Free hosted service or self-hosted. Open source, MIT licensed.

Your email, inside your AI assistant. Nothing stored. Nothing tracked.

MailMCP connects the IMAP, POP3 and SMTP accounts you already have to Claude, Cursor and any other MCP client. Mail is read on demand and never saved. Use the free hosted service, or run it on your own machine or domain.

Install MCPView on GitHub

Ask your assistant to open MailMCP using web_open.

We connect your existing accounts. We do not provide email addresses.

Anything urgent from my accountant this week?

messages_search from accountant, last 7 days, unread
messages_read message 4821, 9 KB

One message needs you: the Q3 filing is due Friday. Want me to draft a reply for your review?

0 bytes of mail storedread live, kept nowhere

CONNECT YOUR ASSISTANT

One prompt. Your email connected.

Copy this prompt into Codex or your MCP-compatible assistant. It includes the setup steps and the browser sign-in you need to complete.

Copy the prompt and paste it into your assistant.
Sign in to MailMCP and authorize the connection in your browser.
Let your assistant verify the connection, then add your email accounts.

Already have a MailMCP account? Use the same login to keep your connected mailboxes. Enter mail passwords in the web panel, never in the chat.

Prompt for your assistant

Help me connect the free hosted MailMCP service to this assistant. Read https://mailmcp.org/install.md for the setup and OAuth troubleshooting guide. The Streamable HTTP endpoint is https://mailmcp.org/mcp.

Identify the client and where it runs first. For local Codex, check `codex mcp list`. If MailMCP is missing, run `codex mcp add mailmcp --url https://mailmcp.org/mcp`. Preserve existing configuration. If adding starts OAuth, keep that process running and complete it; otherwise run `codex mcp login mailmcp --scopes openid,mailmcp`. Do not start simultaneous logins.

Show me the actual authorization link produced by the client if the browser does not open. Keep the login process alive while I sign in and authorize at auth.mailmcp.org. Do not invent a link or substitute a normal website login. If the command cannot run here, give me the exact command to run in my own terminal. For SSH, containers or remote agents, explain that the browser callback must reach the machine running the login. In a graphical client, use its MCP settings and Authenticate action; other clients need remote HTTP MCP and OAuth support.

After authorization, check the connection by calling accounts_list. If the current conversation cannot see the new tools, tell me to restart the client or open a new session before checking again. An empty account list is a successful connection. Then offer web_open so I can add my existing email accounts privately. Never request passwords, access tokens, refresh tokens or callback codes in chat. Do not send or modify email during setup, and do not claim success until a tool call succeeds.

Server URLhttps://mailmcp.org/mcp

Codex does not open the sign-in window?

Adding the server and signing in are separate steps. If it is already added, run this in a terminal on the same computer as your Codex client:

codex mcp login mailmcp --scopes openid,mailmcp

Keep the command running. Open the authorization link it displays, sign in and accept access. Opening mailmcp.org on its own does not authorize Codex. In the app or IDE, use MCP settings → Authenticate instead.

Using SSH, a container or a cloud agent? A localhost callback points to the machine running the command. Run login on your own computer when Codex runs there; for a remote client, follow the callback instructions in the guide. Never paste callback codes or tokens into chat.

Full setup and troubleshooting guide (EN / ES) · Official Codex documentation

Three promises, each one checkable in the source.

Zero mail retention

Messages, subjects, attachments and contacts are fetched from your provider when you ask and never written to disk. There is no access log and no body log. Sessions live in memory and disappear on restart.

100% private

Whether you use the free hosted service or your own server, the only thing kept is your connection settings, encrypted with AES-256-GCM. No analytics, no tracking pixels, no third-party scripts, and email renders as plain text so remote images never load.

Fully open source

Every line is public under the MIT license. Read the threat model, run the test suite, fork it, or host it for your team. There is no closed component and no upsell.

Up and running in three steps

Sign up, or run it yourself

Create a free account on the hosted service, or clone the repository and run it as a local MCP server or as a Docker deployment on your own domain.
Connect an account you already have

Ask your assistant to open MailMCP with the tool web_open and add your IMAP, POP3 or SMTP settings in the browser. Credentials never enter the chat transcript.
Ask in plain language

Triage the inbox, find an attachment, flag what matters, or draft a reply. Sending and moving mail always wait for your confirmation.

