A side-by-side look at the Find Research Papers and Lune Research MCP servers: transport, auth, tools, quality signals, and the config to install either one in Claude, Cursor, Windsurf or VS Code.
Verdict: choose Find Research Papers for research work as a local process; choose Lune Research for research as a local process. You can also run both side by side in one mcpServers block.
search_papers, get_paper, get_research_method.LUNE_API_KEY.search_papers, search_papers_many, search_related_papers.Rows where the two servers differ are marked.
| Spec | ||
|---|---|---|
| Category | Research | Research |
| Quality signal | 63/100 · Good | 53/100 · Good |
| Install command | Confirmed | Confirmed |
| Transport | Local subprocess (stdio) | Local subprocess (stdio) |
| Auth | Not declared | Not declared |
| Pricing | Not declared | Not declared |
| Required env vars | None listed | LUNE_API_KEY |
| Verified owner | Community listing | Community listing |
| GitHub stars | 6 | 4 |
| Directory activity | 2 views 0 installs 0 upvotes | 0 views 0 installs 0 upvotes |
| Tools | 7 | 12 |
| Full listing | View Find Research Papers | View Lune Research |
search_papersSearch scholarly literature across multiple sources (arXiv, OpenAlex, Crossref, Semantic Scholar, PubMed)get_paperResolve one paper by identifier and return its metadata plus references (papers it cites) and citations (papers citing it) — works even for paywalled papersget_research_methodHouse method for using this server: tiers, rules, source quirks, and verification stepslist_sourcesList every scholarly source the server can search, with coverage, key requirements, and rate limitsskills_listList this server's skills (playbooks): guidance for interpreting results and recovering from errors. Fetch one with skill_readskill_readFetch the full content of one skill by name (see skills_list). Read 'interpreting-errors' whenever a tool returns an error or skipped sourcescheck_for_updatesCheck PyPI for newer versions of find-research-papers-mcp and get upgrade instructions.search_papersHybrid vector + BM25 search over the corpussearch_papers_manyMany query variants in one call, merged by reciprocal rank fusionsearch_related_papersThe nearest neighbors of a paper you already havelist_conferencesIndexed venues, optionally filtered by categoryget_conference_papersOne venue's papers, paginatedget_paper_fulltextParsed full text, as markdown or JSONget_paper_citationsThe citation graph, in either directionextract_from_papersPull the same structured fields out of a set of papersverify_claimsCheck each claim against the corpus, with a verbatim quote when one existsgather_evidenceJudge whether the evidence is sufficient yet, and name what is missingsearch_research_guidanceThe curated methodology and reproducibility corpusget_research_guidance_docThe full text of one guidance documentPaste either block (or both) into your client config, e.g. claude_desktop_config.json or ~/.cursor/mcp.json. We only show a config when the install command is confirmed.
{
"mcpServers": {
"find-research-papers": {
"command": "uvx",
"args": [
"find-research-papers-mcp"
]
}
}
}
{
"mcpServers": {
"lune-research-2": {
"command": "npx",
"args": [
"-y",
"@retrograde-labs/lune-mcp-server"
],
"env": {
"LUNE_API_KEY": "YOUR_LUNE_API_KEY_HERE"
}
}
}
}