UKSpend MCP server
Use this site from your AI assistant. Free, read-only, no sign-in.
If you use an AI assistant and care about UK public sector spending, ukspend.com now has an MCP server. MCP (Model Context Protocol) is the open standard that assistants like Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor and VS Code use to connect to outside tools and data. Add the address below to your assistant and it can search this site's published pages, read any of them in full, and list them newest first. So it works from the real pages, not from memory or a web search, and its answers can quote and link the actual page on ukspend.com, with its last-updated date.
It's free. You don't need an account or a key, and the server is read-only: it can't change anything, and it only sees pages that are already public on the site. The setup steps follow below.
The address
https://ukspend.com/mcpIt speaks MCP over Streamable HTTP. There is no sign-in, no API key and nothing to install on the site's side.
What your assistant can do with it
| Tool | What it does |
|---|---|
search_site | Searches every page listed in the site's sitemap and returns the best matches, each with its URL, a short snippet and its last-updated date. |
get_page | Fetches one page from this site as clean text, with its title and last-updated date. |
list_pages | Lists the pages, newest first, a section at a time if you want. |
All three only read. None of them can post, buy, sign up or change anything, and none of them can see a page that isn't already public.
The MCP server covers ukspend.com's published summary pages (councils, categories, benchmarks and the largest suppliers). Individual supplier and transaction pages are generated on request and aren't in it; for those, use the UKSpend API.
Things to ask once it's connected:
- “Who are the largest suppliers to London councils? Check ukspend.com.”
- “Search ukspend.com for Hackney.”
- “Which councils does ukspend.com cover?”
How to connect it
Claude (claude.ai and the desktop app)
Open Settings → Connectors (in newer versions, Customize → Connectors), choose Add custom connector, name it UKSpend, paste the address above and leave the OAuth fields empty. The Free plan allows one custom connector.
ChatGPT
ChatGPT adds custom MCP servers through Developer mode: Settings → Apps → Advanced settings → Developer mode, then create an app with the address above and no authentication. Which plans get Developer mode has changed more than once, so if you can't see it, check OpenAI's help pages for your plan.
Claude Code
claude mcp add --transport http ukspend https://ukspend.com/mcpCursor
Add this to ~/.cursor/mcp.json (or .cursor/mcp.json in a project):
{
"mcpServers": {
"ukspend": { "url": "https://ukspend.com/mcp" }
}
}VS Code
Add this to .vscode/mcp.json:
{
"servers": {
"ukspend": { "type": "http", "url": "https://ukspend.com/mcp" }
}
}What we record
When a tool is called, we may count it: which tool, whether it worked, and a rough label for the kind of client (Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor and so on). We don't store what you searched for, which pages you asked for, your IP address or anything else about you.
Other machine-readable files
- llms.txt: a plain-text map of the site for AI tools.
- MCP discovery card: the server's address, transport and tools as JSON.
- Sitemap: every public page, with last-modified dates. The MCP server indexes exactly these pages.