Eighteen tools, one scope: your own accounts

Every tool runs as the authenticated user. None of them accepts another owner's ID, and the ones that send or move mail wait for your confirmation.

accounts_list
accounts_add
accounts_update
accounts_remove
accounts_verify
folders_list
folders_create
messages_list
messages_search

messages_read
messages_flag
messages_move
messages_send
messages_reply
attachments_list
attachments_download
web_open
web_revoke_sessions

Start in a minute with us, or run it yourself

Hosted by us

Free for everyone

No card, no trial, no plan to choose. Sign in, connect the accounts you already have and start asking your assistant. It runs the exact code published in the repository, at mailmcp.org, on a server we operate.

Your mail never touches our disks: fetched live, kept nowhere
Connection settings encrypted with AES-256-GCM; remove them and they are gone
No analytics, no logs of your mail, no tracking of any kind

Hosted by you

Same code, your hardware

Run it as a local MCP server on your laptop, or deploy the Docker image on your own domain behind your own identity provider. Nothing is held back for a paid tier, because there is none.

Local stdio mode in a handful of commands
Docker, Caddy and Portainer templates included
Bring your own OIDC provider, such as Keycloak

Hosting guide

Privacy by design, not by policy

Your assistant talks to MailMCP. MailMCP talks to your mail provider over verified TLS. Nothing sits in between, and nothing stays behind.

Your mail provider IMAP, POP3 and SMTP over TLS 1.2 or later

MailMCP Encrypted vault holding connection settings only. Mail passes through memory and is gone.

Your assistant Any MCP client, on your machine or over authenticated HTTPS

What MailMCP keeps and what it never keeps
Stored	Never stored
Connection settings for each account, encrypted with AES-256-GCM under a key you hold	Message bodies, subjects or headers
Hashed session tokens in memory, valid for one hour and revocable at any time	Attachments, contacts or search history
Your language preference, in your own browser	Access logs, analytics or tracking identifiers

Not end-to-end encrypted, and we say so plainly: whoever runs the server and holds the master key can decrypt the vault. When you self-host, that person is you. Read the full threat model

Works with the tools you already use

MCP clients

Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code, Windsurf and any client that speaks the Model Context Protocol, over local stdio or authenticated HTTPS.

Mail providers

Gmail, Outlook, iCloud, Fastmail, Proton through Bridge, your company's mail server, or any provider offering IMAP, POP3 or SMTP with an app password.

Questions people ask before trusting us with their mail

Does MailMCP store my email?

No. Messages are fetched from your provider when you or your assistant ask for them and are held in memory only for that request. Nothing about your mail is written to disk or logged.

What exactly does MailMCP save?

Only the settings needed to connect: server, port, username, app password, label and sender name. They live in a vault encrypted with AES-256-GCM under a 256-bit master key held by the operator. Sessions are kept in memory and expire after an hour.

Is MailMCP free and open source?

Yes. The full source is on GitHub under the MIT license, including the web client, the MCP server, the deployment templates and the test suite.

Is the hosted version of MailMCP free?

Yes. The hosted service is free for everyone, with no card, trial or paid tier. You sign in, connect the accounts you already have and start using it with your assistant. Self-hosting remains available with the same code and features.

Is the hosted version as private as self-hosting?

It runs the same open-source code with the same rules: mail is fetched live and never written to disk, there is no access or body logging, and only your encrypted connection settings are kept. Removing a connection deletes its credentials immediately. The difference is who holds the master key: the operator on the hosted service, you when you self-host.

Which AI assistants can use MailMCP?

Any client that supports the Model Context Protocol, including Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor and VS Code. Locally it runs over stdio; on a domain it exposes an OAuth-protected MCP endpoint.

Does MailMCP give me an email address?

No. You bring the accounts you already have. MailMCP never sells, provisions or hosts mailboxes.

Can my assistant send email on its own?

Not without you. Sending and moving mail require an explicit confirmation, and the server instructs assistants to treat email content as untrusted data, never as instructions.

Is MailMCP end-to-end encrypted?

No. The server process decrypts credentials to log in to your provider, so whoever operates it and holds the master key could read them. Self-hosting keeps that person you.

How do I run MailMCP?

Create a free account on the hosted service and connect your accounts in the browser, or clone the repository and add it to your MCP client, or deploy the Docker image behind the included Caddy configuration with your own OIDC provider. The hosting guide covers self-hosting.

Your mail, your server, your assistant.

Free on the hosted service, or on your own server in a few minutes.

Read the source on GitHub Hosting guide

Your mail starts here.

Add an IMAP, POP3 or SMTP account. You will need your provider’s connection settings.

Room to read.

Select a message to open it.