MikkoParkkola/mcp-gateway

**One gateway between your AI and every tool it needs, without flooding the context window.**
MCP Gateway is a single Rust binary that sits between an AI client and all of its tools. Connect MCP servers and REST APIs behind it, and the agent sees a compact meta-surface of 9 to 17 tools instead of every backend definition. It discovers and calls backend tools on demand. A small live-agent benchmark found no completed-task token saving from that extra hop, so the value is catalog capacity plus policy and routing—not a blanket token claim. See Benchmarks.
Personal and noncommercial use is free, including running the full gateway. Running it commercially needs a commercial license.
The problem this removes
Every MCP tool an AI client connects costs roughly 150 tokens of context overhead, loaded into every request whether the tool gets used or not. Connect 20 servers with 100 tools between them and you spend about 15,000 tokens before the conversation starts. Context limits then force a second cost: you have to decide up front which tools to connect and leave the rest out, so the agent makes worse decisions because it cannot reach data you chose not to load.
MCP Gateway moves the full catalog out of the exposed tool list. The agent loads a small fixed set of meta-tools, searches with gateway_search_tools, and invokes a backend tool with gateway_invoke. This creates room for larger catalogs, but the extra search hop can cost more tokens and time on a completed task.
Quick Start
**Four commands:**
That is it. Your AI clients now talk to the gateway, and the gateway routes to every backend you already had configured, at a flat 11 tools instead of ~150 — 11 is the default HTTP configuration counted for an administrator; an ordinary client is shown four fewer. Start with gateway_search_tools from your AI client to find any backend tool, then invoke it with gateway_invoke.
> **Nothing to import yet?** mcp-gateway init --with-examples writes a working gateway.yaml with public capabilities so you can confirm the gateway is alive before adding your own servers.
**Or tell your AI assistant** (recommended):
> Read https://github.com/MikkoParkkola/mcp-gateway and install mcp-gateway to consolidate all my MCP servers behind one gateway
Your agent will install the binary, run the setup wizard, import your existing MCP servers, and wire itself up. This works in Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, Codex, and any AI with terminal access.
Install
| Method | Command |
|--------|---------|
| **Homebrew (macOS/Linux, recommended)** | brew install MikkoParkkola/tap/mcp-gateway |
| **Cargo** | cargo install mcp-gateway |
| **cargo-binstall** | cargo binstall mcp-gateway |
| **Direct binary download (Windows x64)** | Download mcp-gateway-windows-x86_64.exe from the latest release |
| **Docker** | docker run -p 127.0.0.1:39400:39400 -e MCP_GATEWAY_SERVER__ALLOW_UNAUTHENTICATED_NETWORK_BIND=true -v $(pwd)/gateway.container.yaml:/config.yaml:ro ghcr.io/mikkoparkkola/mcp-gateway:latest --config /config.yaml --host 0.0.0.0 --port 39400 |
| **Docker, npx/uvx backends** | Same, with :latest-full — the default image carries no Node or uv, so a stdio backend that shells out to either cannot spawn. See Docker Deployment. |
On Linux, the image runs as UID/GID 1001. Make an owner-only deployment copy
instead of changing ownership on your working config: install -m 600
gateway.yaml gateway.container.yaml && sudo chown 1001:1001
gateway.container.yaml. Do not make a credential-bearing config
world-readable. Docker Desktop handles bind-mount identity differently on
macOS and Windows.
Direct binary download
Set up, three ways
Option A: auto-import everything (recommended)
Scans Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, Zed, Continue.dev, Codex, and running MCP processes; lets you pick which servers to import into gateway.yaml; previews the gateway entry; writes it into each detected client config; verifies the write; and prints backup and rollback paths when an existing client config changes. Add --yes to skip the prompts and import everything.
Option B: add servers from the built-in registry
48 popular MCP servers are pre-registered with the right command, args, and env-var template. mcp-gateway add is compatible with claude mcp add and codex mcp add:
mcp-gateway list shows what is configured. mcp-gateway remove removes one.
Option C: hand-write gateway.yaml
For the full schema, see the annotated examples/gateway-full.yaml, which covers env_files, server, auth, meta_mcp, streaming, failsafe, cache, capabilities, and backends. The remaining top-level sections (playbooks, security, webhooks, routing_profiles, code_mode, mtls, key_server, agent_auth, runtime, marketplace, control_plane, cost_governance) have no prose reference yet; the Config struct in src/config/mod.rs is the authoritative list. Minimal example: