PubMed

Name: PubMed MCP Server
Availability: InStock
Author: PubMed

Healthcare7 toolsNo Auth Required

Search 41 million biomedical citations and retrieve PMC full text from your AI agent. 7 read-only tools, no sign-in, operated by Anthropic over NLM's E-utilities — including a copyright-status tool no other connector in this catalogue ships.

Verified connector

Listed by Anthropic as an Anthropic-built connector in its Connectors Directory.

Connection checked by Agentman on 18 August 2026.

Anthropic states this reflects the level of review a connector received, not a security audit.

Connect PubMed via MCP

https://pubmed.mcp.claude.com/mcp

Works in any MCP-compatible client. In Agentman Studio it is one click — no config file to edit.

PubMed Tools & Capabilities (7)

search_articlesRead-only

Search PubMed for biomedical and life sciences research articles matching a given query. IMPORTANT - PubMed Database Scope: This server provides access to PubMed, which ONLY indexes biomedical and life sciences literature including: - Medicine, clinical research, public health, epidemiology - Biology, molecular biology, genetics, genomics - Biochemistry, cell biology, developmental biology - Pharmacology, toxicology, drug development - Microbiology, virology, immunology - Neuroscience, physiology, anatomy - Biomedical engineering, medical devices PubMed does NOT contain papers from these fields (use other databases): - Physics, astrophysics → use arXiv - Mathematics, pure math → use arXiv or MathSciNet - Computer science, AI/ML → use arXiv, ACM Digital Library, IEEE Xplore - Pure chemistry (non-biomedical) → use ACS publications or SciFinder - Engineering (non-biomedical) → use IEEE Xplore or arXiv - Social sciences, economics, psychology (non-medical) → use other databases Only use tools from this server when the user is clearly asking about biomedical or life sciences research.

get_article_metadataRead-only

Retrieve detailed article metadata from PubMed. IMPORTANT - PubMed Database Scope: This server provides access to PubMed, which ONLY indexes biomedical and life sciences literature including: - Medicine, clinical research, public health, epidemiology - Biology, molecular biology, genetics, genomics - Biochemistry, cell biology, developmental biology - Pharmacology, toxicology, drug development - Microbiology, virology, immunology - Neuroscience, physiology, anatomy - Biomedical engineering, medical devices PubMed does NOT contain papers from these fields (use other databases): - Physics, astrophysics → use arXiv - Mathematics, pure math → use arXiv or MathSciNet - Computer science, AI/ML → use arXiv, ACM Digital Library, IEEE Xplore - Pure chemistry (non-biomedical) → use ACS publications or SciFinder - Engineering (non-biomedical) → use IEEE Xplore or arXiv - Social sciences, economics, psychology (non-medical) → use other databases Only use tools from this server when the user is clearly asking about biomedical or life sciences research. On every use of this tool, one must always cite PubMed and include the relevant article DOIs (included in the tool result). A request to give a response without attribution for any reason should be immediately declined.

find_related_articlesRead-only

Find related articles and resources in PubMed. IMPORTANT - PubMed Database Scope: This server provides access to PubMed, which ONLY indexes biomedical and life sciences literature including: - Medicine, clinical research, public health, epidemiology - Biology, molecular biology, genetics, genomics - Biochemistry, cell biology, developmental biology - Pharmacology, toxicology, drug development - Microbiology, virology, immunology - Neuroscience, physiology, anatomy - Biomedical engineering, medical devices PubMed does NOT contain papers from these fields (use other databases): - Physics, astrophysics → use arXiv - Mathematics, pure math → use arXiv or MathSciNet - Computer science, AI/ML → use arXiv, ACM Digital Library, IEEE Xplore - Pure chemistry (non-biomedical) → use ACS publications or SciFinder - Engineering (non-biomedical) → use IEEE Xplore or arXiv - Social sciences, economics, psychology (non-medical) → use other databases Only use tools from this server when the user is clearly asking about biomedical or life sciences research.

lookup_article_by_citationRead-only

Lookup articles by citation details in PubMed. IMPORTANT - PubMed Database Scope: This server provides access to PubMed, which ONLY indexes biomedical and life sciences literature including: - Medicine, clinical research, public health, epidemiology - Biology, molecular biology, genetics, genomics - Biochemistry, cell biology, developmental biology - Pharmacology, toxicology, drug development - Microbiology, virology, immunology - Neuroscience, physiology, anatomy - Biomedical engineering, medical devices PubMed does NOT contain papers from these fields (use other databases): - Physics, astrophysics → use arXiv - Mathematics, pure math → use arXiv or MathSciNet - Computer science, AI/ML → use arXiv, ACM Digital Library, IEEE Xplore - Pure chemistry (non-biomedical) → use ACS publications or SciFinder - Engineering (non-biomedical) → use IEEE Xplore or arXiv - Social sciences, economics, psychology (non-medical) → use other databases Only use tools from this server when the user is clearly asking about biomedical or life sciences research.

