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How to Add a Custom MCP Server to Grok

Grok adds custom MCP connectors by URL from its connectors page, with automatic tool discovery once active. Available on every plan including Free, with one organizational gate and a public-reachability requirement.

Last verified August 15, 2026

How do I add a custom MCP server to Grok?

Go to grok.com/connectors, click New Connector, choose Custom, and enter the MCP server's URL, then complete any required authentication. Once the connector is active, Grok discovers the server's tools automatically, so there is nothing else to configure. xAI brands the feature Bring Your Own MCP.

Availability, and the two real gates

Connectors are available to all Grok users — xAI's own connectors documentation opens with exactly that, and Connectors is a listed feature of the Free plan, not a paid upgrade. The only access gate is organizational: on Business and Enterprise plans a team admin must provision a connector in the cloud console before members of the organization can use it.

If you are that admin, the console path uses different labels from the consumer one: sign in at console.x.ai, select your team, go to Grok Business → Connectors, click + Add Connector, and choose Other to enter the MCP server URL. Adding and removing connectors requires Team Read-Write permissions.

One requirement that is easy to miss: your MCP server must be reachable over the public internet. Grok rejects localhost and private-range addresses — 127.0.0.1, 10.x.x.x, 172.16.x.x, 192.168.x.x — so a server running on your own machine needs a tunnel first. One caveat from xAI's tunnelling page worth knowing before you pick a tool: Cloudflare quick tunnels don't support Server-Sent Events, so use ngrok if your server uses the SSE transport.

xAI documents this directly — there is a connectors overview, a connector-management page, and a dedicated page on tunnelling a custom MCP server — so the steps below follow published guidance rather than inference.

The steps

1. Open the connectors page

Go to grok.com/connectors, or find Connectors in Grok's settings.

2. Create a custom connector

  1. Click New Connector
  2. Choose Custom
  3. Enter the MCP server URL

3. Authenticate

Complete any authentication prompts that appear. What those are depends on your server: xAI notes that if the server requires OAuth or API keys, you complete that flow in Grok after supplying the URL.

4. Verify

Grok discovers the server's tools automatically once the connector is active, and makes them available in conversations just like its built-in and catalog connectors. Ask what tools it has access to, and you should get a list back.

What usually goes wrong

  • No way to add a custom connector. Not a plan problem — connectors are available to all Grok users, Free included. On Business/Enterprise, a team admin has to provision the connector in the cloud console first, so the option genuinely is absent for members until they do.
  • The connector won't accept your URL. Grok requires the server to be reachable over the public internet and rejects localhost and private-range addresses. Tunnel it, and avoid Cloudflare quick tunnels if your server uses SSE.
  • Authentication doesn't complete. Retry from the connector entry. A half-finished flow leaves a connector that exists but was never authorized, which reads as a broken server.
  • The connection fails immediately. Check the URL against exactly what the server publishes, including the path and any trailing slash.

A worked example

With a real server — Tempreon, a hosted MCP server that gives an AI a persistent memory of how you work:

https://api.tempreon.com/functions/v1/tempreon-mcp/mcp

New Connector → Custom → that URL → approve on the consent screen, and Grok picks up the tools on its own.

Grok is available on the web, iOS, and Android, and a portable memory server is what makes moving between them — and between Grok and anything else you use — not cost you your context. Knowledge stored from a Grok conversation is there when you open another connected client, and the reverse.

The account-holder walkthrough is in the Grok setup doc.

Sources

The dated claims on this page were checked against these vendor documents. Client UIs move constantly, so if one of these has changed since the date shown, trust the vendor over this page — and tell us.

Frequently asked questions

Where do I add a custom MCP server in Grok?
Open grok.com/connectors, or find Connectors in Grok's settings. Click New Connector, choose Custom, and enter the MCP server URL. Once the connector is active, Grok discovers the server's tools automatically, so there is nothing else to configure.
I can't find a way to add a custom connector in Grok. What's wrong?
It is not your plan — connectors are available to all Grok users, and Connectors is a listed feature of the Free plan. The one gate is organizational: on Business and Enterprise plans a team admin has to provision the connector in the cloud console before members of the organization see it, so ask your workspace admin. Admins do this at console.x.ai under Grok Business, then Connectors, using Add Connector and the Other option, which needs Team Read-Write permissions. Also check the server URL itself — Grok requires a server reachable over the public internet and rejects localhost and private-range addresses.
The authentication step never completes in Grok. How do I fix it?
Retry from the connector entry. What the flow asks for depends on the server: xAI notes that a server requiring OAuth or API keys has you complete that flow in Grok after you supply the URL. A half-finished attempt leaves a connector that exists but was never authorized, which looks like a broken server rather than an unfinished sign-in.