MCP Servers & Directories for AI Agents
The best MCP platform for most AI agents is Smithery: a registry of MCP servers with hosted connections, managed OAuth, and secure credential storage — free for 50,000 RPCs a month, then $10/month for 100,000 RPCs. Composio is the pick when you want tool-calling managed end to end across 1,500+ apps, and PulseMCP is the free directory to browse before you pay anyone. Every figure below was read on the vendor's official pricing or documentation page.
Last checked: October 2026 · Researched from official documentation — hands-on API tests rolling out (methodology)
- Best MCP registry Smithery
- Best managed tool platform Composio
- Best free directory PulseMCP
| # | Tool | What it is | Starting price (as published) | Free tier | Notable strength / limit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Smithery | Registry and hosting platform for MCP servers: discover servers, connect through managed OAuth with secure credential storage, and keep persistent connections instead of running each server yourself. Smithery announced it is now part of Arcade.dev. | Pay as you Go $10/mo (100,000 RPCs included; the $10 works as usage credit, then $0.10 per 1,000 RPCs; 100 namespaces). Custom plan on request (custom rate limits, uptime SLA, Slack support) | Yes — Hobby plan is free: 50,000 RPCs/month, namespaces, managed OAuth, persistent connections | The most MCP-native meter here: you pay per RPC through the gateway, so idle servers cost nothing. The limit is scope — it hosts and connects MCP servers; it is not a general tool-execution platform with triggers and sandboxes like Composio. |
| 2 | Composio | Managed tool platform for agents: 1,500+ toolkits (SaaS apps exposed as tools) with authenticated connections, event triggers, and a managed MCP gateway, so agents can act in other apps without you wiring OAuth per tool. | Pro $29/mo (includes $29/month of usage credit; then $0.0003 per tool call and $0.003 per trigger event; sandbox LLM tokens 1M/month free, then $3.75 per million). Enterprise custom (SSO/SCIM, custom integrations) | Yes — Hobby is free: 100,000 tool calls/month, 50,000 trigger events, 3 team members, unlimited connected accounts. Note: Composio-managed apps get a lower 20,000-call allowance on the free plan, with overage at $0.0005/call | The strongest free allowance in this category and the broadest tool catalog. You are buying a platform, not a pure MCP registry — teams committed to hand-picked MCP servers may find its toolkit abstraction more than they need. |
| 3 | PulseMCP | Free MCP directory and newsletter ("The Agentic Loop") for discovering MCP servers and clients. Run by Tadas Antanavicius — a member of the MCP Steering Committee who maintains the official MCP Registry — and Mike Coughlin. | No paid product — the directory and newsletter are free | Yes — the whole product is free | Discovery only: it lists and curates servers but does not host them, manage OAuth, or sit in your agent's call path. That is exactly why it pairs well with the two platforms above it — find the server here, run it there. |
| 4 | Glama | MCP platform offering a chat client, a gateway, hosted MCP servers, and server inspection/scoring for evaluating servers before you connect an agent to them. | Not yet verified — Glama's pricing page is JavaScript-rendered and its figures could not be read during our October 2026 check | Not yet verified (see left) | Glama is included because its inspection tooling is genuinely relevant to agent builders, but we do not publish prices we could not read on the vendor's own page. Third-party listings quote tiered per-user pricing; treat those as unverified until Glama's own pricing page can be read. |
Verdicts
1. Smithery Best MCP registry
The default answer to "where do I find and run MCP servers": a real registry, hosted connections with managed OAuth, and a meter — per RPC — that stays at zero until your agent actually calls something. The free Hobby plan's 50,000 RPCs a month is enough to run a serious evaluation, and the $10 Pay as you Go tier is the cheapest paid entry in this category. One note for the roadmap-watchers: Smithery now operates as part of Arcade.dev, which its pricing page banner discloses.
2. Composio Best managed tool platform
Ranked second only because this category is MCP-first: Composio's center of gravity is managed tool-calling across 1,500+ apps — authenticated connections, triggers that wake your agent up, sandbox execution, and an MCP gateway on top. Its free plan (100,000 tool calls a month) is the most generous here, and the $29 Pro plan's included usage credit makes the first paid month effectively prepaid rather than a fee. Read the fine print on Composio-managed apps: they draw from a smaller free allowance than self-managed connections.
3. PulseMCP Best free directory
The directory to bookmark: free, maintained by people who also maintain the official MCP Registry, and paired with a newsletter that tracks the ecosystem weekly. It will not host a server or manage a credential for you — it is a discovery layer, and it is honest about it. Start here to find servers; graduate to Smithery or Composio when running them becomes the problem.
4. Glama Pricing unverified
Glama's server-inspection angle — score and inspect MCP servers before trusting them in an agent stack — is differentiated and worth watching. It is ranked last with its pricing explicitly flagged: its pricing page renders only as JavaScript, our reader could not extract figures from glama.ai itself, and this site does not republish third-party price lists. When the figures can be read on Glama's own page, this entry gets real numbers and a re-rank.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best MCP server directory for AI agents?
Smithery for discovery plus hosting (free to 50,000 RPCs/month, $10/month for 100,000), Composio if you want tool-calling managed as a platform across 1,500+ apps, and PulseMCP as the free directory to browse first.
How much do hosted MCP servers cost?
Smithery meters RPCs: free to 50,000/month, then $10/month including 100,000 RPCs and $0.10 per 1,000 after that. Composio meters tool calls: free to 100,000/month, then $29/month (including $29 of credit) and $0.0003 per call. PulseMCP is free. Glama's pricing could not be read on its own page this check and is flagged unverified on this page.
Do I need to pay to use MCP servers with my agent?
No — most MCP servers are open source and self-hostable, and directories are free. Paid platforms sell the operational layer: managed OAuth, credential storage, persistent hosted connections, and uptime.
Smithery or Composio — which should I choose?
Smithery if your unit of work is MCP servers themselves (find, host, connect). Composio if it is authenticated actions across many SaaS apps, with triggers and an MCP gateway as one platform. They overlap at the gateway; they diverge on catalog and execution features.
What happened to mcp.run?
It now redirects to Turbo MCP (turbomcp.ai). We list products under the name and pricing on their own current official pages, so mcp.run is not ranked until its successor is reviewed.
Sources (official pages, checked October 14, 2026): smithery.ai/pricing · composio.dev/pricing · pulsemcp.com/about · glama.ai (product pages — pricing figures not readable, flagged above). mcp.run redirects to turbomcp.ai as of this check. No third-party sources were used for any figure on this page.