USA Spending MCP Server

This is a stateless streamable HTTP MCP server for interacting with USASPENDING.gov, the official source of government spending data. You can track government spending over time, search government spending by agency, explore government spending to communities, and much more. USASPENDING.gov provides this neat dashboard which shows some of the powers of the API should you want a high level overview of what you can achieve with this API. The API docs can be viewed at this URL.

Running Locally

uv run src/server.py

Running from PyPi

uvx --from usaspending-mcp-server@latest usaspending-mcp-server

Running from Docker

docker build -t usaspending-mcp-server .
docker run -p 8000:8000 usaspending-mcp-server

Using with Claude Desktop

Update your claude_desktop_config.json with the following configuration. Ensure the MCP server is running by using one of the methods mentioned above.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "usaspending": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "mcp-remote",
        "http://localhost:8000/mcp"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Configuration Options

The following env or .env variables are accepted to customize what host and port the MCP server runs on.

MCP_SERVER_HOST
MCP_SERVER_PORT

Tools

Name	Description	Example prompts
federal_accounts	Use this tool to get a better understanding of how agencies receive and spend congressional funding to carry out their programs, projects, and activities.	- Provide specifics on how the Department of Homeland Security spends money.
list_budget_functions	This retrieves a list of all Budget Functions ordered by their title	- How much does the government spend on community and regional development versus international affairs?
major_object_class	This data can be used to better understand the different ways that a specific agency spends money	- How much money does the Department of Education spend on employee pay and benefits?
recipient	This can be used to visualize the government spending that pertains to a specific recipient. This returns a list of recipients, their level, DUNS, UEI, and amount.	- What are some companies that received funding from the NSA?
spending	This data can be used to drill down into specific subsets of data by level of detail. This data represents all government spending in the specified time period, grouped by the data type of your choice.	- Provide spending by agency for General Science, Space, and Technology.
spending_by_award	This allows for complex filtering for specific subsets of spending data. This accepts filters and fields, and returns the fields of the filtered awards.	- What was the largest award in 2025? - What are some companies that received major federal contracts in Lindsey Graham's district?
spending_over_time	This returns a list of aggregated award amounts grouped by time period in ascending order (earliest to most recent).	- How has spending changed to California over the last 5 years?
subawards	This returns a filtered set of subawards	- Describe some of the subawards for CONT_AWD_FA870221C0001_9700_-NONE-_-NONE- and provide a rationale for them.
total_budgetary_resources	This is used to provide information on the federal budgetary resources of the government	- What was the government budget in 2025 vs 2024? - How much money does the federal government provide in total to various government agencies?
toptier_agencies	This data can be used to better understand the different ways that a specific agency spends money	- Which federal agency receives the most money?

tools directory explained

As each tool is basically a wrapper for an API route, each tool is mapped similarly to the directory structure in the api_contracts directory of the usaspending-api. However, for tools federal_accounts, recipient, spending, and subawards their API mapping are the contracts mentioned in the root directory api_contracts/v2. There is a md file for each tool so it is convenient to reference the documentation used to create the tool. These contracts are rarely updated in the usaspending-api, but checks should still be performed to ensure they are up to date. Currently, all contracts (aka API documentation) are referenced from commit dv551d0 of the usaspending-api.

Testing

MCP Inspector is a good way to test the input and output schema without connecting to a LLM. There is also a sample MCP Client to test the application using OpenAI. There are also a variety of unit tests focusing on the tool handlers, input/output schemas, and HTTP calls to the USASpending API. They can be run with the following command.

uv run pytest

Contributing

Please see the testing section as a starting point to test your changes before submitting a PR. If you are adding a new tool, please also add a copy of the respective contract used as a reference to create the inputSchema and outputSchema. Please add the tool to the same path that it exists in the usaspending_api contacts directory. For file naming convention refer to the contract file name and name the tool this as well. For example, if you are creating a tool for the v2/disaster/spending_by_geography.md API route this tool should be added with under the path tools/v2/disaster/spending_by_geography.py and the tool should be named disaster_spending_by_geography. Should there be any objections to this please explain why in the PR as it is not bullet proof!

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.