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Installation

The Python SDK is on PyPI as mcp. It requires Python 3.10+.

These docs describe v2, the current stable release line:

uv add "mcp[cli]"

pip install "mcp[cli]"

Coming from v1?

v2 is a major version with breaking changes; the Migration Guide covers every one. If your package depends on mcp and isn't ready to migrate, keep a <2 upper bound (for example mcp>=1.28,<2) so an unpinned resolve stays on the 1.x line.

Client-only installation

uv add mcp-client

import anyio

from mcp_client import Client


async def main() -> None:
    async with Client("http://localhost:8000/mcp") as client:
        tools = await client.list_tools()
        for tool in tools.tools:
            print(tool.name)


anyio.run(main)

Run this example against an MCP server listening at http://localhost:8000/mcp.

Use mcp-client when you only connect to servers. It includes the client transports, OAuth support, and shared protocol machinery without installing Starlette, Uvicorn, sse-starlette, or python-multipart. Import client APIs from mcp_client, OAuth support from mcp_client.client.auth, and protocol types from mcp_types.

Install mcp if you also build servers, use the CLI, or pass a server instance to Client(server) for in-process testing. Existing mcp imports keep working and refer to the same client implementation. All three distributions release together; mcp requires its exact mcp-client version, which requires its exact mcp-types version.

What gets installed

You don't need to know any of this to use the SDK, but if you're wondering what each dependency is for:

  • mcp-client: the client API, transports, OAuth support, and shared protocol machinery, versioned in lockstep with the SDK.
  • mcp-types: every protocol type (requests, results, content blocks) as its own package, versioned in lockstep with the SDK. Code that depends on mcp imports it through the mcp.types alias (every from mcp.types import ... in these docs); import mcp_types directly only in a project that installs mcp-types without the SDK.
  • anyio: the async runtime. The whole SDK is written against anyio, so it runs on either asyncio or trio.
  • pydantic: what every mcp.types model is built on, plus all schema generation and validation.
  • httpx2: the HTTP client behind the Streamable HTTP and SSE client transports, with server-sent events support built in.
  • starlette, uvicorn, sse-starlette, and python-multipart: the HTTP server transports.
  • jsonschema: validates a tool's structured output against its declared output schema.
  • pyjwt[crypto]: OAuth token handling for authorization.
  • opentelemetry-api: just the lightweight API, so the SDK's tracing middleware costs nothing unless you install an OpenTelemetry SDK and exporter yourself.
  • typing-extensions and typing-inspection: modern typing features on Python 3.10.
  • pywin32: Windows only, used for stdio subprocess management.

Optional extras

  • mcp[cli] adds typer and python-dotenv for the mcp command-line tool (mcp dev, mcp run, mcp install). You'll want this during development; you may not need it in a deployed server.
  • mcp[rich] adds rich for nicer server logs.