Installation

Install and run the mcpjungle CLI and gateway server

Mcpjungle ships as a single binary.

You will usually use this binary in two ways:

• To run the Mcpjungle gateway server, which manages all upstream MCPs and serves the HTTP API & MCP endpoints
• As a CLI client to manage the mcpjungle server and interact with the mcp gateway

For individual users, the simplest (and recommended) setup is: install the CLI, then run the gateway with Docker Compose.

Homebrew

Homebrew is the recommended installation method on macOS and Linux.

brew install mcpjungle/mcpjungle/mcpjungle

On macOS, you must use Homebrew. The pre-built binary available on the Releases page is not notarized yet, so macOS will block it from running.

Verify the installation:

mcpjungle version

Docker

Pull the official Mcpjungle image if you want to run the gateway in Docker:

docker pull ghcr.io/mcpjungle/mcpjungle

The default image is light-weight & minimal. It contains only the mcpjungle binary and the dependencies needed for runtime.

If you need to register stdio-based MCP servers that rely on npx or uvx, use the stdio-tagged image instead:

docker pull ghcr.io/mcpjungle/mcpjungle:latest-stdio

The stdio-tagged image is significantly larger in size due to more dependencies being included. Use it only when you need to run stdio-based MCP servers as well.

For running the gateway locally, the recommended approach is to use Docker Compose. See the Deploy with Docker guide for details.

Binary

Pre-built binaries for Linux and macOS are available on the GitHub Releases page.

Download the binary for your platform, make it executable, and move it to a directory on your PATH.

On macOS, the binary is not notarized, so Gatekeeper will block it from running. Use Homebrew instead.

Alternatively, you can also build the binary from source.

Verify the installation after placing the binary on your PATH:

mcpjungle version

Server

You can use the binary to run the server directly on your host:

mcpjungle start

This starts the server on port 8080 by default. You can run a quick health check:

curl http://localhost:8080/health

The CLI also connects to this address by default.

If the following command also returns the server version, then your CLI is correctly connected to the server:

mcpjungle version

Configure a custom registry URL

By default, the CLI connects to Mcpjungle at http://127.0.0.1:8080. If your server runs on a different host or port, configure the registry URL in one of two ways:

--registry flag

Pass the URL inline with every command:

mcpjungle --registry http://my-server:9000 list tools

Config file

Create or edit .mcpjungle.conf in your home directory so you don’t repeat the flag:

registry_url: http://my-server:9000

You have now successfully installed mcpjungle and connected the CLI to the server.

Next steps

Deploy with Docker

Choose the right Docker path for local development or a shared deployment.

Core Concepts

Understand the difference between the CLI, the gateway, upstream MCP servers, and groups.

Add a streamable HTTP MCP server

Register a remote MCP server and expose it through mcpjungle.

Add a STDIO MCP server

Register a local STDIO-based MCP server and expose it through mcpjungle.