Shortlist Price Index
Software entry prices for 16 categories, with ratings and true 3-year cost. CC BY 4.0
One address for any MCP client. No sign-in needed on this server.
What it does
4 read
Grouped by tool name. At most: only reads or looks up information.
What it costs
FreeOdel charges nothing per call. The publisher may charge for its own service.
Tools
4 · grouped by tool name · checked 26 Sep 2026Read · 4Look things up
- list_categories
- get_price_index
- get_true_3yr_cost
- get_cheapest
Shortlist Price Index MCP server
An MCP (Model Context Protocol) server that gives AI agents software pricing data: entry prices (lowest paid plan per provider) for 16 categories, from VPNs and cloud backup to travel eSIMs and recruitment software. Prices are compiled from each provider's public pricing page and republished monthly since June 2026. Three categories (VPN, web hosting and cloud backup) are additionally measured by an automated pipeline that archives the source page behind every observation; the remaining categories are hand-curated. Published as open data under CC BY 4.0 by Orai Media.
Endpoint: https://shortlist-mcp.vercel.app/mcp (streamable HTTP, no auth, free)
Tools
| Tool | What it does |
|---|---|
list_categories | All tracked categories with slugs, units and currencies (11 USD/global + 5 Dutch EUR) |
get_price_index | Full index for one category: average, median, cheapest, every provider sorted by price, monthly history, methodology |
get_true_3yr_cost | Honest 3-year cost per provider (year 1 intro, years 2-3 at renewal), ranked by real total, with the renewal multiplier. Published for web hosting and antivirus today |
get_cheapest | The N cheapest providers in a category right now, with a link to the full comparison |
Every response includes a citation string and the CC BY 4.0 license note, so agents can attribute figures correctly.
Add to Claude Code
claude mcp add --transport http shortlist-prices https://shortlist-mcp.vercel.app/mcp
Add to any MCP client
{
"mcpServers": {
"shortlist-prices": {
"type": "http",
"url": "https://shortlist-mcp.vercel.app/mcp"
}
}
}
Example questions your agent can now answer
- "What does a VPN cost per month right now, and which three are cheapest?"
- "Compare travel eSIM prices per GB for a summer trip."
- "How much does an applicant tracking system cost for a single recruiter?"
- "Wat kost een wachtwoordmanager per maand in Nederland?"
Data
The server reads the live Price Index JSON endpoints of the Shortlist comparison sites (republished monthly, cached one hour) and the open dataset repository:
- Dataset with monthly history: https://github.com/ies86/shortlist-price-index
- Kaggle mirror: https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/ries86/shortlist-price-index
License: data CC BY 4.0 (attribution + link to the cited source site), code MIT.
Run locally
npm install
npm run dev
# MCP endpoint on http://localhost:3000/mcp
Self-host with Docker
The included Dockerfile builds a self-contained image of the same server (the production endpoint above is the hosted equivalent):
docker build -t shortlist-mcp .
docker run -p 3000:3000 shortlist-mcp
# MCP endpoint on http://localhost:3000/mcp
Built with mcp-handler on Next.js, deployed on Vercel.
