Apple Notes MCP vs Kagi MCP Server

A side-by-side look at pricing, capabilities, pros, cons, and our editorial scores.

	Apple Notes MCP MCP Servers	Kagi MCP Server MCP Servers
Tagline	Let Claude read your local Apple Notes over the Model Context Protocol.	Official Kagi Search MCP server: search and extract the web from any MCP-compatible agent.
Category	MCP Servers	MCP Servers
Pricing	Free· Free / open-source (MIT). No hosted service; runs locally on your Mac.	Paid· Free: $0 USD · Team: $4 USD per user/month · Enterprise: $21 USD per user/month
Model	—	—
Editorial score	—	—
Use cases	Personal knowledge retrieval from Apple NotesSearching decade-old meeting notes during a Claude chatPulling travel or recipe notes into a planning conversationSummarising a specific note by titleBuilding a local MCP toolchain alongside filesystem and browser serversReference implementation for writing your own macOS SQLite-backed MCP server	agent web search groundingClaude Code documentation lookupdeep-research pipelinesURL to Markdown extraction for RAGnews and video search from an LLMKagi lens-scoped queries in agentscitation gathering for research assistantscoding agent error-message lookups
Pros	Genuinely local: reads the on-disk SQLite database directly, so notes never leave your Mac Trivial install via uv/uvx and a short claude_desktop_config.json block Exposes the three operations that matter most — list, read, search — with a clean MCP surface MIT-licensed Python, small enough to audit or fork in an afternoon Works with any MCP client, not just Claude Desktop, so it composes with other servers No API keys, no subscriptions, no accounts — zero ongoing cost	Official, first-party MCP server maintained by Kagi (not a community wrapper) Two clean tools that cover the 90% agent case: search and full-page Markdown extraction Both hosted (mcp.kagi.com) and local (uvx/Docker) deployment modes Documented setup recipes for Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Codex CLI, Kiro, OpenCode, Smithery MIT-licensed Python code, easy to fork or audit Rides Kagi's ad-free, spam-de-boosted index rather than generic SERP APIs Supports Kagi lenses and filters so agents can scope searches to news, docs, etc.
Cons	Read-only: cannot create, edit, or append notes from within Claude Skips password-protected notes entirely (ZISPASSWORDPROTECTED is unhandled) No attachment content, no checklist state, no pinned-note filtering, no iCloud sync awareness macOS-only by design, and requires granting Full Disk Access to the runner Repository is archived by the maintainer — bug fixes and new features are unlikely without a fork Search is basic keyword matching against the SQLite text, not semantic retrieval	Requires a paid Kagi API key with pay-per-use billing; not usable free FastGPT and Universal Summarizer tools are currently absent (rewrite in progress) Python + uv toolchain assumption raises the bar vs. a single-binary MCP server Small surface area: no built-in caching, batching, or spend controls beyond Kagi's invoice cap Hosted endpoint means your queries and Bearer token traverse Kagi infra, not a concern for everyone but worth noting for regulated workloads
Website	github.com	github.com

Pick Apple Notes MCP if

✅ Genuinely local: reads the on-disk SQLite database directly, so notes never leave your Mac
✅ Trivial install via uv/uvx and a short claude_desktop_config.json block
✅ Exposes the three operations that matter most — list, read, search — with a clean MCP surface
✅ MIT-licensed Python, small enough to audit or fork in an afternoon

Pick Kagi MCP Server if

✅ Official, first-party MCP server maintained by Kagi (not a community wrapper)
✅ Two clean tools that cover the 90% agent case: search and full-page Markdown extraction
✅ Both hosted (mcp.kagi.com) and local (uvx/Docker) deployment modes
✅ Documented setup recipes for Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Codex CLI, Kiro, OpenCode, Smithery

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