MCP Catalogs
Home

time vs zen

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

time
by modelcontextprotocol
zen
by sheshbabu
Stars★ 85,748★ 1,085
30d uses
Score7753
Official
Categories
ProductivityDeveloper ToolsCommunication
ProductivityKnowledge GraphFile System
LanguageTypeScriptJavaScript
Last committhis month1 mo ago

time · Summary

A comprehensive MCP server providing time and timezone conversion tools with automatic system timezone detection.

zen · Summary

Selfhosted notes app with MCP integration for searching, listing and reading notes.

time · Use cases

  • Assisting with international meeting scheduling across time zones
  • Providing real-time time information for location-based queries
  • Enabling time conversion for travel planning and itineraries

zen · Use cases

  • Personal knowledge management with MCP-powered note retrieval
  • Team collaboration using self-hosted note-taking with API access
  • Building custom AI workflows that reference personal notes

time · Install

Installation Options

**Using uv (recommended):**

uvx mcp-server-time

**Using PIP:**

pip install mcp-server-time
python -m mcp_server_time

**Configure for Claude Desktop:**

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "time": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["mcp-server-time"]
    }
  }
}

zen · Install

Installation

Build from source

$ make build

Local Development

Run the application using default configuration

$ make dev

MCP Configuration

Add to Claude Desktop config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "zen": {
      "command": "path-to-zen-executable",
      "args": ["--mcp"]
    }
  }
}
Comparison generated from public README + GitHub signals. Last updated automatically.