paper-search-mcp
paper-search-mcp is an MCP server that searches and downloads academic papers from many free sources for AI apps like Claude.
What it is good for
- Finding academic papers across arXiv, PubMed, and other databases
- Downloading open access PDFs of research papers
- Pulling reference and citation lists for a paper
- Gathering sources for a literature review
At a glance
- Who it is for
- Setup
- Guided command-line setup
Level 4 of 5. You copy and paste commands into a terminal by following the instructions. Comfortable territory for vibe coders.
- Cost
- Free and open source
- Type
- MCP server or connector
- Tasks
- Works with
- Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Smithery, Docker, DeepSeek Harness
Momentum
- Rank this week
- Not ranked yet
- Best rank
- None yet
- GitHub stars
- 2,975
GitHub numbers as of Nov 2, 2026. Updated weekly.
Official links
Setup steps are on the official pages. We do not repeat them here, since they change.
Questions
- Is paper-search-mcp free?
- Yes. It is free and open source (MIT license).
- Do I need to know how to code to use paper-search-mcp?
- You do not need to write code, but setup means copying and pasting commands into a terminal by following its instructions.
- What does paper-search-mcp work with?
- According to its own documentation, it works with Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Smithery, Docker, and DeepSeek Harness.
- What is paper-search-mcp good for?
- Finding academic papers across arXiv, PubMed, and other databases, downloading open access PDFs of research papers, pulling reference and citation lists for a paper, and gathering sources for a literature review.
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