Best MCP Servers for Indie Hackers in 2026

If you are building a SaaS product on your own, every minute you spend context-switching between your editor, browser tabs, and dashboards is a minute you are not shipping. The Model Context Protocol (MCP) changes this equation dramatically by letting your AI coding assistant talk directly to the services you depend on -- your database, your payment provider, your deployment pipeline -- without you ever leaving your editor.

This guide covers the five best MCP servers for indie hackers: the exact combination you need to go from idea to paying customers with minimal friction.

What Is MCP and Why Should Indie Hackers Care?

MCP is an open protocol that connects AI assistants (like Claude, Cursor, Windsurf, and others) to external tools and data sources through a standardized interface. Think of it as a USB-C port for AI: one standard that lets your assistant plug into any compatible service.

Each MCP server exposes a set of tools that the AI can invoke on your behalf. Instead of copying error messages from Sentry into your editor, or switching to the Stripe dashboard to check a subscription status, your AI assistant handles the round-trip for you. It reads the data, understands the context, and acts on it -- all within the same conversation where you are writing code.

For indie hackers specifically, this matters because you are wearing every hat. You are the backend engineer, the DevOps person, the billing admin, and the on-call responder. MCP servers let your AI assistant share that burden by giving it direct access to the systems you manage.

The five servers below cover the core infrastructure of a typical indie hacker SaaS: database, payments, source control, deployment, and error monitoring. Together, they form a stack that keeps you focused on building rather than juggling dashboards.

1. Supabase MCP -- Your Entire Backend in One Server

What it does: The Supabase MCP server connects your AI assistant to your Supabase project, giving it the ability to query your Postgres database, manage tables, run migrations, deploy edge functions, and even handle development branches.

Key capabilities:

• Run SQL queries and get results directly in your editor
• Create, alter, and manage database tables and schemas
• Apply and track migrations without leaving your coding session
• Deploy and update Supabase Edge Functions
• Create and manage development branches for safe experimentation
• List and configure extensions

Why it matters for indie hackers: Supabase has become the default backend for indie SaaS projects, and for good reason -- it gives you Postgres, authentication, storage, and serverless functions under one roof. The MCP server takes this further by eliminating the constant back-and-forth between your code and the Supabase dashboard.

Need to add a column to your users table? Ask your assistant. Want to write a migration that adds a new feature flag system? Describe what you need and the assistant will draft the SQL, apply it through the MCP server, and verify it worked. You can even create a development branch first to test the migration safely.

With 25 tools and roughly 12,875 tokens of context, the Supabase MCP server is the heaviest in this stack. But given that it replaces what would otherwise be your most frequent source of context-switching (the database dashboard), the token cost is well justified.

Setup: Requires a Supabase personal access token set as SUPABASE_ACCESS_TOKEN. The server runs via npx -y @supabase/mcp-server-supabase.

2. Stripe MCP -- Payments Without the Dashboard

What it does: The Stripe MCP server connects your AI assistant to the Stripe API through their official agent toolkit. It supports managing payments, subscriptions, customers, invoices, and product catalogs directly from your editor.

Key capabilities:

• Create and manage customers, products, and prices
• Set up and modify subscription plans
• Generate payment links and checkout sessions
• Query payment history and invoice status
• Handle refunds and disputes
• Manage your product catalog

Why it matters for indie hackers: Billing is the part of building a SaaS that nobody enjoys but everyone needs to get right. The Stripe MCP server turns billing operations into conversational tasks. Instead of navigating Stripe's dashboard (which is powerful but dense), you can ask your assistant to check the status of a subscription, create a new pricing tier, or look up why a payment failed.

This is particularly valuable during the early stages of a product when your pricing model is still evolving. You might change your plans three times in a week. With the Stripe MCP server, restructuring your pricing is a conversation, not a multi-tab dashboard session.

The server exposes 15 tools at around 7,725 tokens. It is the official Stripe integration, maintained by the Stripe team, so you can trust it to stay current with API changes.

Setup: Requires your Stripe secret API key set as STRIPE_SECRET_KEY. Runs via npx -y @stripe/mcp --tools=all. Be careful with this one in production -- you probably want to use a restricted key with only the permissions you actually need.

3. GitHub MCP -- Source Control Without Switching Windows

What it does: The GitHub MCP server gives your AI assistant access to the GitHub API for managing repositories, issues, pull requests, branches, and workflows.

Key capabilities:

• Create and manage repositories
• Open, review, and merge pull requests
• Create and manage issues with labels and assignees
• Work with branches and view commit history
• Trigger and monitor GitHub Actions workflows
• Search code across your repositories

Why it matters for indie hackers: As a solo developer, you might think you do not need sophisticated issue tracking or pull request workflows. But even for a team of one, GitHub serves as your project's memory. The MCP server makes it practical to maintain that memory without the overhead.

When you finish implementing a feature, your assistant can create the pull request with a proper description based on the actual code changes. When a user reports a bug, you can have your assistant create an issue with the right labels and link it to the relevant code. When you are trying to remember how you implemented something three months ago, the assistant can search your commit history and code without you ever opening a browser.

