MCP Server: Connect Claude and AI Assistants to the Web

AI assistants like Claude are incredibly powerful—but they're blind to the live web. They can't check current prices, read today's news, or extract data from websites in real-time. Until now.

The Model Context Protocol (MCP) changes everything. With ScrapeGraphAI's MCP Server, you can give Claude, Cursor IDE, and other AI tools direct access to web scraping capabilities.

What is MCP?

The Model Context Protocol is an open standard that allows AI models to interact with external tools and data sources. Think of it as a universal adapter that lets AI assistants use specialized capabilities.

With ScrapeGraphAI's MCP Server, AI assistants gain the ability to:

• Scrape any website on demand
• Extract structured data from web pages
• Convert pages to markdown for processing
• Crawl entire sites for comprehensive data
• Search the web and extract results

Why MCP + ScrapeGraphAI?

Claude and other LLMs have built-in web browsing, but it's severely limited:

ScrapeGraphAI turns Claude into a web scraping powerhouse.

Setting Up ScrapeGraphAI MCP Server

Step 1: Install the MCP Server

The easiest way is through Smithery:

npx -y @smithery/cli install @anthropic/claude-desktop @anthropic/mcp-server-scrapegraph --config ./mcp-config.json

Or manually add to your Claude Desktop configuration:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "scrapegraph": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@anthropic/mcp-server-scrapegraph"],
      "env": {
        "SCRAPEGRAPH_API_KEY": "your-api-key-here"
      }
    }
  }
}

Step 2: Get Your API Key

1. Go to dashboard.scrapegraphai.com
2. Sign up or log in
3. Navigate to API Keys
4. Create a new key

Step 3: Restart Claude Desktop

After configuration, restart Claude Desktop. You'll see ScrapeGraphAI tools available in the tools menu.

What You Can Do

Ask Claude to Scrape Websites

Once configured, just ask Claude naturally:

"Scrape the pricing page of Notion and extract all plan names, prices, and features"

Claude will use ScrapeGraphAI to fetch the page and extract structured data.

Real-Time Research

"What are the top 10 trending repositories on GitHub right now? Extract the repo name, description, stars, and language."

Claude fetches live data instead of relying on training data.

Competitive Analysis

"Go to Shopify's pricing page and Squarespace's pricing page. Extract all pricing tiers and create a comparison table."

Claude visits both sites and synthesizes the information.

Data Collection

"Crawl the blog section of techcrunch.com and extract all article titles and summaries from the last 7 days."

Claude uses the crawling capability to gather data across multiple pages.

Available MCP Tools

ScrapeGraphAI's MCP Server provides several tools. Here's how to use them programmatically with Python:

smartscraper

Extract structured data from any URL using AI.

from scrapegraph_py import Client
 
# Initialize the client
client = Client(api_key="your-api-key-here")
 
# SmartScraper request
response = client.smartscraper(
    website_url="https://www.notion.so/pricing",
    user_prompt="Extract all plan names, prices, and key features"
)
 
print("Result:", response)

markdownify

Convert any webpage to clean markdown for processing.

from scrapegraph_py import Client
 
# Initialize the client
client = Client(api_key="your-api-key-here")
 
# Markdownify request
response = client.markdownify(
    website_url="https://docs.python.org/3/tutorial/index.html"
)
 
print("Result:", response)

searchscraper

Search the web and extract structured data from results.

from scrapegraph_py import Client
 
# Initialize the client
client = Client(api_key="your-api-key-here")
 
# SearchScraper request
response = client.searchscraper(
    user_prompt="Find the best project management tools in 2025 with pricing and features",
    num_results=5
)
 
print("Result:", response)

scrape

Get the raw HTML content of any webpage.

from scrapegraph_py import Client
 
# Initialize the client
client = Client(api_key="your-api-key-here")
 
# Scrape request
response = client.scrape(
    website_url="https://news.ycombinator.com"
)
 
print("Result:", response)

Use Cases in Cursor IDE

Developers using Cursor can leverage MCP for:

Documentation Research

"Scrape the React documentation and summarize the hooks API"

Package Comparison

"Compare the npm pages for axios, fetch, and got. Which has more downloads and better maintenance?"

API Discovery

"Extract all API endpoints from Stripe's API reference page"

Bug Research

"Search for issues related to 'memory leak' in the Next.js GitHub issues and summarize the common causes"

Use Cases for Claude Desktop

Personal Research

"What are the current mortgage rates from major banks? Scrape Chase, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America mortgage pages."

Shopping Assistance

"Find the best price for a Sony WH-1000XM5 across Amazon, Best Buy, and Walmart"

For automated price tracking, see our price monitoring bot guide.

Travel Planning

"Scrape the top 10 restaurants in Rome from TripAdvisor with their ratings and cuisine types"

News Monitoring

"What are the top stories on Hacker News right now?"

Best Practices

Be Specific in Requests

Instead of "scrape this website," tell Claude exactly what data you need:

✅ "Extract the product name, price, rating, and number of reviews" ❌ "Get the product info"

Use for Real-Time Data

MCP shines when you need current information that Claude's training data doesn't have.

Combine with Claude's Analysis

Scrape the data, then ask Claude to analyze, compare, or summarize it.

Respect Rate Limits

While ScrapeGraphAI handles most complexity, be mindful of making excessive requests.

Supported AI Clients

ScrapeGraphAI MCP works with:

• Claude Desktop - Full MCP support
• Cursor IDE - Built-in MCP integration
• Continue.dev - VSCode AI assistant
• Any MCP-compatible client - Growing ecosystem

Get Started Today

Transform your AI assistant from a static knowledge base into a live web intelligence tool. With ScrapeGraphAI MCP Server, Claude becomes your personal web research assistant.

Ready to supercharge your AI? Sign up for ScrapeGraphAI and follow our MCP setup guide to get started in minutes.

Related Use Cases

• AI Agent Tool - Build custom agents with web access using LangChain and CrewAI
• Price Monitoring Bot - Automate price tracking across retailers
• Lead Generation Tool - Extract business contacts at scale
• Market Research Dashboard - Aggregate competitive intelligence
• Real Estate Tracker - Monitor property listings