Are MCP servers only for Claude? No, other apps use them too

No, MCP servers are not only for Claude. The Model Context Protocol is an open standard that Anthropic open-sourced in November 2024, and clients such as ChatGPT, Codex, Cursor, VS Code, and Gemini CLI connect to the same servers Claude does. A remote server has one URL for every client; what changes from client to client is the config format and the sign-in.

The protocol facts come from Anthropic's announcement and the MCP site; each client's facts come from its own docs, all read on 2026-09-28. The one-URL example is Sume's hosted server, from its MCP overview. For what an MCP server is in the first place, see What is an MCP server?.

Why do people think MCP is a Claude feature?

Because it started at Anthropic. Anthropic's announcement, dated Nov 25, 2024, says it was open-sourcing MCP as a new standard for connecting AI assistants to the systems where data lives, and that MCP was created at Anthropic. Among the pieces it announced was local MCP server support in the Claude Desktop apps.

The protocol itself is not tied to Claude. The MCP site calls it an open-source standard for connecting AI applications to external systems, names Claude and ChatGPT as examples, and says it is supported across a wide range of clients and servers.

Which apps besides Claude can use an MCP server?

Every client below documents MCP support, remote servers included, on its own pages. The same server URL goes into each one; the add step and the sign-in step are what change. MCP JSON config compares their config file keys.

• ChatGPT on the web uses remote MCP tools through installed plugins rather than your local Codex config, per the Codex page.

Does the same server work in every client?

A remote server can, because every client reaches it at the same URL, as long as the client supports the server's transport and sign-in. Sume's docs say to use https://mcp.sume.com/mcp in Cursor, Claude Code, Codex, and other remote MCP clients. Sign-in follows the protocol too: the quickstart says a client should discover Sume's protected-resource metadata from the MCP endpoint and send you to its authorize page, whichever client you use.

A local server is different: it runs as a program on your machine, so each client has to start it with the right command. Local vs remote MCP server explains the split.

Is MCP free to use outside Claude?

MCP itself is an open-source standard; costs come from what a server's tools do. On Sume's hosted server, for example, read tools such as tools_list and jobs_status only look things up, while generate_image and generate_video are paid tools that need an idempotency_key (MCP tools and gates). Is MCP free? breaks down what costs money.