Rankings

The best MCP servers, ranked by real install numbers

aaaa.fyi · 2026-07-21 · 7 min read

Most "best MCP servers" lists are editorial guesses. This one isn't. We track monthly npm and PyPI downloads for every MCP server in our directory and rank by what developers actually install.

What the numbers say

Three categories dominate real-world usage:

Browser automation. Servers like Playwright MCP give an agent a real browser through accessibility snapshots. If your agent needs to test a UI, fill a form or scrape a page, this is the category to start with.

Docs and context injection. Servers that pull live documentation into the agent's context, so it stops hallucinating APIs that changed two years ago. Consistently among the highest-installed servers on the registry.

Repository operations. GitHub-oriented servers that open PRs, triage issues and read Actions logs. The official GitHub MCP server leads here.

How to read install counts

A few rules of thumb we apply when ranking:

Monthly installs beat total stars. Stars accumulate from a single viral tweet; installs reset every month and track sustained usage.

Watch the trend, not the peak. A server holding 100k installs/month for six months beats one that spiked once.

Cross-check the last push date. High installs plus a repo that hasn't moved in a year usually means people are locked in, not happy.

Where to start

Browse the full MCP ranking, it refreshes several times a day from the registries. Every listing shows the install command, and most work in Claude Code, Cursor and any MCP-compatible client with one line of config.