CKAN MCP Server

Turn any CKAN open data portal into a conversation.

Most public open data portals worldwide — Italy's dati.gov.it, the US data.gov, Canada's open.canada.ca, and hundreds more — run on CKAN, an open-source platform with a fully documented public API. Navigating these portals usually requires knowing their structure, search syntax, and APIs.

This MCP server removes that barrier. Once connected, your AI assistant can search datasets, explore organizations, query tabular data, and read metadata — all through natural language. No CKAN knowledge required.

This is possible because of open standards and open source. CKAN exposes a public API. Metadata follows DCAT, an open W3C standard. Both are free to use and maintained by open communities. This server stands on that foundation.

Quick Start

Option A — Install locally (recommended):

npm install -g @aborruso/ckan-mcp-server

Option B — No install, use the hosted endpoint directly:

https://ckan-mcp-server.andy-pr.workers.dev/mcp

The hosted endpoint has a 100k requests/day shared quota. Local installation has no limits.

Connect to your AI tool

Most MCP-compatible tools accept a configuration like this:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "ckan": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["@aborruso/ckan-mcp-server@latest"]
    }
  }
}

Works with ChatGPT, VS Code, Gemini CLI, Codex CLI, and more — see the full guide below.

Full documentation

Complete setup guides, all available tools, usage examples, and advanced Solr query reference:

👉 Full README on GitHub

Created with ❤️ by onData for the open data community