---
title: "Personal Finance MCP Server: Candor and the Alternatives"
description: "Candor is a hosted, read-only personal finance MCP server for Claude, ChatGPT, and other agents. See how it compares with Era, PocketSmith, Finlynq, and more."
url: "https://candor.money/mcp"
updated: "2026-09-25"
---

# A personal finance MCP server for the agent you already use.

Updated 2026-09-25. Canonical page: https://candor.money/mcp

Candor Finance is a remote MCP server that gives your AI agent a financial workspace. Candor reviews your records whenever they change and keeps a short list of what deserves attention, with the figures behind each item. What you approve, such as budgets, goals, and decisions, is saved with its reason, so the next conversation starts from it. Your agent keeps the judgment, and Candor cannot move money.

## How it works with your agent

1. Create a Candor account, choose a plan, and connect your accounts through bank-grade secure sign-in.
2. Copy one setup message into your agent. It loads the candor-finance skill and connects to https://api.candor.money/mcp over remote MCP, and you approve its access on Candor's sign-in page.
3. The agent calls candor_open and starts from what deserves attention, with the figures and transactions behind each item.
4. What you approve is saved in Candor with its reason. Every read is logged with a reason, and nothing leaves Candor to act on your accounts.

## What personal finance MCP servers are there?

As of September 2026, the main personal finance MCP servers are Era Context and PocketSmith (hosted, with write access available), Finlynq (open source, hosted or self-hosted), community and Composio servers for YNAB, open-source Plaid servers you run yourself, PopaDex, and Candor. Candor is hosted and read-only toward your accounts, and keeps a short list of what deserves attention.

They differ in three ways that matter before you connect one: who runs it, whether the agent can change anything, and what the server holds beyond raw transactions. Tool counts change often, so check each vendor's documentation for the current list.

Pick by the job. If you already budget in PocketSmith or YNAB, their servers put that data in front of your agent. If you want to run everything on your own machine, the open-source servers do that, and you manage your own bank-data keys. If you want the agent to arrive knowing what deserves attention and to keep the plans you approve, that is what Candor is built for.

Personal finance MCP servers, checked September 22, 2026:

| Server | Where it runs | Account access | What it holds |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Era Context | Hosted by Era at context.era.app, OAuth 2.1 | Read and write: edits transactions, tags, and rules; transfers between your own accounts in private beta, each approved by you | Balances, holdings, transactions, automation rules, and memory of facts, goals, and preferences you approve |
| PocketSmith | Hosted by PocketSmith, OAuth 2.0 with PKCE | Your choice of two endpoints: read-only (40 tools) or full access (66 tools, including create, update, and delete) | Your PocketSmith accounts, transactions, categories, and budget events |
| Finlynq | Open source (AGPL v3): free managed cloud or self-hosted with Docker | Read and write, including budgets and categorization rules | Its own ledger of transactions, budgets, investments, loans, and goals, from bank sync or file import |
| YNAB (community servers, Composio) | Community servers run on your machine with a YNAB personal access token; Composio hosts a YNAB toolkit | Read and write: create and approve transactions, move money between categories | Your YNAB budget, accounts, and transactions |
| Open-source Plaid servers (bank-mcp, personal-finance-mcp) | Self-hosted with your own bank-data API keys | Read-only by design | Balances and transactions pulled from your banks, stored on your machine or server |
| PopaDex | Hosted by PopaDex | Reading and analysis tools; portfolio access on the Premium plan | Net worth, portfolio, and tax, salary, and retirement estimates |
| Candor | Hosted at https://api.candor.money/mcp, OAuth 2.1 | Read-only toward your accounts; writes only workspace state you approve, such as budgets, goals, and notes | Accounts, transactions, recurring payments, budgets, goals, holdings, and a short list of what deserves attention, with reasons |

- [Candor as an Era alternative](https://candor.money/era-alternative)
- [Best AI personal finance tools compared](https://candor.money/best-ai-personal-finance-tools)

## What is the Candor Finance MCP server?

Candor Finance is Candor's official remote MCP server for personal finance, registered as money.candor/candor-finance on the official MCP Registry and served at https://api.candor.money/mcp over Streamable HTTP with OAuth. Any agent that supports remote MCP can connect without installing anything locally.

The official MCP Registry record points to the same endpoint and to the public package on GitHub, so an agent platform or reviewer can inspect the declared server, the finance skill, and the connection metadata before installing.

The server pairs with the candor-finance skill. MCP carries the tools and records; the skill teaches the agent the methods, such as checking coverage before a total, investigating a possible duplicate charge, or following up on a missing refund. Supported installs keep both on matching versions.

- [Official MCP Registry record](https://registry.modelcontextprotocol.io/v0.1/servers?search=money.candor%2Fcandor-finance)
- [Candor Finance package on GitHub](https://github.com/candorsystems/candor-finance)
- [Live package manifest](https://api.candor.money/agents/candor/bootstrap.json)

## What does an agent get from Candor's MCP server?

A financial workspace, not just transactions. Candor reviews your records whenever they change and keeps a short list of what deserves attention, each item with its figures and the reason it made the list. Your agent reads it with candor_open, then pulls the exact records behind it. Budgets, goals, notes, and decisions you approve are saved with their reasons.

The list covers what a careful advisor would raise: a price increase, a duplicate charge, cash sitting idle while a card charges interest, budget drift, missing or changed income, a debt deadline, goal pace, and questions with no single transaction behind them, such as an employer match left on the table or a tax deadline. If nothing qualifies, the list is empty.

Totals, budget pace, and variance are computed from your records, so the agent reports a figure instead of predicting one. candor_query and candor_get return bounded records with freshness and coverage, candor_visualize draws a dashboard panel where the agent supports it, and candor_write saves approved state. Candor is not a licensed advisor: the agent makes suggestions and you decide.

