YNAB
Enables AI assistants to help manage your You Need A Budget (YNAB) finances through comprehensive budget operations. Supports account management, transaction handling, category budgeting, split transactions, scheduled payments, and spending analytics
What is YNAB?
YNAB is a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that allows AI assistants like Claude, Cursor, and VS Code to enables ai assistants to help manage your you need a budget (ynab) finances through comprehensive budget operations. supports account management, transaction handling, category budgeting, split transa...
Enables AI assistants to help manage your You Need A Budget (YNAB) finances through comprehensive budget operations. Supports account management, transaction handling, category budgeting, split transactions, scheduled payments, and spending analytics
This server falls under the Finance & Fintech category on MCPgee, the world's largest MCP server directory with 33,000+ servers.
Features
- Enables AI assistants to help manage your You Need A Budget
Use Cases
Maintainer
Works with
Installation
Manual Installation
npx ynab-mcp-serverConfiguration
Configuration Details
claude_desktop_config.json
Performance
Response Metrics
Resource Usage
How to Set Up and Use YNAB
YNAB MCP Server connects AI assistants to your You Need A Budget (YNAB) account, enabling natural-language management of budgets, accounts, transactions, and categories. It exposes tools to list budgets, get a budget summary of underfunded categories, retrieve unapproved transactions, create new transactions, and approve pending transactions. Your YNAB Personal Access Token is stored only in an environment variable and is never sent directly to the LLM, keeping your credentials private. This is ideal for anyone who wants to manage their personal finances through a conversational AI without manually navigating the YNAB web interface.
Prerequisites
- A YNAB account at ynab.com with at least one budget set up
- A YNAB Personal Access Token from app.ynab.com/settings/developer
- Node.js 18 or higher
- An MCP-compatible client: Claude Desktop, Cursor, or any stdio MCP client
Create a YNAB Personal Access Token
Log in to YNAB, go to Account Settings > Developer Settings (app.ynab.com/settings/developer), and click 'New Token'. Copy the token — it is only shown once. This token gives the MCP server read/write access to your budgets.
Install the YNAB MCP server via Smithery (easiest method)
Use Smithery to automatically install and configure ynab-mcp-server for Claude Desktop. Replace the placeholder with your actual Personal Access Token.
npx -y @smithery/cli install @calebl/ynab-mcp-server --client claudeOr configure manually in Claude Desktop
Alternatively, add the server to your claude_desktop_config.json manually. After publishing, the server runs via npx. Provide your YNAB_API_TOKEN as an environment variable.
{
"mcpServers": {
"ynab-mcp-server": {
"command": "npx",
"args": ["-y", "ynab-mcp-server"],
"env": {
"YNAB_API_TOKEN": "your_ynab_personal_access_token_here"
}
}
}
}(Optional) Pin a default budget with YNAB_BUDGET_ID
If you have multiple YNAB budgets, set YNAB_BUDGET_ID to the UUID of your primary budget so the agent does not need to ask which budget to use on every request. You can find the budget ID in the YNAB web URL when the budget is open.
{
"mcpServers": {
"ynab-mcp-server": {
"command": "npx",
"args": ["-y", "ynab-mcp-server"],
"env": {
"YNAB_API_TOKEN": "your_ynab_personal_access_token_here",
"YNAB_BUDGET_ID": "your-budget-uuid-here"
}
}
}
}Restart your MCP client and verify the connection
Restart Claude Desktop after saving the configuration. Ask the AI to list your budgets — it should call the ListBudgets tool and return your YNAB budget names.
YNAB Examples
Client configuration (Claude Desktop)
Add this to ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json on macOS or %APPDATA%/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json on Windows.
{
"mcpServers": {
"ynab-mcp-server": {
"command": "npx",
"args": ["-y", "ynab-mcp-server"],
"env": {
"YNAB_API_TOKEN": "your_ynab_personal_access_token_here",
"YNAB_BUDGET_ID": "your-budget-uuid-here"
}
}
}
}Prompts to try
Use these prompts in Claude Desktop to interact with your YNAB budget through natural language.
- "Show me a summary of my budget — which categories are underfunded this month?"
- "Add a transaction to my Ally account for $3.98 I spent at REI today"
- "Show me all unapproved transactions and help me approve them one by one"
- "Approve the transaction for $6.95 on the Apple Card"
- "Which of my accounts have low balances right now?"Troubleshooting YNAB
The server responds with 'Unauthorized' or 401 errors
Your YNAB_API_TOKEN is invalid or has expired. Go to app.ynab.com/settings/developer, revoke the old token, generate a new one, and update the token value in your MCP client config. Restart the client after saving.
The agent asks which budget to use on every request
Set the YNAB_BUDGET_ID environment variable to your budget's UUID. You can find this in the YNAB web app URL when viewing that budget (it looks like a long alphanumeric string). Adding this env var pins the server to one budget by default.
CreateTransaction fails with an account not found error
The CreateTransaction tool requires knowing the account ID, which is fetched internally when the budget is loaded. Make sure the agent has called GetBudget (or a budget summary tool) first in the conversation so account IDs are available. Try asking 'show me my accounts' before adding a transaction.
Frequently Asked Questions about YNAB
What is YNAB?
YNAB is a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that enables ai assistants to help manage your you need a budget (ynab) finances through comprehensive budget operations. supports account management, transaction handling, category budgeting, split transactions, scheduled payments, and spending analytics It connects AI assistants to external tools and data sources through a standardized interface.
How do I install YNAB?
Follow the installation instructions on the YNAB GitHub repository. Clone the repo, install dependencies, and add the server config to your AI client.
Which AI clients work with YNAB?
YNAB works with all major MCP-compatible AI clients including Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code (GitHub Copilot), Windsurf, and Cline.
Is YNAB free to use?
Yes, YNAB is open source and available under the MIT License license. You can use it freely in both personal and commercial projects.
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Set Up YNAB in Your Editor
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Quick Config Preview
Add this to your claude_desktop_config.json or .cursor/mcp.json
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