Render MCP Server

What Render MCP Server does

Render MCP Server gives MCP-compatible AI clients access to Render workspaces and resources. It is intended for infrastructure and application operations such as creating services, reviewing deployment activity, inspecting logs and performance metrics, and working with databases and key-value stores.

The server can create web services, static sites, and cron jobs. It also supports listing and inspecting services, updating a service’s complete environment-variable set, and working with deployment history. Render Blueprints are included among the supported resource areas.

How it works

Workspace access is explicit. Agents can list available workspaces, select one, and retrieve the selected workspace. Resource calls can also receive a workspace identifier directly, which keeps the target workspace clear across MCP reconnects and transport-session changes. Omitting that identifier temporarily falls back to the workspace selected in the active session.

The hosted endpoint is mcp.render.com. Authentication can use OAuth or an API key. The server supports both Streamable HTTP and stdio transports, with MCP protocol versions 2025-11-25, 2025-06-18, 2025-03-26, and 2024-11-05; stdio also supports the sessionless 2026-07-28 protocol. Streamable HTTP clients must perform the MCP initialization handshake.

Setup and configuration

Connect an MCP client to the hosted Render endpoint using the authentication method supported by the client, or configure the server through stdio. Render’s MCP server documentation provides the official connection instructions at https://render.com/docs/mcp-server.

When creating a web service or cron job, provide the runtime and build and start commands unless using Docker. Supported runtimes include Node, Python, Go, Rust, Ruby, Elixir, and Docker. Repository, branch, plan, region, automatic-deployment behavior, and environment variables can be supplied where applicable.

Tools and capabilities

• List, select, and inspect Render workspaces.
• List services, optionally including preview services, and retrieve service details.
• Create web services, static sites, and scheduled cron jobs.
• Configure supported runtimes, repositories, branches, regions, plans, commands, and environment variables during creation.
• Replace a service’s complete environment-variable list.
• List deployment history, inspect individual deployments, and trigger deployments.
• Read application logs, service metrics, deployment status, databases, key-value stores, and Blueprints.

Cron schedules use standard five-field cron syntax. Docker-based services and cron jobs can specify a Dockerfile path, build context, and startup command. Deploying a prebuilt image from a container registry is not supported.

Limitations and notes

The web-service, static-site, and cron-job update tools do not apply changes directly. They return a link to the relevant Render Dashboard settings page, where changes can be made manually or through the Render API.

Workspace selection through the deprecated ownerID parameter remains available for compatibility, but new resource calls should pass workspaceId directly. Automatic deployments default to enabled when creating supported services unless disabled. Web services and cron jobs default to the Oregon region when no region is supplied.