Ayrshare's MCP server: there are two, and one of them cannot post

Ayrshare has two MCP servers and only one of them can publish. If you connect the wrong one, nothing fails: your agent politely reads API documentation while you wait for a post that never goes out. This page is about telling them apart, what the working one costs, and what the same job looks like on PlanVortex.

All of it verified on September 15, 2026 against Ayrshare's own documentation and PlanVortex's production code.

The two servers

	Documentation MCP	Action MCP
What it does	Searches Ayrshare's API docs	Drives the Ayrshare API
Can it publish?	No	Yes
Tools	Documentation search	27, across publishing, analytics, history, comments, DMs and profiles
Auth	None	Bearer token
Price	Free	Needs an API plan, from $149/month

Ayrshare's own docs draw the line, and it is worth reading the sentence rather than paraphrasing it: "This is the read-only Documentation MCP (it searches Ayrshare's API docs). To let an AI agent drive the Ayrshare API, see the MCP Server (Action MCP)."

The Documentation MCP is a genuinely good idea and we are not going to pretend otherwise — pointing a coding agent at real API docs is the difference between an integration that compiles and one that invents endpoints. It is just not the thing you want when you asked for a post to go out on Thursday.

There are also community-built Ayrshare MCP servers on the registries, some with a much larger tool count. They are unofficial. Whether that matters is your call, but it is your token they are holding.

What the Action MCP costs

The Action MCP is a second door onto the Ayrshare API, so it inherits that API's price: Premium, $149/month, which is Ayrshare's cheapest plan. There is no free tier and no permanent free key.

That is the whole comparison on price, and it is a short one:

	Cheapest plan that can publish from an agent
Ayrshare	$149/month
PlanVortex	€0/month

PlanVortex's MCP server authenticates with the client_id and client_secret of an app, and every plan has apps, the free one included — one on free, two on basic, five on pro, up to ten on custom. What scales with the plan is how many separate apps you get and how fast you can call, not whether an agent can publish at all.

npx -y planvortex-mcp

Those are the same credentials the Node and Python libraries use. It is listed in the official MCP registry and installs as a one-command npx, with a .mcpb bundle for Claude Desktop if you would rather not have Node on the machine.

Twenty-eight tools, and the one that is missing on purpose

PlanVortex's MCP exposes 28 tools. Grouped by what you would actually ask for:

• Publishing — create_publication, update_publication, retry_publication, upload_media, get_publication, list_publications
• The comment inbox — list_comments, get_comment_thread, reply_to_comment, hide_comment, mark_comment_read
• Private messages — list_conversations, list_messages, send_message, get_unread_counts
• Accounts and setup — list_organizations, list_accounts, create_connect_link, get_plan_use, get_social_capabilities, get_social_limits
• Numbers — get_dashboard_summary, get_account_metrics, get_publication_stats, get_top_publications
• AI planning — get_planner_templates, list_ai_plans, get_ai_plan

A twenty-ninth, create_ai_plan, generates a whole week of posts and spends AI credits, so it stays off until you start the server with PLANVORTEX_MCP_ALLOW_AI=1. Opt-in, because an agent that quietly burns credits is a support ticket, not a feature.

There is no delete tool anywhere in that list, and that is the design. No tool removes a post, an account, a contact or a comment. An agent that misreads an instruction can publish something you have to retract — it cannot erase a client's inbox. Deletions happen in the panel, by a person.

The comparison on tool count — 27 against 28 — is close enough to be meaningless on its own, and we would rather say so than dress it up. The number that separates them is the other one.

Where the real difference is, and it isn't the MCP

Both servers publish. Both read analytics. The question that decides which one you want is whose accounts are these.

Ayrshare's API is built to publish on behalf of your users, and it is good at it — that is what user profiles are for. What you are paying $149/month for is the floor to find out whether it fits.

PlanVortex separates clients, organizations and accounts in the data model rather than bolting a client_id onto a single-company schema, and the account connection itself is an API call: create_connect_link returns a link your user opens to authorize their own Instagram, on your screens, under your brand. An agent can therefore onboard a customer end to end, not just post for one that someone else connected by hand.

What Ayrshare does better

It covers more networks. Fourteen against thirteen, with eleven in common. The three they have and we do not are Reddit, Pinterest and Snapchat. All three are on the PlanVortex roadmap and none of them has shipped, so if your agent has to post to Pinterest this quarter, the honest answer is that we cannot do it and they can.

Worth knowing about that 14 when you compare: Ayrshare's homepage counts WhatsApp in beta, while its own API documentation still listed 13 and left WhatsApp out as of August 31, 2026.

Their Documentation MCP has no equivalent here. If what you want is an agent that writes your integration correctly, pointing it at their docs server works and we ship nothing like it. Ours is an action server only.

The short version

If you are choosing an MCP server to let an assistant publish:

• Connect the Action MCP, not the Documentation one. This is the single most common way to lose an afternoon with Ayrshare.
• Ayrshare's floor to publish from an agent is $149/month. PlanVortex's is €0, on the free plan, with the API and an app included and no card.
• Tool counts are a wash (27 vs 28). The difference that matters is whether you need to connect your customers' accounts from your own product, and whether you want the comment inbox and DMs in the same server.
• If you need Reddit, Pinterest or Snapchat today, use Ayrshare.

PlanVortex's MCP server is documented at planvortex.com/en/agents, and the npx -y planvortex-mcp above is the whole install.