Overview

The data.gouv.fr MCP Server is the official open-source Model Context Protocol (MCP) server developed by the French government's digital agency (Etalab / data.gouv.fr). It provides a secure, standardized bridge that allows AI agents and chatbots to interact directly with France's national open data platform — home to over 74,000 public datasets — without requiring custom API integrations or API keys.

Launched in early 2026 as an experimental but production-ready service, it uses streamable HTTP transport and exposes structured tools that AI models can call conversationally.

Key Features

Official & Trusted: Maintained by the data.gouv.fr team; MIT-licensed and fully open source.
Hosted Endpoint: Ready-to-use at https://mcp.data.gouv.fr/mcp (recommended for most users).
No API Key Required: Public open data access with no authentication barriers.
Rich Tool Set: Exposes ~10 structured tools for searching datasets, fetching metadata, downloading resources, exploring organizations, and analyzing content.
Natural Language Interaction: AI agents can ask questions like “Find recent datasets about French energy consumption” or “Summarize the latest census data for Paris”.
Python Implementation: Built with the official MCP SDK; easy to self-host if needed.
SSE / Streamable HTTP Support: Compatible with Claude Desktop, Cursor, VS Code, ChatGPT advanced features, and other MCP clients.

Supported Capabilities

Search datasets using keywords, themes, organizations, or advanced filters
Retrieve detailed metadata, licenses, and resource URLs
Explore producers (organizations) and their published datasets
Access usage metrics and popularity indicators
Fetch and analyze specific dataset resources
Combine multiple tools for complex data exploration workflows

Use Cases

AI-Powered Open Data Research: Quickly discover and summarize relevant French public datasets for reports, studies, or journalism.
Data-Driven Decision Making: Let agents analyze government data on economy, environment, health, transport, and more.
Educational & Civic Tools: Build conversational interfaces that make public data accessible to citizens and students.
Multi-Agent Automation: Combine with other MCP servers (GitHub, Azure DevOps, weather, etc.) for comprehensive research agents.
Journalism & Transparency: Enable LLMs to cross-reference official statistics in real time.

Getting Started

Use the hosted server (easiest):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "datagouv": {
      "type": "streamable",
      "url": "https://mcp.data.gouv.fr/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Add the configuration in your MCP client (Claude, Cursor, VS Code, etc.).
Start chatting — the AI will automatically use the available tools to search and analyze data.gouv.fr datasets.

Self-hosting instructions and full tool documentation are available in the GitHub repository.

Resources

Official GitHub Repository: https://github.com/datagouv/datagouv-mcp
data.gouv.fr Announcement: https://www.data.gouv.fr/posts/experimentation-autour-dun-serveur-mcp-pour-datagouv
Hosted MCP Endpoint: https://mcp.data.gouv.fr/mcp

This server represents France's leadership in making high-quality public data natively accessible to the AI ecosystem through the open Model Context Protocol.

data.gouv.fr MCP Server (mcp data gouv)