HasData/google-scholar-mcp

A hosted Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that gives Claude, Cursor, Windsurf and any other MCP client two read-only Google Scholar tools. Search the literature with Scholar's own operators, year ranges and cited-by lookups, then pull a paper's citation in five styles with its BibTeX and EndNote export links, both as structured JSON, with nothing to host.
It reads public Google Scholar pages that a signed-out visitor can see.
**1,000 free credits every month, no card required**, which is 100 Scholar calls at the 10-credit rate.
- Prompts and resources
Contents
- What you need
- Quick start
- Example prompts
- Tools
- Errors and failure paths
- Pricing, free tier and limits
- Tool selection
- How it compares
- FAQ
- HasData links
- Development
- Contributing
- License
What you need
An MCP client and a HasData API key from the dashboard, free to create with no card, and the free tier covers about 100 calls a month at the 10-credit rate. This is a remote server, so the simplest path is a URL and an x-api-key header, with no container to run. A client that only speaks stdio reaches it through a thin launcher, published as @hasdata/google-scholar-mcp on npm and hasdata-google-scholar-mcp on PyPI, shown below.
Quick start
The server URL is the same for every client. We run it hands-on in Claude Code and Claude Desktop. The other blocks follow each client's own documented format for a remote server.
| Field | Value |
| :--- | :--- |
| URL | https://mcp.hasdata.com/mcp?apis=google_scholar |
| Transport | HTTP, streamable |
| Auth header | x-api-key: HASDATA_API_KEY |
Clients with OAuth support can add the same URL as a connector and sign in without putting a key in a config file.
Claude Code
Claude Desktop
Settings, then Connectors, then Add custom connector, then paste https://mcp.hasdata.com/mcp?apis=google_scholar and sign in.
For the config-file route, Claude Desktop loads only local (stdio) servers, so it reaches a remote server through a stdio launcher. The @hasdata/google-scholar-mcp package is that launcher, and it reads the key from the environment. Add this to claude_desktop_config.json:
For Python instead of Node, swap the launcher for the PyPI package, which uvx runs without a manual install:
Cursor
~/.cursor/mcp.json for every project, or .cursor/mcp.json for one:
Windsurf
~/.codeium/windsurf/mcp_config.json. Windsurf calls the field serverUrl, not url:
VS Code
.vscode/mcp.json in the workspace:
Example prompts
Each of these lands on one tool, or on two in sequence when the second needs an id the first returns.
- Find papers on transformer architectures published since 2023 and sort them by citation count.
- Who has cited this paper, and how has that grown year on year?
- Give me the BibTeX for this paper.
- Find review articles only on this topic, excluding citations without full records.
- Show me every indexed version of this paper and which of them have a PDF.
- Find recent work by this author on this topic.
A prompt naming a paper takes two calls, one search to reach its resultId and one citation lookup. A prompt about who cites a paper also takes two, because the second call reuses citedBy.citesId from the first.
Tools
| Tool | What it returns |
| --- | --- |
| hasdata_google_scholar_case_law_getScholarCaseLawOpinion | One court opinion with its court, reporter citation, docket numbers, argued and decided dates, and every case it cites with its own caseId. 10 credits a call |
| hasdata_google_scholar_cite_getScholarCitationFormats | Formatted citation snippets (MLA, APA, Chicago, Harvard, Vancouver) and reference-manager export links (BibTeX, EndNote, RefMan, RefWorks). 10 credits a call |
| hasdata_google_scholar_scholar_getScholarSearchResults | Each organic result with title, link, snippet, publication info (authors with profile links), cited-by count and link, related-articles link, and all-versions count and…. 10 credits a call |
Three tools, 10 credits per successful call.
Get Scholar search results
hasdata_google_scholar_scholar_getScholarSearchResults
A page of Scholar results.
| Parameter | Type | Required | Notes |
| :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- |
| q | string | yes | The query. Scholar operators such as author: and source: work here |