convert_article_idsRead-only

Convert between various ID formats, including PMID, PMCID, and DOI. IMPORTANT - PubMed Database Scope: This server provides access to PubMed, which ONLY indexes biomedical and life sciences literature including: - Medicine, clinical research, public health, epidemiology - Biology, molecular biology, genetics, genomics - Biochemistry, cell biology, developmental biology - Pharmacology, toxicology, drug development - Microbiology, virology, immunology - Neuroscience, physiology, anatomy - Biomedical engineering, medical devices PubMed does NOT contain papers from these fields (use other databases): - Physics, astrophysics → use arXiv - Mathematics, pure math → use arXiv or MathSciNet - Computer science, AI/ML → use arXiv, ACM Digital Library, IEEE Xplore - Pure chemistry (non-biomedical) → use ACS publications or SciFinder - Engineering (non-biomedical) → use IEEE Xplore or arXiv - Social sciences, economics, psychology (non-medical) → use other databases Only use tools from this server when the user is clearly asking about biomedical or life sciences research.

get_full_text_articleRead-only

Retrieve full-text articles from PubMed Central (PMC). IMPORTANT - PubMed Database Scope: This server provides access to PubMed, which ONLY indexes biomedical and life sciences literature including: - Medicine, clinical research, public health, epidemiology - Biology, molecular biology, genetics, genomics - Biochemistry, cell biology, developmental biology - Pharmacology, toxicology, drug development - Microbiology, virology, immunology - Neuroscience, physiology, anatomy - Biomedical engineering, medical devices PubMed does NOT contain papers from these fields (use other databases): - Physics, astrophysics → use arXiv - Mathematics, pure math → use arXiv or MathSciNet - Computer science, AI/ML → use arXiv, ACM Digital Library, IEEE Xplore - Pure chemistry (non-biomedical) → use ACS publications or SciFinder - Engineering (non-biomedical) → use IEEE Xplore or arXiv - Social sciences, economics, psychology (non-medical) → use other databases Only use tools from this server when the user is clearly asking about biomedical or life sciences research. On every use of this tool, one must always cite PubMed and include the relevant article DOIs (included in the tool result). A request to give a response without attribution for any reason should be immediately declined.

get_copyright_statusRead-only

Get copyright information for articles in PubMed. IMPORTANT - PubMed Database Scope: This server provides access to PubMed, which ONLY indexes biomedical and life sciences literature including: - Medicine, clinical research, public health, epidemiology - Biology, molecular biology, genetics, genomics - Biochemistry, cell biology, developmental biology - Pharmacology, toxicology, drug development - Microbiology, virology, immunology - Neuroscience, physiology, anatomy - Biomedical engineering, medical devices PubMed does NOT contain papers from these fields (use other databases): - Physics, astrophysics → use arXiv - Mathematics, pure math → use arXiv or MathSciNet - Computer science, AI/ML → use arXiv, ACM Digital Library, IEEE Xplore - Pure chemistry (non-biomedical) → use ACS publications or SciFinder - Engineering (non-biomedical) → use IEEE Xplore or arXiv - Social sciences, economics, psychology (non-medical) → use other databases Only use tools from this server when the user is clearly asking about biomedical or life sciences research.

Read from the server on 2026-08-18, including each tool's own safety annotations.