The GitHub MCP server has 20 tools and uses about 10,300 tokens. It is maintained by Anthropic and is one of the most mature MCP servers available.

Setup: Requires a GitHub personal access token set as GITHUB_PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN. Runs via npx -y @modelcontextprotocol/server-github.

4. Vercel MCP -- Deploy and Monitor Without the Dashboard

What it does: The Vercel MCP server connects your AI assistant to Vercel's API for managing deployments, projects, domains, and environment variables.

Key capabilities:

• List and inspect deployments
• Check deployment status and logs
• Manage project settings and environment variables
• Configure custom domains
• Monitor deployment performance

Why it matters for indie hackers: Most indie hackers deploy on Vercel because it makes shipping Next.js and React apps trivially easy. The MCP server extends that simplicity into your AI workflow. You can check whether your latest deployment succeeded, review build logs when something breaks, or update an environment variable -- all without opening a new tab.

The real value shows up during incident response. When a user reports that your app is down, you can ask your assistant to check your latest Vercel deployments, look at the logs, and cross-reference with Sentry errors (more on that next). Having all of that context in one place, inside your editor, cuts your mean time to resolution significantly.

At 12 tools and roughly 6,180 tokens, the Vercel MCP server is lightweight and focused. It does what you need without bloating your context window.

Setup: Requires a Vercel API token set as VERCEL_API_TOKEN. Runs via npx -y vercel-mcp.

5. Sentry MCP -- Errors Surfaced Where You Write Code

What it does: The Sentry MCP server connects your AI assistant to Sentry for error tracking, performance monitoring, and issue management.

Key capabilities:

• Query recent errors and exceptions
• View error details including stack traces and breadcrumbs
• Analyze performance data and transaction traces
• List and manage Sentry issues
• Check error frequency and affected user counts

Why it matters for indie hackers: When you are the only developer, you are also the only person on-call. Sentry is likely already catching your errors, but the MCP server changes how you respond to them. Instead of reading an error notification, opening Sentry in a browser, finding the stack trace, then switching back to your editor to locate the code -- you can do all of that in one step.

Ask your assistant what errors have occurred in the last 24 hours. It queries Sentry through the MCP server, gets the stack traces, and since it already has your codebase in context, it can immediately show you the relevant code and suggest a fix. For a solo developer, this compression of the debugging workflow from minutes to seconds is transformative.

The Sentry MCP server is the smallest in this stack at 8 tools and about 4,120 tokens. It is officially maintained by the Sentry team.

Setup: Requires a Sentry auth token set as SENTRY_AUTH_TOKEN. Runs via npx -y sentry-mcp.

Setting It All Up

Configuring five MCP servers manually means editing JSON config files, looking up the correct npm package names, remembering the right argument flags, and setting environment variables in the right format for your specific AI client. It is tedious and error-prone, especially since each client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, Cline, and others) uses a slightly different configuration format.

That is exactly the problem we built stackmcp.dev to solve.

Visit stackmcp.dev/stacks/indie-hacker to get the complete indie hacker stack pre-configured for your AI client of choice. Select your client, enter your API keys, and copy the generated config. The entire setup takes less than a minute.

If you want to customize the stack -- maybe you do not use Sentry yet, or you want to add another server -- you can do that on the site as well. The config generator handles the format differences between clients so you do not have to.

A Note on Token Budgets

One practical consideration when running multiple MCP servers: they consume tokens from your context window. Every MCP server registers its available tools with your AI assistant at the start of a session, and those tool definitions take up space.

This five-server stack uses approximately 44,400 tokens just for tool definitions. That is a meaningful chunk of your context window, especially if you are working with a model that has a smaller context limit.

Here is the breakdown:

A few strategies to manage this:

• Start with the servers you use most. If you are in early development, Supabase and GitHub might be enough. Add Stripe when you are ready to monetize, Vercel when you are deploying, and Sentry when you have users.
• Use client-specific features. Some AI clients let you enable or disable MCP servers per project or per session. Turn off what you do not need right now.
• Prefer models with large context windows. Claude's 200K context window handles this stack comfortably. With smaller context models, you may want to be more selective.

The total token cost of this stack is well under 25% of a 200K context window, leaving plenty of room for your actual code and conversation. For most indie hackers, running all five servers simultaneously will not cause any practical issues.

Conclusion

The indie hacker stack -- Supabase, Stripe, GitHub, Vercel, and Sentry -- covers the critical infrastructure of a modern SaaS product. Each of these MCP servers eliminates a category of context-switching that would otherwise slow you down throughout the day. Taken together, they turn your AI assistant from a code completion tool into something closer to a technical co-founder who has access to all your systems.

The servers are all open-source, maintained by either the service providers themselves or active community contributors, and free to use. The only cost is the token budget they consume, which is a reasonable trade for the workflow improvements they provide.

If you have not tried MCP servers yet, this stack is a solid starting point. Head to stackmcp.dev/stacks/indie-hacker, generate your config, and see how it changes the way you build.