---
title: Deploy MCP Servers
sidebarTitle: "Deploy MCP Servers"
description: "Host standalone MCP servers—FastMCP, custom tooling, or data backends—on mcp-agent cloud"
icon: server
---

You do not need full agent orchestration to benefit from the platform. Use mcp-agent cloud to host plain MCP servers that expose tools, resources, and prompts. Typical scenarios:

- A catalogue of internal services (Jira, GitHub, PagerDuty) surfaced to MCP clients.
- Reusable data access layers (BI dashboards, CRM fetchers).
- Utility toolkits (formatting, encryption, validation) shared across teams.
- Bridges that wrap legacy gRPC/REST APIs in MCP.

## Quick workflow

```bash
# 1. Authenticate
mcp-agent login

# 2. Test locally (FastMCP or custom server)
uv run main.py

# 3. Deploy from project directory
mcp-agent deploy utilities-server \
  --app-description "Utility tools exposed via MCP"

# 4. Describe & copy server URL
mcp-agent cloud servers describe utilities-server

# (The CLI prints a hostname like `app_abc123xyz.deployments.mcp-agent.com`; use that value anywhere `<app_id>` appears below.)

# 5. Install into clients
mcp-agent install https://<app_id>.deployments.mcp-agent.com/sse \
  --client cursor
```

## Project layout

```
utilities-server/
├── main.py                  # FastMCP or custom server entrypoint
├── mcp_agent.config.yaml    # Points at the command/args to start the server
├── requirements.txt         # Dependencies (or pyproject.toml)
└── mcp_agent.secrets.yaml   # Optional secrets for outbound APIs
```

Minimal config:

```yaml
name: utilities-server
execution_engine: asyncio
mcp:
  servers:
    utilities:
      command: "uvx"
      args: ["python", "main.py"]
logger:
  transports: [console]
  level: info
```

> Even though you are not using Temporal, the platform still provides logging, secrets, and auth.

## Authentication modes

- **Bearer token** (default) – users set `MCP_API_KEY` or run `mcp-agent login`.
- **Unauthenticated** – deploy with `--no-auth` for public servers or ChatGPT Apps.
- **OAuth (coming soon)** – follow updates in [Authentication →](/cloud/authentication/overview).

## Observability & operations

- `mcp-agent cloud logger tail <name>` – inspect logs, filter by regex, follow in real time.
- `mcp-agent cloud servers list` – inventory + status.
- `mcp-agent cloud servers delete <name>` – remove deployment.
- `mcp-agent cloud logger configure` – forward logs to your OTEL collector.

## Evolving into an agent

When you want durable workflows, wrap existing tools with `MCPApp` and redeploy under the same name. MCP clients continue to work while gaining new capabilities (`@app.async_tool`, workflow management). See [Deploy Agents →](/cloud/use-cases/deploy-agents) for the migration playbook.

## Further reading

- [Deploying MCP servers (deep dive) →](/cloud/mcp-agent-cloud/deploy-mcp-server)
- [ChatGPT Apps deployment →](/cloud/use-cases/deploy-chatgpt-apps)
- [Secrets management →](/cloud/mcp-agent-cloud/manage-secrets)
