The MCP ecosystem crossed 50,000 raw listings earlier this year. But raw listings do not tell you where the real momentum is. To answer that, you need to look at what categories are actually growing — and which ones have already plateaued.
We pulled the data from the AgentNDX directory, where every server is reviewed before it gets listed. Here is what the numbers say about the first half of 2026.
The Numbers at a Glance
AgentNDX currently tracks 537 curated MCP servers across 10 categories. All of these were added between April and June 2026 as the directory ramped up its review pipeline. The category breakdown:
| Category | Servers | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Data | 151 | 28.1% |
| Infrastructure | 86 | 16.0% |
| Productivity | 76 | 14.2% |
| Code | 44 | 8.2% |
| AI | 40 | 7.4% |
| Payments | 34 | 6.3% |
| Media | 31 | 5.8% |
| Communication | 29 | 5.4% |
| Web | 28 | 5.2% |
| Identity | 18 | 3.4% |
Data servers account for more than a quarter of the index on their own. That is not a surprise — agents need to read before they can act, and data connectors are the most direct path from “I have an AI” to “it does something useful.”
Where the Growth Is
Month-over-month additions tell a sharper story than totals. Here is the new-server intake by category for each month:
| Category | April | May | June (partial) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Data | 47 | 71 | 33 |
| Infrastructure | 32 | 38 | 16 |
| Productivity | 33 | 34 | 9 |
| Payments | 11 | 12 | 11 |
| Code | 21 | 15 | 8 |
| AI | 24 | 16 | 0 |
| Media | 13 | 11 | 7 |
| Communication | 17 | 8 | 3 |
| Web | 14 | 13 | 1 |
| Identity | 10 | 7 | 1 |
Three patterns stand out.
Data is pulling away
Data servers jumped from 47 new additions in April to 71 in May — a 51% increase. That makes it both the largest category and the fastest-growing in absolute terms. The drivers: database connectors (Postgres, MySQL, MongoDB, Supabase), API wrappers for SaaS platforms, and search/retrieval tools that let agents query structured and unstructured data sources.
If you are building an agent and only connecting one type of MCP server, it is probably a data server.
Infrastructure is the quiet second story
Infrastructure servers — cloud providers, deployment tools, CI/CD runners, container management — grew steadily from 32 in April to 38 in May. That trajectory tracks with enterprise teams moving past prototypes and into production agent deployments. When an agent needs to ship code or manage cloud resources, infrastructure servers are how it gets done.
Payments hold steady while others cool off
Payments: 11 in April, 12 in May, 11 so far in June. Most other categories slowed. Payments didn’t. That tells you x402 adoption and payment-gated services are still in an active build phase — developers are not losing interest even as other categories mature.
Meanwhile, AI-focused servers (model wrappers, embedding generators, prompt tools) peaked in April and have added zero new entries in June. That market saturated fast.
Transport and Protocol Trends
The transport layer adds another angle:
- stdio: 377 servers (70.2%) — still the default for local-first agent setups
- HTTP: 157 servers (29.2%) — growing as remote and hosted deployments increase
- SSE: 2 servers (0.4%) — effectively dead as a transport choice
The stdio dominance makes sense for developer tooling and local workflows. But the HTTP share has been climbing as teams deploy agents to servers rather than running everything on a laptop.
On the protocol side, only 5 servers in the directory currently support x402 payments. That number is small but meaningful — x402 is still new, and the servers that do support it tend to be production-grade services rather than experiments.
What This Means for Builders
So where should you build?
Data connectors still have room. The category is large, but the demand is larger — every SaaS platform, database, or API that ships without an MCP server is an open slot. Agents cannot use what they cannot connect to.
Infrastructure is undersupplied. 86 servers covering all of cloud, CI/CD, containers, and deployment? That is thin. If you have cloud-native or Kubernetes experience, there is real space here.
Payments are worth watching. The flat growth curve is not stagnation — it is a category waiting on x402 tooling to catch up. When it does, expect a spike. And AI-on-AI wrappers? Those peaked. Wrapping one model in an MCP server so another model can call it was a Q1 novelty. Developers have moved on.
FAQ
Q: Where does this data come from? A: The AgentNDX directory. Every server is reviewed before listing. The numbers here reflect curated, verified servers — not raw registry dumps.
Q: How does June compare if you project the full month? A: June is on pace for roughly 180 new servers across all categories, which would be slightly below May’s 225. Some of that is seasonal, some is the directory’s review pipeline catching up to submission volume.
Q: Which category should I build an MCP server in? A: Data and infrastructure have the strongest demand signals. But the real answer depends on what problem you are solving. A well-built server in a small category can be more valuable than the 50th Postgres connector.
Q: Will AgentNDX publish updated numbers? A: Yes. We plan to run this analysis quarterly to track how the ecosystem shifts over time.