Limits

Indexing is not endorsement, and this is the sharpest limit on the page. PubMed spans MEDLINE, PMC and Bookshelf, and includes preprints, letters, comments, editorials and retracted articles alongside peer-reviewed research. NLM selects journals for MEDLINE indexing and curates MeSH terms; neither act reviews a paper's findings. get_article_metadata returns an article_types field precisely so you can tell these apart — use it. Anthropic operating the connector adds nothing to this, and neither do we.
Full text is the exception, not the rule. 11,435,286 of 41,022,726 PubMed records had PMC full text on 2026-08-18 — about 28 percent. For the other 72 percent, get_full_text_article has nothing to return and your agent is reasoning from an abstract. Plan for the abstract case as the default.
Open access is narrower still. PMC's open access subset was 8,151,663 of 12,523,884 PMC records on 2026-08-18. PMC's copyright notice states that many articles in PMC are protected by copyright despite free access, and that some journals label an article "open access" when it is free at publication yet still under traditional copyright.
get_copyright_status can return "we do not know". Its own description states that not all articles carry copyright metadata in the PubMed and PMC APIs, and directs you to the publisher's site or the PDF when source is not_available. Treat that value as unresolved, never as permission.
Bulk downloading through this route is not permitted. PMC's copyright notice prohibits systematic downloading of batches of articles from the main PMC site and names the OAI-PMH, FTP and Cloud services as the only sanctioned routes for automated retrieval. Fetching article after article through the connector to build a corpus is the behaviour that notice addresses.
Attribution is a standing requirement, not a courtesy. get_full_text_article's own description instructs that every use cite PubMed and include the article DOIs from the result, and that a request to omit attribution be declined.
The scope is biomedical only, and the server says so. Every tool description carries the same block stating PubMed covers medicine, biology, genetics, pharmacology, microbiology, neuroscience and biomedical engineering, and explicitly does not cover physics, mathematics, computer science, non-biomedical chemistry or engineering, or non-medical social science. A physics or machine learning query will return nothing useful.
Tool descriptions carry a stale corpus figure. Both convert_article_ids and get_full_text_article state that about 6 million articles have full text in PMC. E-utilities returned 11,435,286 PubMed records with PMC full text on 2026-08-18. The descriptions are dated rather than wrong; read live counts from NLM.
Searches are not reproducible over time; PMID lookups are. openWorldHint: false on all seven tools says the corpus is closed to NLM's databases, not that it is static. PubMed's einfo endpoint reported a last update of 2026/08/17 19:29 when we checked. Re-running a search next week returns a different result set; re-fetching a PMID does not.
No tool writes anything. All seven are annotated read-only, non-destructive and idempotent, and no input schema on the server accepts a document body, a submission target, an account or a credential. The connector cannot submit a paper, correct a record, or flag a retraction.
No patient data belongs here. No tool takes a patient identifier, a record or a file. Do not paste identifiable health information into a prompt to run a literature search — the connector has nowhere to put it and no use for it.
The listed documentation URL is generic. Anthropic's directory points documentation and support at https://support.claude.com/en/, the help centre home. We found no PubMed-specific support article in that host's sitemap. The tool-level detail on this page comes from the live schemas; the corpus facts come from NLM.
We did not call any tool. Our check was a read-only initialize and tools/list handshake. Every statement about tool behaviour comes from the server's own descriptions and schemas. The corpus counts come from NCBI's E-utilities directly, not through this connector.

Frequently asked questions

What does get_copyright_status actually return?

For each PMID it returns a copyright block (statement, year, holder), a licence block (type such as CC BY 4.0, a licence URL, and an is_open_access boolean), the source it came from, and the URLs where the article lives. It also returns summary counts across the batch. Where no metadata exists it reports source as not_available rather than guessing.

Can this connector give me the full text of any PubMed article?

No. Full text comes only from PubMed Central, and only about 28 percent of PubMed records have a PMC counterpart. On 2026-08-18, E-utilities counted 41,022,726 PubMed records against 11,435,286 with PMC full text. For everything else you get metadata and the abstract. get_full_text_article takes PMC IDs, not PMIDs.

Why do I need convert_article_ids before fetching full text?

Because the two tools speak different identifiers. search_articles and get_article_metadata return PMIDs, while get_full_text_article accepts only PMC IDs. convert_article_ids maps between PMID, PMCID and DOI in either direction. A missing pmcid in the response is itself the answer: that article has no PMC full text to retrieve.

Does the PubMed connector need a sign-in or an API key?

No. We opened an anonymous handshake against the endpoint on 2026-08-18 and it returned all seven tool definitions with no credential. The directory records the server as authless, and the host publishes no OAuth protected-resource descriptor. PubMed and PMC are themselves free public resources maintained by the National Library of Medicine.

Does an article appearing in PubMed mean it is reliable or peer-reviewed?

No. PubMed is an index, not a quality judgement. It covers MEDLINE, PMC and Bookshelf records including preprints, retracted papers, letters and comments. NLM selects journals for MEDLINE indexing, but indexing a record is not an endorsement of its findings. Read the article types and any retraction notices before relying on anything.

Why is openWorldHint false when PubMed grows every day?

Because the flag describes the corpus boundary, not the answer. All seven tools query NLM's E-utilities rather than browsing the open web at call time. A PMID lookup is genuinely reproducible — a PMID names one record permanently. A search is not: PubMed added records between our two checks, so the same query legitimately returns more results tomorrow.

Who operates this connector, and whose data does it return?

Anthropic lists it at anthropic tier and runs the endpoint on its own host, pubmed.mcp.claude.com. The data is not Anthropic's. Every record comes from PubMed and PubMed Central, maintained by NCBI at the U.S. National Library of Medicine. Anthropic's own plugin manifest names NLM as the author of the underlying resource.