Eight project management tools, ranked by their Model Context Protocol (MCP) support. If you want Claude Desktop, Gemini CLI, ChatGPT, or Cursor to read and update your PM data directly inside the conversation, MCP is the standard that makes that work.
Independent comparison. Onplana is the publisher of this page, so we lead the list. All comparisons below are based on publicly available information as of May 2026, and the Asana, ClickUp, Monday.com and OpenProject entries on each vendor’s own pages on 3 November 2026; competitor MCP support may change.
“Native” = first-party MCP server published by the vendor. “Beta” = preview / limited rollout. “Community” = unofficial wrappers built around the vendor’s REST API. “None” = no MCP integration as of May 2026.
| Tool | MCP support | Tool count | Auth | Open source? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Onplana | Native | 346 | OAuth 2.1 + PAT | Partial |
| Linear | Native | ~15 | OAuth (Linear app) | No |
| Notion | Native | ~10 | OAuth (Notion app) | No |
| Atlassian (Jira) | Beta | unpublished | OAuth (Atlassian) | No |
| Asana | Native | unpublished | OAuth (Asana) | No |
| ClickUp | Native | unpublished | See ClickUp's docs | No |
| Monday.com | Native | unpublished | See monday.com's docs | No |
| Microsoft Planner / Project | None | 0 | n/a | No |
| OpenProject | Native | unpublished | See OpenProject's docs | No |
346 MCP tools · OAuth 2.1 + PAT
~15 MCP tools · OAuth (Linear app)
~10 MCP tools · OAuth (Notion app)
unpublished MCP tools · OAuth (Atlassian)
unpublished MCP tools · OAuth (Asana)
unpublished MCP tools · See ClickUp's docs
unpublished MCP tools · See monday.com's docs
No MCP tools exposed · n/a
unpublished MCP tools · See OpenProject's docs
“It combines enterprise-grade project management features like Gantt charts, dependencies, and portfolio management with a modern AI-powered and collaborative experience. It feels like a strong modern alternative for organizations moving away from Microsoft Project.”
The Model Context Protocol is an open standard published by Anthropic in late 2024 for connecting AI agents to external tools and data sources. Instead of a one-off integration per client (Claude needs one wrapper, ChatGPT needs another, Gemini needs a third), the PM tool exposes an MCP server once and any MCP-aware client can read and write its data.
In practice, MCP compatibility means you can ask Claude, Gemini, or ChatGPT something like “create a project plan for the Q3 launch, with weekly milestones and a risk register,” and the agent runs the work directly inside your PM tool, instead of recommending steps and asking you to execute them yourself.
readOnlyHint,destructiveHint, and idempotentHint. Without these, agents can’t make safe decisions about which calls need user confirmation.<onplana_user_content>...</onplana_user_content>tags. If your MCP server doesn’t do this, a cleverly-named task can rewrite your agent’s plan.A project management tool that ships a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server endpoint that AI agents like Claude Desktop, Gemini CLI, ChatGPT custom connectors, Cursor, and GitHub Copilot can connect to via Streamable HTTP. The agent reads + writes the PM tool's data directly inside the conversation, instead of you copy-pasting between the chat and the PM UI.
Onplana (346 tools, OAuth 2.1 + PAT, MIT-licensed transport), Linear (engineering-focused issue + project model), and Notion (wiki + database model), as of May 2026. Asana, ClickUp and Monday.com each publish a hosted MCP server of their own, and OpenProject sells one as an Enterprise add-on, per each vendor's developer docs or pricing page on 3 November 2026. Atlassian / Jira was in limited preview via Atlassian Rovo, and Microsoft Planner / Project, Smartsheet, Trello, and Basecamp had no MCP server, as of May 2026.
Onplana ships 346 curated tools covering the full PM lifecycle: projects, tasks, sprints, milestones, risks, team members, timesheets, and a hybrid BM25 + vector search across the org's indexed content (wiki, projects, tasks, comments). Linear focuses on issues + projects for engineering teams. Notion focuses on wiki + database operations. The right choice depends on whether you need Gantt + critical path + governance workflows (Onplana), issue tracking (Linear), or document/database workflows (Notion). Onplana also publishes the transport layer (Streamable HTTP + Bearer auth + prompt-injection containment) as an open-source npm package at github.com/Onplana/onplana-mcp-server, so anyone can self-host a custom MCP server using the same primitives.
Onplana includes MCP access on every plan, including Free (the concurrent-connection cap scales with tier: Free 2, Pro 3, and up). Linear and Notion both gate MCP behind paid plans, so Onplana Free is a genuinely free way to put your projects behind an MCP server; check their pricing pages for current terms.
Two options: (1) migrate to an MCP-native tool, Onplana imports .mpp, .mpx, Project XML, XER, Excel and CSV files, and imports from Microsoft Planner. (2) self-host a community wrapper if one exists; the Onplana MCP server template (MIT-licensed) is also a reasonable starting point for wrapping any PM tool's REST API as an MCP server.
Native support: Claude Desktop, Claude.ai web (via Connectors Directory), Gemini CLI, Gemini Code Assist (VS Code + JetBrains), ChatGPT custom connectors (Plus/Pro/Team/Enterprise/Edu), ChatGPT Codex CLI, Cursor, GitHub Copilot in VS Code, and the official MCP Inspector. Consumer gemini.google.com does not yet support custom MCP servers as of May 2026.
For Onplana: one command in Gemini CLI (`gemini extensions install https://github.com/Onplana/onplana-mcp-server`). For Claude Desktop: paste a JSON snippet into the config file and restart. Total time including signing up for an Onplana account and minting a PAT: about 5 minutes. Linear and Notion take a similar amount of time via their OAuth-based app install flows.
Onplana ships a 250+-tool MCP server with OAuth 2.1 + PAT auth, one-line install for Gemini CLI, and FREE-tier signup. The transport layer is MIT-licensed if you want to self-host or wrap a different PM tool.
See also how MCP project management actually works (real screenshots), MCP docs, facts and figures, pricing, or other comparisons.