MCP Directories Compared: mcp.so, Glama, PulseMCP, Smithery

If you've gone looking for MCP servers, you've probably landed on one of four places: mcp.so, Glama, PulseMCP or Smithery — or one of the many awesome-mcp-serverslists on GitHub. They all do roughly the same job (help you find a server that does what you need) but differ in how they're built, how servers get listed, and — critically — whether anyone independently checks if a listed server is safe to run. None of them is a trust layer. That gap is what Vouchity exists to fill.

What each of these actually is

It helps to be precise about what these sites are for, because "MCP directory" gets used loosely. Here's what each one actually does, based on what they publish about themselves.

mcp.so — a community-run marketplace

mcp.so bills itself as the "MCP Marketplace" — a community-driven directory that indexes MCP servers submitted or scraped from public sources, searchable by name, tag and category. The site is built on an open-source project, chatmcp/mcpso, and leans on GitHub-style community contribution (issues, a Discord, a Telegram group) to keep listings current. It's a good first stop for casually browsing what exists in a category; it doesn't publish an independent safety or quality score for the servers it lists.

Glama — the largest catalogue, plus hosting and scoring

Glama runs the biggest MCP server index by raw count — north of 70,000 listed servers at the time of writing, filterable by hosting type (remote, local, hybrid), language, and 40-plus categories. Glama goes further than a plain directory: it assigns each server a per-project score covering things like license, documented tools and basic quality signals, ships an in-browser MCP Inspector for testing a server before you install it, and offers a hosted gateway that can proxy and log calls to a server. Glama was founded by Frank Fiegel, who also maintains one of the most-starred awesome-mcp-servers lists on GitHub (below) — the two projects share some DNA but are separate products.

PulseMCP — directory plus editorial coverage

PulseMCP pairs a server directory (tens of thousands of entries, updated daily) with an MCP client directory, use-case write-ups, and a newsletter ("The Agentic Loop") covering the protocol's development. It was started by Tadas Antanavicius, who has served on the MCP steering committee, and Mike Coughlin. PulseMCP reads more like a trade publication with a directory attached than a pure listings site — useful if you want context on why a category of server exists, not just a list of them.

Smithery — registry, CLI and hosted deployment (now part of Arcade.dev)

Smithery combines a searchable registry of MCP servers with a CLI (npx @smithery/cli) and hosted deployment: publishers can ship a server through Smithery and have it run on Smithery's infrastructure, with OAuth and credential handling managed for the caller. In August 2026, Smithery was acquired by Arcade.dev, which pairs the registry with Arcade's agent-tool execution and authorization layer — a sign that "discovery" and "governed execution" are consolidating for at least one major registry. We cover Smithery specifically, in much more depth, in our dedicated Smithery comparison.

The awesome-mcp-servers phenomenon

Alongside the hosted directories, GitHub hosts dozens of hand-curated awesome-mcp-serverslists — plain markdown READMEs following the "awesome list" convention. The largest, maintained by Frank Fiegel (punkpeye), has roughly 90,000 stars. These lists are useful precisely because a human read the README before adding an entry — but they're static snapshots: no live install counts, no maintenance tracking, no automated re-check when a repo goes stale or gets archived. A server can sit unmaintained in an awesome list for a year with nothing telling you that's happened.

How they compare, side by side

Why none of this is a trust layer

Every directory above answers "does a server like this exist?" None of them, on their own, answers "should I actually connect this to my agent?" A listing — even in a large, well-maintained directory — mostly tells you a server was submitted or scraped, not that it's maintained, licensed, reasonably scoped, or safe to run with real credentials. Glama's per-project score is the closest any of these get to independent scoring, and it's worth checking; it still isn't built around the same five-signal model — maintenance, adoption, transparency, security and provenance — that a Trust Score is. See how to vet an MCP server for the manual version of that checklist, and our security analysis for how often servers actually fail it — across the 320 servers Vouchity currently tracks, the average Trust Score is only 63/100, and a meaningful share carry at least one real risk flag (no license, no declared auth, an archived repo).

This is the top of the current leaderboard — servers that clear the bar on all five signals, not just the ones with the most stars:

See the full ranking on the live leaderboard, or browse 11 categories — from developer tools to finance to browser automation — on the categories page.

Where Vouchity fits — a layer above the catalogues, not another one

Vouchity doesn't compete with mcp.so, Glama, PulseMCP or Smithery for submissions, and it isn't trying to be the biggest index — it's deliberately narrower and deeper. Every server Vouchity tracks gets a Trust Score computed from five weighted, independently verifiable signals: recent maintenance activity, real adoption (stars and npm downloads), transparency (license, public source, versioned releases), security posture (declared auth on remote servers, no red-flag permission patterns) and publisher provenance. Full detail on how each is weighted is in our methodology, and the plain-English, do-it-yourself version of the same checks is in how to vet an MCP server. The practical workflow most people land on: find a candidate server on whichever catalogue you prefer, then check its Trust Score on Vouchity before you connect it to anything that can take real actions.

That workflow also works for agents, not just people. Vouchity exposes a hosted MCP endpoint (see the API docs) with search_mcp_servers, get_trust_score and check_server_safety tools, so an agent evaluating whether to install a server it found on mcp.so or Smithery can check the score itself, programmatically, before ever calling the tool in question. See how it works for the full picture, and about Vouchity for why we built it as an independent registry rather than folding scoring into a submission-based directory that also profits from listings volume.

A decision framework

• Want the biggest possible net to browse, or a self-hosted gateway? Start with Glama. It has the largest count and the most filtering, plus an inspector and gateway if you want to run servers through its infrastructure.
• Want editorial context, use cases, or an MCP client directory too? Try PulseMCP.
• Want hosted deployment with managed auth, and don't mind a platform now backed by an execution-layer vendor? Look at Smithery — and read our deeper Smithery comparison first.
• Want a quick, casual browse? mcp.so or a GitHub awesome-mcp-servers list works fine for that.
• Either way, before you connect anything to an agent that can act on your behalf: check its Trust Score on Vouchity. None of the catalogues above are built to answer that question, and it's the one that actually matters once a server has real access.

For background on the protocol itself, see what MCP is and MCP security fundamentals. If you're choosing between running a server locally or connecting to a hosted one, remote vs. local MCP servers covers how the trust model changes either way.