworx/mcp-ebid

It speaks MCP over stdin/stdout and answers initialize/tools/list/tools/call for only this pack's tools — none of the shared meta-tools the gateway connection above adds. Same source, same tools, no ask_pipeworx routing.

Using with ask_pipeworx

Instead of calling tools directly, you can ask questions in plain English — this works on the pack endpoint above as well as on the full gateway:

ask_pipeworx({ question: "your question about Ebid data" })

The gateway picks the right tool and fills the arguments automatically.

More

• Docs and guides

• pipeworx.io

License

MIT