OpenMCP
OpenMCP is an open-source MCP gateway for registering, deploying, and securing AI tool integrations.
Pick OpenMCP if owning the MCP control plane matters more than convenience — self-hosting, RBAC, and audit logs are the whole point. The catch is that the docs are thin and there is no managed cloud, so a small team without Kubernetes experience will spend more time on plumbing than on integrations. Budget for that learning curve, and treat the $99/mo Team tier as the realistic starting point once you pass three members.
Last checked 14d ago · cite: rightaichoice.com/tools/openmcp
- Platform engineers running an internal MCP control plane
- Security-conscious teams that need RBAC and audit logs on AI tool access
- Developers building custom AI pipelines on top of MCP servers
- Organizations that must keep integration metadata inside their own network
- Non-technical users who need a drag-and-drop integration builder
- Teams wanting a fully managed cloud service with vendor-run uptime
- Enterprises that expect mature, complete documentation on day one
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Skip OpenMCP if you need a fully managed cloud solution, have non-technical users who rely on drag-and-drop, or require mature documentation and guaranteed vendor support without self-hosting infrastructure.
The Community edition caps you at 3 team members, so growing teams must upgrade to Team at $99/mo for unlimited users — a jump many small teams hit quickly.
OpenMCP's pricing fits small technical teams that can self-host: Community is free for up to 3 users, Team is $99/mo for unlimited users and SSO. Compared to managed gateways like Portkey (which start around $49/mo for 10k requests), OpenMCP is cheaper at low volume but demands you run it yourself. For a solo dev prototyping, Community is unbeatable; for production reliability, Enterprise custom pricing is your only path to dedicated support.
In short
OpenMCP — OpenMCP is an open-source MCP gateway for registering, deploying, and securing AI tool integrations. Best for Platform engineers running an internal MCP control plane, Security-conscious teams that need RBAC and audit logs on AI tool access, Developers building custom AI pipelines on top of MCP servers. Free to start; paid plans from $99/mo.
Viability Score
How well maintained and how widely used is OpenMCP? Built from what the vendor actually publishes (docs, changelog, tutorials, integrations, pricing), whether the site is live, and how much real users discuss it. How we calculate this
Last calculated: September 2026
How we score →Key Features
- Register and discover MCP servers from a central catalog
- Real-time monitoring and logging of MCP server traffic
- Version control for MCP deployments with rollback
- Role-based access control (RBAC) for teams and services
- SSO integration via SAML or OIDC
- Audit logs with customizable retention windows
- API key management for MCP server access
- Self-hosted deployment via Docker
- Self-hosted deployment via Kubernetes
- On-premise private cloud deployment (Enterprise)
- Custom plugin support for wrapping internal services
- Centralized configuration for MCP server connections
About OpenMCP
OpenMCP is an open-source gateway for MCP servers — the plumbing that lets AI agents and assistants reach external tools. Instead of scattering connection config across a dozen projects, you register each MCP server once, then discover, configure, and deploy it from a single control plane. The target user is a platform or infrastructure engineer who already runs Docker or Kubernetes and wants the integration layer to sit inside their own network. The platform covers the operational basics a technical team expects: real-time monitoring and logging of server traffic, version control for MCP deployments so you can roll back a broken registration, and custom plugin support for wrapping internal services. Access control is handled with RBAC, SSO through SAML or OIDC, and API key management, while audit logs with customizable retention give you the paper trail compliance reviewers ask for. Deployment is deliberately self-hosted. Docker and Kubernetes paths are documented, and the Enterprise tier adds on-premise private cloud for organizations that cannot send integration metadata outside their perimeter. Pricing on file runs from a free Community tier capped at three team members, through a $99/mo Team plan with unlimited users and SSO, up to custom Enterprise terms. Confirm current tiers on the vendor site before budgeting — the site was unreachable at refresh time, so these figures come from our prior profile. Where it sits against alternatives: this is infrastructure, not a managed service. Teams comparing it to LangChain or Portkey should expect to own uptime, upgrades, and documentation gaps themselves. In exchange, nothing about your MCP topology leaves your environment.
Behind the Verdict
The honest framing: OpenMCP solves a governance problem, not a capability problem. Your agents can already call MCP servers without a gateway. What you buy here is a single place to see what is registered, who can reach it, what changed, and when — plus audit logs with retention you control. If that sentence describes a gap on your team, the tool earns its keep. If it does not, you are adding an operational dependency for nothing. We would reach for this in a regulated or security-conscious environment. Self-hosted Docker or Kubernetes deployment, on-premise private cloud on Enterprise, SAML/OIDC SSO, and role-based access control are exactly the controls that get an AI integration project past a review board. The free Community tier covering three team members is a genuine way to prove the model before spending anything. Where it bites: no managed cloud offering and documentation that our profile already flagged as immature. Self-hosting means you own the upgrade path, the backup story, and the on-call rotation. A team of two generalist developers will feel that. Version control for deployments softens the risk of a bad rollback, but it does not remove the maintenance load. Pass on this if you want a hosted product with a support SLA and a drag-and-drop interface. Non-technical users will not get far — this is a CLI-and-manifest kind of tool. Enterprises that need guaranteed vendor support without running infrastructure should look at managed alternatives instead. The closest comparison on file is LangChain or Portkey, both of which offer broader ecosystems and managed paths. OpenMCP's counterargument is narrower and clearer: open source, self-hosted, MCP-specific. That specificity is the selling point, and also the ceiling. One caveat worth stating plainly: the
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Real-world workflow fit
Concrete scenarios for the personas OpenMCP actually fits — and what changes day-one when you adopt it.
