Model Context Protocol · WordPress
WordPress MCP: let Claude or ChatGPT run your site
Three ways to do it, what each one costs you, and the one question worth asking before you install anything.
Check the SEO on my 12 newest posts.
Reading the live pages, not the database…
Average 88/100 across 12 posts.
Two things worth your time:
1. Eleven of twelve summaries are auto-generated.
Only one was written by hand.
2. Every headline runs 62–75 characters.
Google cuts off around 60, so the ending never shows.
Write proper summaries for all eleven.
Saved to All in One SEO. Checked the live page for each one.
11 of 11 now reach Google.
What is WordPress MCP?
MCP is the Model Context Protocol — an open standard that lets an AI assistant call tools on another system. WordPress MCP means exposing your site’s own functions as those tools, so an assistant like Claude or ChatGPT can create a post, fix a meta description or moderate a comment on your real site, rather than handing you text to paste in yourself.
The difference matters more than it sounds. Without MCP, an assistant writes you a blog post and the work starts: open wp-admin, paste, find an image, write the alt text, check the SEO plugin, publish. With MCP, the assistant does all of that itself and tells you when it is done.
WordPress got serious about this in 2026. The Abilities API arrived in WordPress 6.9, giving plugins a standard way to register what they can do, and the official MCP Adapter turns those abilities into MCP tools. Automattic’s earlier wordpress-mcp plugin was archived on 17 September 2026; the MCP Adapter is now the canonical plugin, and WordPress.com runs its own hosted MCP server.
Three routes
The three ways to run MCP on WordPress
They are genuinely different things, and most articles blur them together. Here is the honest version, including where ours is the wrong answer.
WordPress.com’s MCP server
WordPress.com runs a built-in MCP server. One connection reaches every site on your account, and self-hosted sites connected through Jetpack use the same server.
The catch: it needs a paid WordPress.com plan, or Jetpack AI or Jetpack Complete on a self-hosted site, and everything runs through WordPress.com. Ideal if your sites already live there.
The MCP Adapter
The core route, and now the canonical plugin for MCP on self-hosted WordPress. WordPress 6.9’s Abilities API lets any plugin register what it can do; the MCP Adapter exposes those abilities as MCP tools.
The catch: it is built for developers. What an assistant can do depends on which abilities your plugins register, and setting it up is configuration, not plain English. Right answer if you are building something.
A ready-made client
PressHand and WP Agent both sit between your assistant and your sites, with no plugin to install on any of them. You approve each connection inside your own wp-admin and never type a password or a token. PressHand runs on your own machine; WP Agent runs on theirs.
The catch: it costs money, and you are trusting somebody’s software. Worth it at the point where connecting sites by hand has become the job.
Which one should you use?
- Your sites are on WordPress.com. Use its built-in MCP server. It comes with the paid plans, so do not pay anybody else.
- You are building a product on top of WordPress. The MCP Adapter and the Abilities API. Nothing else gives you that control.
- Several sites, and you want the work done rather than the setup. A ready-made client. This is where PressHand is meant to be the answer.
If you are weighing the two ready-made options, we wrote the comparison out in full, with their real prices: PressHand vs WP Agent. If you would rather install something on the site, we compared the WordPress MCP plugins too, and there is a separate guide to connecting Claude to WordPress.
Is WordPress MCP safe?
It can be, and the thing to check is how the connection is made. Any tool that asks you to paste your administrator password into a chat window, or into a textbox on someone else’s website, has already failed the test.
The safe pattern uses WordPress’s own Application Passwords. You are sent to your wp-admin, you press Approve, and WordPress mints a separate credential for that one app. Your real password is never involved, and you can revoke the credential yourself from Users → Profile without touching anything else.
Two more worth knowing. An assistant with MCP access can change your live site, so give it a site you have backups of. And whatever the tool reads — posts, comments, customer names — passes through whoever hosts the connector, which is a good reason to read the privacy page before you connect a client’s site.
Common questions
Do I need a plugin to use WordPress MCP?
Not always. The MCP Adapter runs on your site, so it needs installing, and WordPress.com’s own MCP server needs a paid plan or a Jetpack connection. A ready-made client like PressHand connects through WordPress’s built-in Application Passwords instead, so plain WordPress is enough — a small helper plugin is only needed for custom CSS and for SEO on a site with no SEO plugin.
Does WordPress MCP work with ChatGPT as well as Claude?
Yes, with conditions. MCP is an open standard, so Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor and other clients can all connect, but ChatGPT only accepts servers on a public address that sign in with OAuth or not at all. PressHand’s desktop app works with Claude Desktop and Claude Code; its server edition serves other clients that accept a key.
What does WordPress MCP cost?
The MCP Adapter is free and open source, and WordPress.com includes MCP with its paid plans. Ready-made clients charge: WP Agent runs from free to $59 a month, with $10 a month for every site above your plan’s slots. PressHand is $97 once, for every site you own, with no per-site fee.
Can it publish posts, or only read them?
It can publish, edit, schedule, revert to an earlier version, set featured images, rewrite SEO titles and meta descriptions, build menus, moderate comments and install plugins. Whether a given tool does all of that depends on the tool — PressHand has 83 of these jobs.
Will it work on WordPress.com or Wix?
WordPress.com sites need a plan that allows plugins or Application Passwords; a free WordPress.com site will not work. Wix, Squarespace and Shopify are not WordPress, so nothing here applies to them.
MCP on every site you own, for one payment
No per-site fee, no monthly allowance to run out of, and the source code comes with it.