YNAB MCP Server

Overview

The YNAB MCP Server acts as a secure, bidirectional conduit between the You Need A Budget (YNAB) platform and AI assistants that support the Model Context Protocol. By exposing a rich set of YNAB API endpoints as MCP tools, it allows an assistant to fetch real‑time budget data, analyze spending patterns, and answer personalized financial questions without ever exposing the user’s API token or raw data to the model itself. This separation of concerns gives developers a trusted way to augment AI workflows with sensitive personal finance information while keeping compliance and privacy requirements intact.

At its core, the server translates standard YNAB API calls into MCP tool definitions. For example, a client can invoke to retrieve the current balance and allocations for any budget, or to pull a filtered list of recent purchases. These tools are grouped into logical categories—user and budget information, categories and transactions, accounts and payees, and financial analysis—making it straightforward for developers to compose complex queries or automate routine reporting tasks. The server’s design ensures that all communication remains encrypted, and the YNAB token is stored only on the server side, never transmitted to the AI model.

Developers benefit from a single, well‑documented entry point for integrating YNAB data into conversational agents. Common use cases include budgeting assistants that can confirm whether a user has met their monthly goal, expense‑tracking bots that flag overspending in specific categories, or financial planners that generate customized reports on income versus expense trends. Because the MCP protocol supports function calls, an assistant can prompt a user for clarification (e.g., which budget month to analyze) and then automatically retrieve the relevant data, resulting in a seamless, interactive budgeting experience.

The server also offers higher‑level analytical tools such as and . These provide aggregated insights that would otherwise require manual aggregation or third‑party analytics services. By bundling these summaries into MCP tools, developers can quickly surface actionable advice—like suggesting a savings target or highlighting recurring expenses—to users in natural language, all while keeping the underlying calculations off‑loaded to YNAB’s own data.

Finally, the YNAB MCP Server is distributed as a Docker image and also supports local .NET 9 builds, making it adaptable to both cloud‑native and on‑premise environments. Its integration with Smithery’s install workflow further simplifies deployment for Claude Desktop users, allowing developers to focus on crafting conversational flows rather than managing infrastructure. In summary, the YNAB MCP Server bridges personal finance data and AI assistants in a secure, extensible manner, empowering developers to build intelligent budgeting tools that respect privacy and deliver real‑time insights.