Free primary-source APIs for AI agents

Twelve MCP tools over authoritative public sources — SEC EDGAR, World Bank, GDELT, DATA.GOV.HK, HKMA, the official MCP Registry, UK Companies House, FRED and Jina Reader. Ten need no key, the server has zero runtime dependencies, and every result is wrapped in a { source, retrievedAt, data } provenance envelope.

12 tools 10 keyless 0 runtime deps Node ≥ 20 MIT MCP Registry

Get started View source

Quick start

Hosted (Streamable HTTP)

POST https://primary-sources-mcp.vercel.app/mcp

Local (stdio)

npx -y @simonmak-ascent/primary-sources-mcp

Registry: io.github.simonmak-ascent/primary-sources-mcp · optional keys: COMPANIES_HOUSE_API_KEY, FRED_API_KEY (both free); RESEARCH_CONTACT recommended.

Tools

Tool	Source	Key
`sec_edgar_fulltext`	SEC EDGAR full-text search (US filings)	none
`sec_edgar_company`	SEC EDGAR registrant + recent filings	none
`world_bank_indicator`	World Bank development indicators	none
`gdelt_news`	GDELT DOC 2.0 global news search / trends	none
`hk_open_data_search`	DATA.GOV.HK catalogue search	none
`hk_open_data_filter`	DATA.GOV.HK resource filtering	none
`hkma`	Hong Kong Monetary Authority public API	none
`mcp_registry_search`	Official MCP Registry	none
`jina_read`	Any URL as clean markdown (Jina Reader)	none
`companies_house_search`	UK Companies House search	free key
`companies_house_company`	UK Companies House record	free key
`fred_series`	FRED economic series observations	free key

Provenance by default

Every tool returns the same envelope, so an agent can always cite where a fact came from and when it was fetched.

{
  "source": "SEC EDGAR",
  "retrievedAt": "2026-10-03T00:00:00.000Z",
  "data": { /* the upstream payload */ }
}

Links

Source on GitHub · npm

Official MCP Registry · /llms.txt