Financial Rates in Any AI App
Connect RateAPI to Claude, ChatGPT, VS Code, and more using MCP. Rich UI widgets render interactive rate cards, benchmark charts, and comparison tables directly in your conversations.
What is the RateAPI MCP Server?
The RateAPI MCP Server connects AI apps like Claude, ChatGPT, and VS Code to real-time mortgage, auto loan, HELOC, personal loan, and credit card rates from 3,700+ US lenders. With MCP Apps support, tools return rich UI widgets that render interactive rate cards, benchmark dashboards, and comparison tables directly inside your chat interface.
What is MCP?
The Model Context Protocol lets AI assistants like Claude access external data sources directly. Instead of copying and pasting rate data, Claude can query RateAPI in real-time during your conversation.
Claude queries RateAPI and returns live rates from 3,700+ credit unions.
Get personalized auto loan recommendations with vehicle condition filters.
Side-by-side comparison with current APRs, points, and fees.
Filtered searches across the entire dataset.
Quick Start
Set Up in 2 Minutes
Get Started
One command. No signup required.
# Create a free API key (email required — 20 requests/month)curl -X POST https://api.rateapi.dev/keys \ -H "Content-Type: application/json" \ -d '{"email": "you@example.com", "source": "curl-mcp"}'Save your key securely - it can't be retrieved again. Free tier includes 20 requests/month (email required).
Configure Claude Desktop
Edit ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
{ "mcpServers": { "rateapi": { "url": "https://mcp.rateapi.dev/mcp", "headers": { "x-api-key": "rk_your_key_here" } } }}Restart Claude Desktop after saving the config file.
Or Configure Claude Code (CLI)
claude mcp add rateapi https://mcp.rateapi.dev/mcp \ --transport http \ --header "x-api-key: rk_your_key_here"Start Asking Questions
MCP Tools
Available Commands
Claude can use these tools to query mortgage, auto loan, HELOC, personal loan, and credit card rate data — and check whether you can actually join each credit union
get_financing_decisionPrimaryPersonalized mortgage, auto loan, HELOC, personal loan, or credit card recommendations with ranked offers and savings analysis. Pass a borrower's county, employer, military status, school, or place of worship to get membership-eligibility annotations on every offer.
check_membership_eligibilityNewAnswer “can this person join?” for any credit union. Accepts county/state plus optional employer, occupation, military_status, school, and worship — returns a verdict (open to anyone, eligible via military, likely eligible, or unknown) with the verbatim membership rule, evidence link, and cost to join. Annotates, never falsely excludes.
get_benchmarksNewMarket rate benchmarks with min/median/max APR across all institutions by product type
get_credit_unionDetailed rates and membership eligibility plus the latest imported NCUA quarterly profile: members, assets, founding year, reported services, and branch locations.
list_credit_unionsBrowse by state with rate, member, and location counts.
find_credit_unions_near_zipNewFind the closest NCUA-reported branch for each credit union, ordered by estimated straight-line miles from a five-digit ZIP.
find_product_rates_near_zipNewFind APR-ranked, product-matched rates from credit unions in the nearby-branch set, with distance, freshness, and branch context.
get_extraction_statsData extraction statistics showing collection volumes, product coverage, and freshness
create_monitorSet up webhook alerts when rates meet specific conditions
get_monitorGet detailed info for a specific rate change monitor
list_monitorsView all your active rate monitoring alerts
update_monitorUpdate monitor conditions, status, or webhook configuration
delete_monitorPermanently remove a rate change monitor
simulate_monitorTest monitor conditions with simulated rate changes
FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I connect RateAPI to Claude or ChatGPT?
Get a free API key with one curl request, then add the MCP endpoint https://mcp.rateapi.dev/mcp to your AI app config with an x-api-key header. In Claude Code, run: claude mcp add rateapi https://mcp.rateapi.dev/mcp --transport http --header "x-api-key: rk_your_key_here". Setup takes about 2 minutes.
What is the RateAPI MCP Server?
It is a Model Context Protocol server that lets AI apps like Claude, ChatGPT, and VS Code query live rates and source-labelled credit union profiles from 3,700+ US institutions. It exposes 75 tools for financing decisions, nearby product rates, institution and nearest-branch discovery, deposits/CDs, monitors, membership eligibility, affordability math, portfolio scans, and branded rate-email campaigns.
Do I need to pay to use the MCP server?
No. The free tier includes 20 requests per month (email required). Paid plans add higher limits and more tools.
Which AI clients support the rich UI widgets?
Widgets render automatically in Claude, ChatGPT, VS Code, and other MCP Apps-compatible clients. CLI tools like Claude Code receive the same data as structured text for terminal display.
Can it tell me whether I am eligible to join a credit union?
Yes. The check_membership_eligibility tool, and get_financing_decision, accept the county, employer, occupation, military status, school, or place of worship for a borrower and return a per-credit-union eligibility verdict — open to anyone, eligible via military service, likely eligible, or unknown — each backed by the verbatim membership rule from the membership page of the credit union, an evidence link, and the cost to join. It annotates offers rather than falsely excluding them: when eligibility cannot be confirmed, it is labeled unknown instead of assumed no.
Explore the full RateAPI platform: see live mortgage rates and auto loan rates, compare the mortgage rate benchmark, or read the data methodology.