Add a stock news MCP server in Cursor

A cursor mcp stock news setup lets the agent in the editor fetch headlines while you are still in the file. You stop pasting stories into the chat, and the answer can name the source and the time on the article. This is the Cursor path only. Claude and ChatGPT use OAuth. Cursor uses a bearer key in mcp.json.

The server is remote. The URL is https://mcp.marketnewsapi.com/mcp. Transport is Streamable HTTP. You do not run a local news process, and you do not install an SDK. The same Pro plan that includes REST and the WebSocket includes this server. The 7-day trial includes it too. A Free key is refused.

Get a key that is allowed to call MCP

Open the dashboard and copy a key, or use the Connect your AI page, which fills the header for you. MCP is included with Pro and with the 7-day trial. A Free key receives HTTP 403 from the MCP endpoint.

The trial requires a card. Nothing is charged during the seven days. The trial includes the live feed, the WebSocket, MCP, and the full archive, with 1,000 REST requests a day. Unless you cancel, the card is billed for Pro when the trial ends. Canceling during the trial returns the account to Free and nothing is billed. Paid Pro is $15 a month, or $162 a year, and it removes the daily cap.

That $15 plan cannot be used commercially. Research inside Cursor, on your own account, is the case this tutorial is for. A product you sell, work you do for a client, or redistribution of the feed needs a separate license. There is no public price for that license. Email [email protected].

The Cursor config

Open Cursor Settings, then MCP, and choose Add new MCP server. You can also edit ~/.cursor/mcp.json yourself. The block below is the whole server entry. Replace the placeholder with your key. Do not commit that file to a repository.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "marketnewsapi": {
      "url": "https://mcp.marketnewsapi.com/mcp",
      "headers": { "Authorization": "Bearer mna-live-..." }
    }
  }
}

Save the file and restart Cursor if the tools do not appear. The server should show a green dot once the tool list loads. The steps, including the green dot, are written out on the Cursor MCP page. If the JSON is invalid, Cursor will not list the tools. A trailing comma is the usual cause.

Auth for Cursor is Authorization: Bearer. Do not start an OAuth login for this client. OAuth is how Claude and ChatGPT connect. They send you to marketnewsapi.com, you click Allow, and the site creates a key named for that app. Cursor never does that round trip. If you revoke the key on the keys page, the green dot goes away within a few seconds. Make a second key for the laptop if you want to revoke one machine without stopping another.

Ask for one ticker

In the agent chat, ask: what are today's NVDA headlines? A working client calls latest_news with that symbol. You can also ask it to search for a phrase, to open one article by id, or to list what is trending. The tools on the server are latest_news, search_news, get_article, market_brief, get_trending, list_sources, and list_tickers. Search returns up to 50 articles per call. A long press-release body is capped at 20,000 characters on MCP.

Read the fields the tool returns before you trust a sentence the model writes around them. published_at is when the publisher released the story. summary is one to three neutral sentences, and it can be null for a few seconds after ingest. body is the full wire text on a press release, including a short release. On publisher news and on legal notices, body is null. The agent should follow url and keep the source name when it shows you the item. Do not treat the summary as advice, and do not treat it as the article.

The feed is English-language stock news for listings worldwide, plus crypto, forex, and macro headlines. Leave the category off and the stock tools stay on equities and ETFs. Crypto, forex, and macro are category=crypto, category=forex, and category=macro on REST. The MCP search tool takes the same category values. Listings include the exchange, so a TSX symbol is not silently treated as the US ticker with the same letters.

What the call counts as

MCP tool calls share the burst limit of 20 requests per second with REST. They are not free of that burst, and they show up on the usage page. WebSocket messages are a different channel and are not counted as REST calls. Paid Pro has no daily REST cap. The trial is 1,000 REST requests a day. Free is 100 a day and cannot open MCP at all.

If the agent fires a loop of searches, you will hit the burst before you hit any daily number on paid Pro. Slow it down. One question, then the tool call, is the shape this server is for. The overview of every tool is on the MCP docs.

When the tools do not load

• 401, or a client that says it could not connect: the key is wrong, revoked, or still the placeholder mna-live-....
• 403: the key is on Free. MCP needs Pro or the trial.
• No tools after a save: restart Cursor, and check that the JSON parses.
• An answer with no link: tell the agent to quote source and url from the tool result. The headline alone is not the record.

Cursor is one client. The same URL works from the other clients on the docs, with OAuth where that client expects it. Start here if the editor is where you already work. Signup, if you do not have a key yet, is at signup. The plan comparison is on pricing.

Frequently asked questions