Notion MCP Server
[!NOTE]
For the best experience, use Remote Notion MCP,
our official hosted MCP server. This repository is a separate, self-hosted MCP
server implementation that is no longer actively maintained or supported. Please
use Remote Notion MCP instead. It is purpose-built to give AI agents
faster results using far fewer tokens.
Remote Notion MCP can search your workspace and connected apps semantically, read and
edit pages in Markdown, and return only the most relevant context. That means less
time waiting, less context-window usage, and lower token costs. It also uses OAuth
and automatically respects each user's existing Notion permissions—without API
tokens, JSON configuration, manual page sharing, or a local server to maintain.
| Feature | Remote Notion MCP | This project (local) |
|---|
| Fast, hosted experience | ✅ | Runs and updates locally |
| Token-efficient responses | ✅ | Limited |
| Powerful tools tailored for AI agents | ✅ | Basic API-derived tools |
| Semantic search across your Notion workspace | ✅ | Keyword search only |
| AI Connector search across connected apps | ✅ | Not available |
| Markdown-native page reading and editing | ✅ | Limited to two page-content tools |
| Seamless OAuth setup | ✅ | Manual token and JSON configuration |
| Respects each user's existing Notion permissions | ✅ | Manual integration permissions and page sharing |
| Active support and ongoing improvements | ✅ | Not actively supported |
Learn more and get started in the Remote Notion MCP documentation.
We are prioritizing, and only providing active support for, Remote Notion MCP. As a result:
- We may sunset this local MCP server repository in the future.
- Issues and pull requests here are not actively monitored.
- Please do not file issues relating to the remote MCP here; instead, contact Notion support.
This project implements an MCP server for the Notion API.
⚠️ Version 2.0.0 breaking changes
Version 2.0.0 migrates to the Notion API 2025-09-03 which introduces data sources as the primary abstraction for databases.
What changed
Removed tools (3):
post-database-query - replaced by query-data-sourceupdate-a-database - replaced by update-a-data-sourcecreate-a-database - replaced by create-a-data-source
New tools (7):
query-data-source - Query a data source (database) with filters and sortsretrieve-a-data-source - Get metadata and schema for a data sourceupdate-a-data-source - Update data source propertiescreate-a-data-source - Create a new data sourcelist-data-source-templates - List available templates in a data sourcemove-page - Move a page to a different parent locationretrieve-a-database - Get database metadata including its data source IDs
Parameter changes:
- All database operations now use
data_source_id instead of database_id
- Search filter values changed from
["page", "database"] to ["page", "data_source"]
- Page creation now supports both
page_id and database_id parents (for data sources)
Do I need to migrate?
No code changes required. MCP tools are discovered automatically when the server starts. When you upgrade to v2.0.0, AI clients will automatically see the new tool names and parameters. The old database tools are no longer available.
If you have hardcoded tool names or prompts that reference the old database tools, update them to use the new data source tools:
| Old Tool (v1.x) | New Tool (v2.0) | Parameter Change |
|---|
post-database-query | query-data-source | database_id → data_source_id |
update-a-database | update-a-data-source | database_id → data_source_id |
create-a-database | create-a-data-source | No change (uses parent.page_id) |
Note: retrieve-a-database is still available and returns database metadata including the list of data source IDs. Use retrieve-a-data-source to get the schema and properties of a specific data source.
Total tools now: 22 (was 19 in v1.x)
Page content as Markdown
The server exposes two tools for working with page content as enhanced Markdown instead of block JSON, which is significantly more token-efficient for AI agents:
retrieve-page-markdown — Read a page's full content as Markdown (GET /v1/pages/{page_id}/markdown). Pass include_transcript: true to inline meeting-note transcripts.update-page-markdown — Edit a page's content with Markdown (PATCH /v1/pages/{page_id}/markdown). Prefer replace_content to overwrite the whole page, or update_content for targeted find-and-replace edits.
These endpoints require Notion API version 2026-03-11. The server now sources the Notion-Version header per operation from the OpenAPI spec, so these tools use 2026-03-11 while the rest of the API continues to use 2025-09-03 — no configuration needed. If you set Notion-Version yourself via OPENAPI_MCP_HEADERS, your value takes precedence for every tool.
Transport options
The Notion MCP Server supports two transport modes:
STDIO transport (default)
The default transport mode uses standard input/output for communication. This is the standard MCP transport used by most clients like Claude Desktop.
# Run with default stdio transport
npx @notionhq/notion-mcp-server
# Or explicitly specify stdio
npx @notionhq/notion-mcp-server --transport stdio
Streamable HTTP transport
For web-based applications or clients that prefer HTTP communication, you can use the Streamable HTTP transport:
# Run with Streamable HTTP transport on port 3000 (default)
npx @notionhq/notion-mcp-server --transport http
# Run on a custom port
npx @notionhq/notion-mcp-server --transport http --port 8080
# Bind to a different host. The default is 127.0.0.1.
npx @notionhq/notion-mcp-server --transport http --host 0.0.0.0
# Run with a custom authentication token
npx @notionhq/notion-mcp-server --transport http --auth-token "your-secret-token"
When using Streamable HTTP transport, the server will be available at http://127.0.0.1:<port>/mcp by default.
