everything vs needle-mcp

Side-by-side comparison to help you pick between these two MCP servers.

	everything by modelcontextprotocol	needle-mcp by needle-ai
Stars	★ 85,748	★ 100
30d uses	—	—
Score	77	44
Official	✓	—
Categories	Developer ToolsAI / LLM ToolsOther	AI / LLM ToolsKnowledge GraphProductivity
Language	TypeScript	Python
Last commit	this month	10 mo ago

everything · Summary

Official MCP test server exercising all protocol features for client builders.

needle-mcp · Summary

Needle MCP Server enables RAG functionality with document management and semantic search for LLMs.

everything · Use cases

Testing MCP client implementations against all protocol features
Learning MCP protocol capabilities through a reference server
Validating client compatibility with different transport methods

needle-mcp · Use cases

Research document retrieval and analysis
Knowledge base construction for AI assistants
Semantic search across organizational documents

everything · Install

NPX (recommended)

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "everything": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@modelcontextprotocol/server-everything"]
    }
  }
}

On Windows, use cmd /c:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "everything": {
      "command": "cmd",
      "args": ["/c", "npx", "-y", "@modelcontextprotocol/server-everything"]
    }
  }
}

Docker

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "everything": {
      "command": "docker",
      "args": ["run", "-i", "--rm", "mcp/everything"]
    }
  }
}

Global install

npm install -g @modelcontextprotocol/server-everything@latest
npx @modelcontextprotocol/server-everything

needle-mcp · Install

Remote Installation (Recommended)

**Claude Desktop Config** Add to your claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "needle": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "mcp-remote",
        "https://mcp.needle.app/mcp",
        "--header",
        "Authorization:Bearer ${NEEDLE_API_KEY}"
      ],
      "env": {
        "NEEDLE_API_KEY": "<your-needle-api-key>"
      }
    }
  }
}

**Local Installation**

Clone: git clone https://github.com/needle-ai/needle-mcp.git
Install UV: brew install uv
Update config with:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "needle": {
      "command": "uv",
      "args": ["--directory", "/path/to/needle-mcp", "run", "needle-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "NEEDLE_API_KEY": "<your-needle-api-key>"
      }
    }
  }
}

Comparison generated from public README + GitHub signals. Last updated automatically.