How the Thesaurus Score works
Every entry in MCP Thesaurus carries a score from 0 to 100 across five weighted dimensions: documentation, maintenance, trust, capability and install experience. Every criterion is derived from something observable — a licence file, a commit date, a tool count — and every one is shown on the entry page with its pass or fail. Nothing in the rubric can be purchased.
Grades
| Grade | Score | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| A | 80–100 | Well documented, actively maintained, easy to install. |
| B | 60–79 | Solid, with one or two gaps. |
| C | 40–59 | Usable, but expect to read the source. |
| D | 0–39 | Incomplete, unmaintained, or failing a prerequisite. |
Prerequisites
Three criteria are prerequisites rather than points. An entry failing any of them is capped at grade D regardless of how it scores elsewhere, because a server you cannot install or understand is not usable no matter how many stars it has.
- Documents what it does and how to connect
- A README of usable length, or — for a hosted server with no public repository — a substantive description and a documentation URL.
- Has a resolvable package or endpoint
- Something a person can actually install or connect to.
- Exposes at least one tool, prompt or resource
- An MCP server with no capabilities is not yet a server.
Documentation
25 points- README depth
- Up to 10 points, scaled by length: a 4,000-character README earns full marks, 200 characters earns 2.
- Includes a code example
- 6 points. A fenced code block anywhere in the README.
- Documents configuration
- 5 points. Mentions its config file, environment variables or an mcpServers block.
- Mentions credentials or security
- 4 points. Says what access it needs and what it does with it.
Maintenance
25 points- Commit recency
- Up to 14 points. Within 30 days earns full marks; over a year earns none.
- Release history
- 6 points for three or more published versions.
- Not archived
- 5 points. An archived repository loses these.
Trust
20 points- Has a licence
- 7 points. An unlicensed repository is legally unusable in most companies.
- Registry-verified namespace
- 6 points. Ownership proven via GitHub OAuth or a DNS TXT record in the official MCP registry.
- Claimed by its owner
- 4 points. A human with proven access has taken responsibility for the entry.
- Published under an organisation
- 3 points.
Capability
15 points- Number of tools
- Up to 8 points: ten or more tools earns full marks.
- Provides prompts
- 4 points.
- Provides resources
- 3 points.
Install experience
15 points- Documented install methods
- Up to 9 points, by how many clients we can generate a verified command for.
- Published to a package registry
- 3 points.
- Offers a hosted endpoint
- 3 points. Nothing to install at all.
What the score deliberately ignores
- Sponsorship. Paid placements appear in separately labelled slots and have no term in the scoring or ranking functions.
- Premium submission. Paying moves a listing up the review queue. It does not add a point.
- Popularity alone. Stars affect ordering on list pages, not the score. A widely starred but abandoned server should not outscore a small, well-maintained one.
What each badge means
A listing carries two independent labels: what is proven about who publishes it, and whether anyone paid for placement. They are deliberately kept apart — nothing in the first table can be bought at any price, and nothing in the second affects ranking or scoring.
Earned
Derived from public evidence and never for sale. No payment changes any of these.
- Official
- The publisher owns this namespace in the official MCP registry.
- Claimed
- A person proved they control this project. Free — claiming is not a paid feature.
- Community
- Indexed from a public source. Not yet claimed by its author.
- Unmaintained
- No commits in over a year.
- Archived
- The repository has been archived by its owner.
Paid
Always labelled, always separated from ranking.
- Featured
- A paid placement from a premium submission. It expires, and it never affects ranking or scoring.
- Sponsored
- A paid placement. It does not affect ranking anywhere on this site.
Questions
- Can a score be bought?
- No. Every criterion is derived from something observable in the repository, the package registry or the official MCP registry. There is no criterion a payment could satisfy, and the scoring code has no access to billing state.
- Why did my server get a low score?
- The entry page lists every criterion with its pass or fail and the observation behind it, so you can see exactly which ones you missed. The most common causes are a missing licence, a thin README and no commits in the last few months.
- How do I improve it?
- Add a licence, expand the README with a config section and a worked example, and claim your listing so ownership is verified. Those three usually move a listing a full grade.
- What is the difference between Community, Verified and Official?
- They describe how much is proven about who publishes a server. Community means we indexed it from a public source and nobody has claimed it. Verified means a person proved they control the repository and the listing passed review. Official means the publisher owns the namespace in the official MCP registry, which we check automatically. Almost every listing is Community today, because claiming is new.
- What do Unmaintained and Archived mean?
- Unmaintained means no commits in over a year. Archived means the repository owner has archived it themselves. Both are warnings rather than judgements of quality, and we show them because a directory that only reports good news is not useful.
- Can a badge be bought?
- No provenance badge can. Official comes from owning the namespace in the official MCP registry, and Claimed comes from proving you control the project — which is free, and which a paying customer still has to do themselves. Featured and Sponsored are the paid labels, both always disclosed, and neither sits inside organic ranking.
- What is the difference between Featured and Sponsored?
- Featured comes from a one-time premium submission: it promotes a listing that is genuinely in the directory, for a fixed window, and expires on its own. Sponsored is a monthly subscription for advertising inventory that renders in its own slot and stops the day it is cancelled. Featured is about a listing; Sponsored is about a slot.
- What does a premium submission actually buy?
- Speed, control and placement — published immediately after a safety scan, reviewed within 24 hours instead of the free queue, editable metadata with your own logo, description and links, and a Featured label for a fixed window. It does not buy Claimed, Official, or a better score. Claiming your listing is free whether or not you pay.
- How often is it recalculated?
- On every ingest run, which reads the official registry and each project's public repository daily. A score reflects the state of the project, not the state of it when it was first added.