Fetch MCP Server

What Fetch MCP Server does

Fetch MCP Server exposes web retrieval and extraction operations through a stdio-based Model Context Protocol interface. It can make GET, POST, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, and OPTIONS requests, returning response status, headers, content, redirect information, and either decoded text, parsed JSON, or base64 data.

For web content, it converts HTML to markdown or plain text, isolates article content in reader mode, and extracts page metadata. It also handles outbound-link discovery, robots.txt evaluation, sitemap parsing, and RSS or Atom feed parsing. These capabilities make it suitable for agents that need to inspect public web resources without implementing separate HTTP and HTML-processing logic.

How it works

The package runs as an MCP server over stdio and can be started with npx -y @yawlabs/fetch-mcp@latest, installed globally with npm, or launched through the fetch-mcp command. MCP clients provide tool arguments such as an absolute URL, request headers, timeout, retry count, redirect limit, and response-size limit.

HTTP request tools accept basic authentication and bearer-token options. POST, PUT, PATCH, and DELETE also accept either a raw string body or a structured JSON value; the JSON form sets the content type automatically. Responses can be truncated at a configured byte limit, and retries are available for selected transient statuses including 408, 425, 429, and 5xx responses.

HTML extraction removes scripts and other non-content elements before producing markdown or text. Reader mode selects likely article containers such as article, main, or common CMS content classes, then returns the title, optional byline, word count, and markdown.

Setup and configuration

Running on Node.js requires version 22.19 or newer. A basic MCP configuration uses the fetch server name, npx as the command, and -y @yawlabs/fetch-mcp@latest as its arguments. The package can also be added with mcph add fetch.

Private, loopback, link-local, and other non-public destinations are blocked by default. To permit an individual request to use private hosts, the server operator must set FETCH_MCP_ALLOW_PRIVATE_HOSTS to 1, true, yes, or on, and the tool call must also set allow_private_hosts to true. This setting is intended for environments where internal-network access is deliberate.

Tools and capabilities

• http_get, http_post, http_put, http_patch, http_delete, http_head, and http_options make controlled HTTP requests.
• fetch_html_to_markdown creates compact markdown with headings, lists, links, and fenced code blocks.
• fetch_html_to_text returns readable text while preserving block-level line breaks.
• fetch_reader extracts the main article and returns title, byline, word count, and markdown.
• fetch_meta reads titles, descriptions, canonical URLs, language, robots directives, Open Graph, Twitter Card, article properties, icons, feeds, and JSON-LD.
• fetch_links resolves HTTP and HTTPS links to absolute URLs and marks them internal or external.
• fetch_robots evaluates crawlability using parsed robots.txt rules.
• fetch_sitemap supports sitemap indexes, gzip-compressed XML, URL metadata, and partial-failure warnings.
• fetch_feed parses RSS 2.0 and Atom 1.0 feeds into feed metadata and entries.

Limitations and notes

Redirect destinations are rechecked for allowed schemes and public addressing, and sensitive authorization headers are removed when redirects cross origins. Large responses and metadata collections are capped, so extraction results may indicate truncation. PATCH idempotency depends on the target API, while POST requests can submit again if repeated. Private-host access should be enabled only where the agent is allowed to reach internal services.