- [Prompt: a weekly money review](https://candor.money/explore/weekly-review)
- [Prompt: find your financial starting point](https://candor.money/explore/first-pass)

## Which AI agents work with Candor's MCP server?

Claude, ChatGPT, Grok Bot, Meta Muse, Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, OpenClaw, Hermes, and any agent that can load the finance skill and use remote MCP with OAuth. Agents that cannot use MCP can use the Candor CLI instead. Every agent opens the same workspace, so plans made in one are there in the next.

Your agent reads the list when you ask, or on a schedule if it supports scheduled tasks. Scheduling belongs to the agent, not to Candor, so set it up there and have the agent confirm it.

- [Connect Claude](https://candor.money/connect/claude)
- [Connect ChatGPT](https://candor.money/connect/chatgpt)
- [Connect Grok Bot](https://candor.money/connect/grok-bot)
- [Connect Meta Muse](https://candor.money/connect/muse)
- [Connect Claude Code](https://candor.money/connect/claude-code)
- [Connect another agent](https://candor.money/connect/other-agents)

## How does an agent sign in to Candor?

Through OAuth 2.1 with dynamic client registration. Your MCP client handles the authorization challenge, and you sign in and approve that client on Candor's own page. Bank credentials never pass through the agent or the chat, and you can revoke a client at any time.

Accounts connect separately, through bank-grade secure sign-in in Candor's web app. Bank logins, access tokens, full account numbers, and verification codes never belong in a conversation.

Hosted OAuth clients work too. When a client omits the resource parameter, Candor binds the MCP resource before consent; tokens stay limited to their authorized audience, and hosted browser callbacks do not need access to the agent's computer.

- [Start Candor with your agent](https://candor.money/START.md)
- [OAuth protected-resource metadata](https://api.candor.money/.well-known/oauth-protected-resource/mcp)

## Can an agent move money through Candor?

No. Candor's MCP server has no tool to move money, pay a bill, trade, or cancel a service. The agent can save workspace state you approve, such as a budget, goal, or note. Anything outside Candor, the agent does through its own tools with your approval. Every read is logged with a reason.

Candor never sells your data or trains models on it. You can export what Candor holds, disconnect an account, revoke an agent, or delete your data from account settings.

- [Read-only finance access for AI agents](https://candor.money/read-only-finance-ai)
- [Candor trust model](https://candor.money/trust)

## How this page was researched

Each server in the table was checked against its maker's own documentation or repository on September 22, 2026. Candor is included because this is Candor's site.

Where a vendor page and a directory listing disagreed, this page uses the vendor page. If a server changes its access model, the table will be updated with the date.

## Common questions

### What is a personal finance MCP server?

A Model Context Protocol server that gives an AI agent tools for financial data, such as accounts, transactions, and budgets. The agent calls those tools instead of you pasting statements into a chat. Candor Finance is a hosted one: agents connect over remote MCP with OAuth.

### Is there a read-only personal finance MCP server?

Yes. Candor is read-only toward your accounts and writes only workspace state you approve. PocketSmith offers a separate read-only endpoint, and open-source servers such as bank-mcp and personal-finance-mcp are read-only by design but run on your own machine with your own keys.

### Does Claude or ChatGPT need anything else to use Candor?

In ChatGPT, install Candor Finance from the plugin directory; it brings the finance skill with it. In Claude, add Candor as a custom connector with its server address, or paste Candor's one-line setup message and let the agent install the finance skill. Then approve its access on Candor's page. The setup pages cover each agent step by step.

### How much does the Candor Finance MCP server cost?

The server is included in a Candor subscription. Candor starts at $8.25 a month on the annual plan ($99 a year), or $14.99 month to month, and the first 7 days are free.

### Where is the server officially listed?

The canonical record is money.candor/candor-finance on the official MCP Registry. It points to the production endpoint api.candor.money/mcp and the public package on GitHub.

## Sources

- [Context MCP server documentation](https://era.app/help/mcp-server-era-context/), Era, 2026-09-15
- [PocketSmith MCP Server](https://developers.pocketsmith.com/docs/pocketsmith-mcp-server), PocketSmith, 2026-08-20
- [PocketSmith MCP server: connect AI tools to PocketSmith](https://www.pocketsmith.com/news/2026-04-01-pocketsmith-mcp-server-connect-ai-tools-to-pocketsmith/), PocketSmith, 2026-04-01
- [Finlynq: open-source personal finance with an MCP server](https://finlynq.com/), Finlynq
- [YNAB API: works with YNAB](https://api.ynab.com/), YNAB
- [calebl/ynab-mcp-server](https://github.com/calebl/ynab-mcp-server), GitHub
- [YNAB MCP server](https://composio.dev/toolkits/ynab), Composio
- [elcukro/bank-mcp](https://github.com/elcukro/bank-mcp), GitHub
- [JosueM1109/personal-finance-mcp](https://github.com/josuem1109/personal-finance-mcp), GitHub
- [PopaDex net worth tracker](https://popadex.com/), PopaDex

## Keep reading

- [Candor CLI for terminal agents](https://candor.money/candor-cli-for-ai-agents)
- [Claude for personal finance](https://candor.money/claude-personal-finance)
- [Read-only finance access for AI agents](https://candor.money/read-only-finance-ai)
- [Candor as an Era alternative](https://candor.money/era-alternative)
- [Safe AI money management](https://candor.money/safe-ai-money-management)
- [Find my financial starting point](https://candor.money/explore/first-pass)
- [Give me a weekly money review](https://candor.money/explore/weekly-review)

## Connect your agent to Candor Finance.

Create a Candor account and connect your accounts, then copy one setup message into the agent you already use and approve its access. Agents can install Candor themselves from https://candor.money/START.md.