Notion MCP

What it does (plain English)

Notion MCP connects Claude to your Notion workspace. Once you sign in, Claude can search your pages, open them as Markdown, create new pages (including rows in a database), update properties, move pages around, and query databases. An MCP server is a plug-in that gives Claude a new ability; this one is hosted by Notion, so there is nothing to install or keep updated.

There used to be a self-hosted version on GitHub (makenotion/notion-mcp-server). Its README now says it is “no longer actively maintained or supported” and tells everyone to use the hosted server instead. This profile covers the hosted one.

Is it for you?

Pick it if Notion is where your notes, plans or content calendar live and you keep copying text between Notion and Claude. It suits solo founders and small teams who want Claude to “write this up and put it in the Projects database” without manual pasting.

Check your plan for the fancier features. Basic search falls back to keyword matching unless you are on Business or Enterprise with Notion AI. Core tools such as notion-fetch, notion-create-pages and notion-update-page are not on Notion’s list of plan-restricted tools; AI search, cross-database SQL, meeting-notes queries and most comment tools are.

What you can do with it

• Find and summarise: “Search Notion for last month’s launch notes and give me the five open decisions.”
• Create from chat: “Turn this outline into a new page under Marketing > Blog drafts.” The notion-create-pages tool can also use a database template.
• Update a tracker: “In the Content Calendar database, set the status of ‘October newsletter’ to Scheduled.”
• Query a database: notion-query-data-sources reads rows, runs a saved view or runs SQL over one database.
• Tidy up: move, duplicate or send pages to Trash. Deleting asks for confirmation, and notion-restore-pages can bring pages back from Trash.

How to set it up

1. Claude Code. In your terminal:

   claude mcp add --transport http notion https://mcp.notion.com/mcp

2. Sign in. Start Claude Code, run /mcp, select Notion, and follow the OAuth flow in your browser. Choose the workspace you want Claude to use.

3. claude.ai or Claude Desktop. Notion’s help centre says many AI apps have a built-in Notion option in their settings or integrations menu, so first look in Settings > Connectors for Notion and click Connect. If it is not there, click Add custom connector and paste https://mcp.notion.com/mcp. Anthropic lists custom connectors for Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise plans.

4. Check what you can use. Ask Claude to run notion-get-tool-access; it reports which tools and parameters your workspace’s plan allows.

5. Old client? Only if your client cannot use Streamable HTTP, use the fallback URL https://mcp.notion.com/sse.

Watch out for

• Your permissions, all of them. Notion’s help centre says MCP tools act with your full Notion permissions, so Claude can reach anything you can. Consider connecting with an account that only sees what it needs.
• Rate limits. Every tool call counts toward Notion’s standard API limits. Notion retries a rate-limited call once if the wait is 2 seconds or less; otherwise it returns a rate_limited error.
• File limits. Uploads through notion-create-file-upload are capped at 20 MiB, and notion-download-attachment returns up to 200 KiB of text.
• Admin controls are Enterprise-only. Restricting which AI apps members can connect requires the Enterprise plan. Workspace owners can review connected clients under Settings → Notion MCP.
• Multiple workspaces. The connection is to the workspace you pick during sign-in. To switch, disconnect and reconnect.

Alternatives

• Atlassian Rovo MCP if your docs live in Confluence.
• Airtable MCP if your “database” is really a spreadsheet-style base with automations.
• Zapier MCP if you want Claude to push content from Notion out to other apps.