YNAB MCP Server

Talk to your finances.

What is this?

YNAB (You Need A Budget) is a popular budgeting app that helps you gain control of your money. This MCP server connects AI assistants to your YNAB data, giving you conversational access to:

• Your budgets and accounts
• Transaction history and patterns
• Category balances and spending insights
• Scheduled and recurring transactions

Installation

Via npx (recommended)

No installation required. Configure your Claude client to use npx directly (see below).

Via npm (global)

npm install -g ynab-mcp-server

From source

git clone https://github.com/jeangnc/ynab-mcp-server.git
cd ynab-mcp-server
make install
make build

Configuration

First, set your YNAB API token in your shell profile (~/.zshrc or ~/.bashrc):

export YNAB_API_TOKEN="your-token-here"

Claude Code

claude mcp add ynab --scope user --env YNAB_API_TOKEN='${YNAB_API_TOKEN}' -- npx -y ynab-mcp-server

Claude Desktop

Add to ~/.config/claude/claude_desktop_config.json (Linux) or ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json (macOS):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "ynab": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "ynab-mcp-server"],
      "env": {
        "YNAB_API_TOKEN": "${YNAB_API_TOKEN}"
      }
    }
  }
}

Manual usage

YNAB_API_TOKEN=$YNAB_API_TOKEN npx ynab-mcp-server

Available Tools

Makefile Commands

make install  # Install dependencies
make build    # Compile TypeScript
make run      # Run compiled server
make dev      # Run TypeScript directly
make clean    # Remove build artifacts