AI · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to MCP Defender
Hi HN, MCP Defender is an open source desktop app that automatically proxies your MCP traffic in AI apps like Cursor, Claude, Windsurf and VSCode. It then scans all requests and responses between the apps and the MCP tools they call. If it detects anything malicious, it alerts you and lets you allow or block the tool call. While the threat landscape of MCP is still being actively researched, there are dangerous things that MCP Defender can block today. For example, a developer asks Cursor to fix a Github issue with an attached crash log. However, the Github issue was created by an attacker…
Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Prices are shown for the 2 we have checked on their own sites, 2 of them free or with a free tier.
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Browser MCP connects AI applications to your browser so you can automate tasks using AI. Supported by Claude, Cursor, VS Code, Windsurf, and more.
2025 · browsermcp.io · its alternatives →
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I noticed the growing security concerns around MCP (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43600192) and built an open source tool that can detect several patterns of tool poisoning attacks, exfiltration channels and cross-origin manipulations. MCP-Shield scans your installed servers (Cursor, Claude Desktop, etc.) and shows what each tool is trying to do at the instruction level, beyond just the API surface. It catches hidden instructions that try to read sensitive files, shadow other tools' behavior, or exfiltrate data. Example of what it detects: - Hidden instructions…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
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mTarsier▲188Open-source platform for managing MCP servers and clients
Mar 2026 · mtarsier.com · its alternatives →
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CoreSpeedfree tier, from $20/mo▲332One MCP for everything your agents need: apps, memory, tools
27d ago · corespeed.io · its alternatives →
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Hi HN, Gabriel, Co-Founder at Permit.io. We're releasing Permit MCP Gateway today, an authorization proxy for MCP servers. TL;DR - we built an MCP Gateway that developers love and CISOs trust. Watch more[0] Now, after your little hate on using fancy copy on HN, to the real thing: MCP is in a strange place. Developers are debating whether it's overcomplicated compared to CLIs or skills files. Meanwhile, enterprises are adopting it by default because every agentic system that acts on your behalf, Cursor, Claude, Copilot, internal agents, needs a stable infrastructure for connecting to tools.…
Mar 2026 · permit.io · its alternatives →
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OpenMemory MCP▲379Sync memory across AI's so they pick up where you left off.
2025 · mem0.ai · its alternatives →
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LockIn MCP▲116I was tired of how bad distraction blockers are so I built my own. LockIn lets AI assistants (Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, etc.) block websites by editing the system hosts file directly via MCP tools (via a secure cloudflare bridge). Why? Because chrome extensions don't work. Blocking it natively makes it unbypassable, and having your agent gatekeep your focus is the ultimate cheat code. Since everyone is using AI agents nowadays, but most people start scrolling or Reddit while waiting for Claude Code to finish, giving them control over your focus solves that. The MCP server exposes four tools:…
Jun 2026 · lockinmcp.com · its alternatives →
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Hi HN! We kept seeing devs get pwned through MCP tools in ways that security scanners completely miss. So we built an open-source analyzer to catch these attacks. Our first OSS by Mighty team. The problem: At Defcon, we saw MCP exploits with 100% success rate against Claude and Llama. Three attack patterns: Hidden Unicode in "error messages" - Paste a colleague's error into Claude, your SSH keys get exfiltrated Trusted tool updates - That database tool you've used for months? Last week's update added credential theft Tool redefinition - Malicious tool redefines "deploy to prod" to run…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Open-source Computer Use MCP for AI agents
May 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Web to MCP▲353Send any website components to Cursor or Claude via MCP
2025 · web-to-mcp.com · its alternatives →
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Skip migration and launch MCP with built-in Auth
Nov 2025 · arcade.dev · its alternatives →
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MCP-Builder.aifree tier, from $29/mo▲174The fastest way to connect your data with your AI Tools.
Aug 2026 · mcp-builder.ai · its alternatives →
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fileAI MCP▲235Give AI agents secure, real-time access to your files
2025 · file.ai · its alternatives →
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The app store for AI tools. Find, trust, and install
Mar 2026 · mcp-marketplace.io · its alternatives →
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The firewall for AI agents. Block dangerous commands
Dec 2025 · mcp-shield.vercel.app · its alternatives →
- 20MJ
My friends and I built MCP Jetpack which makes it really easy to start using MCP. It’s an MCP server that automatically finds and executes the right tools needed to accomplish your task without having to manage MCP servers for each service (GitHub, Linear, Atlassian, Notion etc.). Once you add it to Cursor (or any other AI app with MCP support), Cursor instantly gets access to a growing library of remote MCP servers without any extra setup. For services that require authentication, you will be asked to login the first time you ask your AI to interact with that service. Two problems we are…
2025 · mcpjetpack.com · its alternatives →
- 21AH
While building my startup i kept running into the issue where ai agents in cursor create endpoints or code that shouldn't exist, hallucinates strings, or just don't understand the code. ask-human-mcp pauses your agent whenever it’s stuck, logs a question into ask_human.md in your root directory with answer: PENDING, and then resumes as soon as you fill in the correct answer. the pain: your agent screams out an endpoint that never existed it makes confident assumptions and you spend hours debugging false leads the fix: ask-human-mcp gives your agent an escape hatch. when it’s unsure, it calls…
2025 · masonyarbrough.com · its alternatives →
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Hey everyone, I've wanted an easy way to control which mcp server tools are available to clients. So for example, I might want a gmail server to only expose the read tool (but not send, delete etc). I figured if I create a cli for spawning mcp servers, I could intercept the stdin, stdout, stderr etc and modify what the clients see when they are making calls to list tools, resources, and prompts. Well it worked! In the initial version you can easily add a server to claude with a safe list of tools: npx -y mcpgod add @modelcontextprotocol/server-everything --client claude --tools=echo,add…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 23FL
Hi HN! We just launched Codacy Guardrails, an IDE extension with a CLI for code analysis and MCP server that enforces security & quality rules on AI-generated code in real-time. It hooks into AI coding assistants (like VS Code Agent Mode, Cursor, Windsurf), silently scanning and fixing AI-suggested code that has vulnerabilities or violates your coding standards, while the code it’s being generated. We built this because coding agents can be a double-edged sword. They do boost productivity, but can easily introduce insecure or non-compliant code. One recent research team at NYU found that 40%…
2025 · its alternatives →
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Preloop▲121Hey HN, I’m Yannis, co-founder of Preloop. We’ve built a proxy for the Model Context Protocol (MCP) that lets you add human approval gates to your AI agents without changing your agent code. We’re building agents that use tools (Claude Desktop, Cursor, etc.), but we were terrified to give them write-access to sensitive systems (Stripe, Prod DBs, AWS). We didn't want to rewrite our agents to wrap every tool call in complex "ask_user" logic, especially since we use different agent runtimes. We built Preloop as a middleware layer. It acts as a standard MCP server proxy.You point your agent to…
Jan 2026 · preloop.ai · its alternatives →
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Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →