Three minutes from sign-up to your first agent call. A walkthrough for Claude Desktop, Cursor, and the Claude Code CLI.

The fastest way to give Claude, Cursor, or the Claude Code CLI access to the open web is to install UnifAPI as an MCP server. One config block, one API key, and every endpoint in our catalog becomes a callable tool. Here's the walkthrough.

Create a free account at unifapi.com/signup. You'll land on a dashboard with a single API key prefilled. Copy it into your shell as UNIFAPI_KEY. Done.

Step 2 — Add the MCP config to your client

Open your MCP client's config file. The location depends on the client.

Claude Desktop

Edit ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json (macOS) or %APPDATA%/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json (Windows). Add an entry under mcpServers pointing at https://mcp.unifapi.com with your Authorization header. Restart Claude.

Cursor

Edit ~/.cursor/mcp.json. Same shape — mcpServers entry, URL, Authorization header. Cursor picks it up without a restart.

Claude Code CLI

Run claude mcp add unifapi https://mcp.unifapi.com --header "Authorization: Bearer $UNIFAPI_KEY". Done.

Step 3 — Use it

Open a new chat and ask: "Find the top three TikTok videos about Anthropic this week." Claude picks the right tool — tiktok.search — calls it, and returns the results. No prompt engineering, no per-tool plumbing.

Try combining tools: "Search Google News for OpenAI announcements in the last week, then summarise the top three." Claude will fan out across news.search and url-to-markdown to do it. That's the whole pitch.

What gets billed

Every tool call costs credits, billed against your account balance. The Free tier's monthly grant is plenty to play with — typically a few hundred MCP calls. When you're ready for production, add a card and switch to pay-as-you-go.

Step 1 — Sign up and get a key