py-ynab-mcp

A Model Context Protocol server for YNAB (You Need A Budget). Talk to your budget from Claude, Cursor, or any MCP client.

Features

• Query budgets, accounts, categories, transactions, payees, and months
• Get single-resource details (account, category, payee, transaction)
• Create, update, and delete transactions (single and bulk)
• Update category budgets and metadata
• Rename payees
• Manage scheduled transactions (full CRUD)
• Budget settings and user info

Install

uvx py-ynab-mcp

Or with pip:

pip install py-ynab-mcp

Setup

1. Get a YNAB Personal Access Token
2. Add to your MCP client config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "ynab": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["py-ynab-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "YNAB_ACCESS_TOKEN": "your-token-here"
      }
    }
  }
}

Why this project?

There are several YNAB MCP servers out there:

Project	Language	License
calebl/ynab-mcp-server	TypeScript	MIT
mattweg/ynab-mcp	JavaScript	MIT
chrisguidry/you-need-an-mcp	Python	No license
py-ynab-mcp	Python	MIT

We wanted an MIT-licensed Python implementation with full API coverage and thorough test coverage. At the time of writing, the only Python option had no OSS license, so we built this one.

YNAB API Coverage

Read

• User info, budget settings
• Budgets, accounts, categories, payees, months (list and single)
• Transactions with filtering by account, category, or payee
• Scheduled transactions (list and single)

Write

• Create, update, delete transactions (single and bulk)
• Update category budgets and metadata
• Rename payees
• Create, update, delete scheduled transactions

Not available in YNAB API

• Create/delete budgets, categories, or accounts
• Create/delete payees (auto-created via transactions)
• Transaction import

Development

# Clone and install
git clone https://github.com/duganth/py-ynab-mcp.git
cd py-ynab-mcp
uv sync

# Run tests
uv run pytest

# Lint and type check
uv run ruff check .
uv run mypy src/

License

MIT