You need to give your AI agents access to internal APIs while keeping them behind authentication and monitoring.
Outcome: Deploy OpenMCP via Docker, register each internal API as an MCP server, and set up API key management. Within a day, agents can discover and call the servers through the gateway with full logging.
You must audit every AI-tool interaction to satisfy compliance.
Outcome: Use OpenMCP's role-based access control and audit logs to track which agents access which MCP servers. On the Team plan, you set audit log retention to 7 days, and on Enterprise extend retention as needed.
You want a simple way to manage a few MCP servers from your laptop.
Outcome: Install the Community edition via Docker, register a couple of test servers, and use the dashboard to monitor their health. Zero cost, full control, and you can scale to Team when you bring in collaborators.
Use Cases
- Register all internal APIs as MCP servers and let AI agents discover them via the gateway
- Enforce uniform authentication and rate limits across all tool integrations used by agents
- Monitor health and usage of each MCP server from a single dashboard to detect failures proactively
- Provide an internal marketplace of pre-approved MCP servers for different teams
- Audit all agent-tool interactions for compliance in regulated industries like finance or healthcare
Limitations
- The Community edition is capped at 3 users, which limits growth for small teams.
- Audit log retention is only 7 days on the Team plan, requiring Enterprise for longer periods.
- While the web UI is functional, it lacks advanced dashboard customization.
- Deployment requires Docker or Kubernetes knowledge; there is no fully managed cloud version.
- Documentation is currently sparse, making onboarding slower for new users.
as of 2026-08-30
Verification history
We have re-verified OpenMCP 19 times since . Each pass re-reads the vendor's own pages and re-checks every listed field against that evidence; passes where nothing had changed are marked as such.
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-checked, vendor evidence unchanged
- — re-checked, vendor evidence unchanged
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-checked, vendor evidence unchanged
Showing the 6 most recent of 19 verification passes.
Free to cite with attribution — this page re-verifies continuously.
12-month cost
Project the real annual outlay, including the implied monthly cost when only an annual tier is published.
Vendor list price only. Add-on usage, seat overages, and contract minimums are surfaced under Hidden costs & gotchas.
Plans compared
For each published OpenMCP tier: who it actually fits, and what it adds vs. the previous tier. Cross-reference the cost calculator above for projected annual outlay.
Community
$0/mo
Ideal for
Solo developers and small teams prototyping with MCP who can self-host and need basic monitoring, version control, and RBAC at zero cost.
What this tier adds
Free entry point with up to 3 team members, self-hosted via Docker or Kubernetes, includes monitoring, logging, version control, and RBAC.
Team
$99/mo
Ideal for
Growing teams that needs unlimited users, SSO (SAML/OIDC), and audit logs with longer retention — still self-hosted but with more collaboration features.
What this tier adds
Adds unlimited users, SSO, and audit logs with customizable retention (7 days default) on top of all Community features.
Enterprise
Custom
Ideal for
Large organizations that require on-premise private cloud deployment, custom SLAs, and dedicated support for regulated environments.
What this tier adds
Adds on-premise private cloud, custom SLAs, dedicated support, and advanced security controls beyond the Team plan.
Where the pricing makes sense
The company stage and team size where OpenMCP's pricing actually pencils out — and where peers do it cheaper.
OpenMCP's pricing fits small technical teams that can self-host: Community is free for up to 3 users, Team is $99/mo for unlimited users and SSO. Compared to managed gateways like Portkey (which start around $49/mo for 10k requests), OpenMCP is cheaper at low volume but demands you run it yourself. For a solo dev prototyping, Community is unbeatable; for production reliability, Enterprise custom pricing is your only path to dedicated support.
Setup time & first value
How long it actually takes to get something useful out of OpenMCP — broken out by persona, not the marketing-page minute.
For a developer familiar with Docker, you can get the Community edition running in under an hour — pull the image, run it, and register your first MCP server. Adding Kubernetes-based deployment and configuring SSO on the Team plan takes another 2-3 hours. Expect a learning curve with the sparse docs, so account for extra time reading the source or experimenting.
Switching to or from OpenMCP
How to bring data in from common predecessors and how to get it back out — written for the switcher, not the buyer.
- →From in-house scripts: Replace ad-hoc scripts that call MCP servers directly with OpenMCP's centralized registration, monitoring, and API key management.
- →From manual API gateways: Bring existing API endpoints into OpenMCP as MCP servers, then reuse your existing auth tokens via API key management.
- ↗To LangChain: Export your MCP server configurations and recreate them as LangChain tools, but you'll lose OpenMCP's monitoring and audit features.
- ↗To Portkey: If you need a managed gateway, migrate your MCP servers to Portkey's hosted platform and map your API keys to Portkey's key management.
Resources & Guides
Tutorials & Learning
YouTube returned 6 videos for “OpenMCP”, and we withheld 6: 6 could not be judged, because “OpenMCP” is a single word that other videos use for other things. We are showing none, because we could not prove any of them are about OpenMCP.
Official links
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