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Documentation Grafana documentation AI tools OSS MCP server Configure Transports and addresses

Transports and addresses

The Grafana MCP server supports three transports: stdio (default for local use), SSE, and streamable-http. Choose the one that matches how your MCP client connects.

What you’ll achieve

You run the server with the right transport and, for SSE or streamable-http, the correct address and path so your client can connect.

Before you begin

• The server installed (for example, Install with uvx or Install with Docker).

Use stdio transport

With stdio (the default when you run the binary or uvx), the server talks to the client over standard input and output. Use this when the client launches the server as a subprocess (for example, Claude Desktop, Cursor). No --address or port is needed.

Bash Copy

mcp-grafana
# or
uvx mcp-grafana

Use SSE or streamable-http transport

With -t sse or -t streamable-http, the server listens on an address (default localhost:8000). Use --address to change host and port, and optionally --base-path or --endpoint-path for path configuration.

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mcp-grafana -t sse
mcp-grafana -t streamable-http --address :9090

Clients connect to the server URL (for example, http://localhost:8000/sse for SSE). For streamable-http, the default endpoint path is /mcp (override with --endpoint-path if your client expects a different path).

--base-path prefixes the application routes on the listener:

Bash Copy

mcp-grafana -t sse --address :8000 --base-path /my-base --metrics

serves /my-base/sse. /healthz and /metrics are internal-only endpoints for probes and scrapers, so they always stay at the server root — never under --base-path — regardless of this flag.

Keep idle SSE sessions alive behind a proxy

Reverse proxies and load balancers close connections that stay idle longer than their timeout, for example, 60 seconds for ingress-nginx’s default proxy-read-timeout. When that happens to an SSE event stream, the server ends the session, and the client’s next tool call fails. Set --sse-keepalive to an interval below the proxy’s idle timeout, so the server pings each client and the stream never sits idle that long:

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mcp-grafana -t sse --sse-keepalive 30s

A client is disconnected after 3 pings in a row go unanswered for half the interval each, so one slow reply doesn’t end the session. The interval must be at least 1s. The flag has no effect on the stdio and streamable-http transports.

Next steps

• Server TLS (streamable-http) if you need HTTPS for the MCP server.
• Client TLS if Grafana is behind mTLS or custom certificates.