Authentication
The Streamable HTTP transport requires bearer token authentication for security. You have three options:
Option 1: Auto-generated token (only for development)
npx @notionhq/notion-mcp-server --transport http
The server will generate a secure random token and write it to a file with restricted permissions:
Generated auth token written to: /tmp/.notion-mcp-auth-token-12345
Option 2: Custom token via command line (recommended for production)
npx @notionhq/notion-mcp-server --transport http --auth-token "your-secret-token"
Option 3: Custom token via environment variable (recommended for production)
AUTH_TOKEN="your-secret-token" npx @notionhq/notion-mcp-server --transport http
The command line argument --auth-token takes precedence over the AUTH_TOKEN environment variable if both are provided.
Unsafe option: disable HTTP authentication
You can disable bearer token authentication only with the explicit unsafe flag:
npx @notionhq/notion-mcp-server --transport http --unsafe-disable-auth
WARNING: --unsafe-disable-auth is unsafe. The server may be reachable to pages you visit via DNS rebinding. Only use it on an isolated network.
When authentication is disabled, the server enables DNS rebinding protection by checking the Host and Origin headers against the configured local host and loopback hosts. The previous --disable-auth flag is still accepted as a deprecated alias, but it will print a warning.
Making HTTP requests
All requests to the Streamable HTTP transport must include the bearer token in the Authorization header:
# Example request
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer your-token-here" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-H "mcp-session-id: your-session-id" \
-d '{"jsonrpc": "2.0", "method": "initialize", "params": {}, "id": 1}' \
http://localhost:3000/mcp
Note: Make sure to set either the NOTION_TOKEN environment variable (recommended) or the OPENAPI_MCP_HEADERS environment variable with your Notion integration token when using either transport mode.
Serving multiple integrations (per-request token passthrough)
By default the server authenticates to Notion with a single token baked in at
startup, which locks one deployment to one Notion integration. To let a single
deployment serve multiple integrations, enable token passthrough so each
client supplies its own Notion integration token per connection:
# Enable per-request Notion tokens (flag or ENABLE_TOKEN_PASSTHROUGH=true)
npx @notionhq/notion-mcp-server --transport http --enable-token-passthrough
Clients then send their Notion token on the initialize request using the
dedicated Notion-Token header:
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer <server-auth-token>" \
-H "Notion-Token: ntn_****" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"jsonrpc": "2.0", "method": "initialize", "params": {}, "id": 1}' \
http://localhost:3000/mcp
How the token is resolved for each connection, in order:
- The
Notion-Token header (preferred — unambiguous, and works alongside the
server's own Authorization gateway auth). If present it must be a valid
Notion token, otherwise the request is rejected with 401.
Authorization: Bearer ntn_**** — only when the server's own bearer auth is
turned off (--unsafe-disable-auth), so the header is free to carry the
Notion token directly.- Otherwise the startup env token (
NOTION_TOKEN / OPENAPI_MCP_HEADERS), if
set, so passthrough and a default integration can coexist on one deployment.
Notes:
- Only values with a Notion token prefix (
ntn_, legacy secret_) are treated
as Notion tokens, so the server's gateway secret and a tenant's Notion token
never collide.
- Each token is bound to its MCP session; tokens are never logged (only a
redacted prefix is emitted).
- This is a deliberate token-passthrough setup. Always deploy it over TLS, and
prefer keeping the server's own bearer auth (
--auth-token) enabled as a
gateway in front of multi-tenant traffic.
Examples
- Using the following instruction
Comment "Hello MCP" on page "Getting started"
AI will correctly plan two API calls, v1/search and v1/comments, to achieve the task
- Similarly, the following instruction will result in a new page named "Notion MCP" added to parent page "Development"
Add a page titled "Notion MCP" to page "Development"
- You may also reference content ID directly
Get the content of page 1a6b35e6e67f802fa7e1d27686f017f2
Development
Build & test
npm run build
npm test
Execute
npx -y --prefix /path/to/local/notion-mcp-server @notionhq/notion-mcp-server
Testing changes locally in Cursor:
- Run
npm link command from repository root to create a machine-global symlink to the notion-mcp-server package.
- Merge the configuration snippet below into Cursor's
mcp.json (or other MCP client you want to test with).
- (Cleanup) run
npm unlink from repository root.
{
"mcpServers": {
"notion-local-package": {
"command": "notion-mcp-server",
"env": {
"NOTION_TOKEN": "ntn_..."
}
}
}
}
Publish
npm login
npm publish --access public