⌁ labsco summary — our analysis, not the vendor's

What it is — an MCP server for YNAB (You Need A Budget) that lets MCP clients read budget data through natural language.

What you get —

User and budget listing — GetUser, ListBudgets to see accessible budgets and IDs
Budget detail — GetBudget with optional date filtering and transaction limits (amounts in milliunits, 1000 = $1.00)
Category and settings access — GetBudgetCategories, GetBudgetSettings (currency/date formats)
MCP Inspector support for debugging tool calls

Requirements — a YNAB personal access token (YNAB_API_KEY); a YNAB account.

Cost snapshot — server is free and MIT-licensed; requires a YNAB subscription/account for the API key. YNAB itself is a paid product, but the README states no price.

Setup effort — uvx run ynab-mcp (or uv --directory) with the key in the env block.

Our take — handy for asking questions about your budget in-chat, but the tools are read-only (Get/List) — there's no way to create or edit transactions here, so it's for reporting, not bookkeeping.

Source: the project README — summarized 2026-07-08.

⌁ readme from github — mirrored (latest on GitHub ↗)

YNAB MCP Server

A Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for interacting with YNAB (You Need A Budget). Provides tools for accessing budget data through MCP-enabled clients like Claude Desktop.

Available Tools

GetUser

Retrieves information about the authenticated YNAB user, including user ID and email.

ListBudgets

Lists all budgets accessible to the authenticated user, including budget IDs and names.

GetBudget

Retrieves detailed information about a specific budget, including transactions, categories, and balances. Supports optional date filtering and transaction limiting.

Note: Monetary amounts are returned in milliunits (e.g., 1000 = $1.00)

GetBudgetCategories

Retrieves all categories defined in the specified budget, including category groups, names, and IDs.

GetBudgetSettings

Retrieves settings for the specified budget, including currency format, date format, and other preferences.

Copy & paste — that's it

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "ynab-mcp": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["run", "ynab-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "YNAB_API_KEY": "your-api-key-here"
      }
    }
  }
}

Before it works, you'll need: YNAB_API_KEY

MCP Client Configuration

Basic Configuration

Add this to your MCP client's configuration (e.g. cline_mcp_settings.json for Claude Desktop):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "ynab-mcp": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["run", "ynab-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "YNAB_API_KEY": "your-api-key-here"
      }
    }
  }
}

Advanced Configuration

If you're running from a specific directory:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "ynab-mcp": {
      "command": "uv",
      "args": ["--directory", "/path/to/ynab-mcp", "run", "ynab-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "YNAB_API_KEY": "your-api-key-here"
      }
    }
  }
}

Debugging

To debug with the MCP Inspector:

Install the inspector:

npm install -g @modelcontextprotocol/inspector

Update your configuration to use the inspector with uv:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "ynab-mcp": {
      "command": "uv",
      "args": ["--directory", "/path/to/ynab-mcp", "run", "@modelcontextprotocol/inspector", "ynab-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "YNAB_API_KEY": "your-api-key-here"
      },
      "disabled": false,
      "autoApprove": []
    }
  }
}

The inspector provides:

Real-time logs of tool calls and responses
Request/response inspection
Tool schema validation
Interactive testing interface

No common issues documented yet. If you hit a problem, the repository's GitHub Issues page is the best place to look.

Licensed under MIT— you can use, modify, and redistribute it under that license's terms.

View the full license file on GitHub →