Airbnb MCP Server: Complete Guide (2026)

TL;DR + what you actually need

Three things to know before you install anything:

• NPM package: @openbnb/mcp-server-airbnb — run it with npx -y @openbnb/mcp-server-airbnb. Node 18+ is the only requirement.
• No API key. No Airbnb account, no signup, no token. It reads public listing pages directly. (Airbnb has no public listings API — that’s the whole reason this exists.)
• Two tools: airbnb_search and airbnb_listing_details. Search with filters, then drill into any result.

The fast install paths:

• Claude Desktop: download the .mcpb bundle from the repo’s latest release and double-click it — Claude Desktop pops an install dialog. One click, done.
• Cursor / VS Code / Claude Code / Windsurf: add the npx stdio block below to your MCP config, restart, and the two tools appear.

The rest of this guide walks through the tools, the install snippets, five recipes, the local-vs-hosted decision, and the terms-of-service and fragility caveats worth understanding before you lean on it. If you just want the lightweight no-key servers list, our free MCP servers page collects them.

What the Airbnb MCP server actually does

You ask your agent, in plain language, “find me a 2-bed place in Lisbon under €150/night for the first week of September, walkable to the river.” The agent calls airbnb_search with the location, dates, guest count, and price cap, gets back a ranked list of real listings with prices and direct links, then — if you want — calls airbnb_listing_details on the one you like to read its house rules and amenities. No browser tabs, no manual filter-clicking, no copy-pasting.

That’s the appeal, and it’s why this server stands out in a catalog full of developer tooling: it’s a genuinely consumer-facing MCP. Most servers wire an agent to a database, a CI system, or a docs index. This one wires it to travel planning — the kind of task a non-engineer would actually ask an assistant to do. It is, mechanically, a structured wrapper around Airbnb’s public search and listing pages, exposed to your agent as two clean tool calls.

The server is maintained by openbnb-org and is explicitly not affiliated with Airbnb, Inc. — the README says so directly. It’s an independent, MIT-licensed project that reads publicly available data. Keep that framing in mind; it matters for the terms-of-service section below.

The two tools, walked through

Everything the server does happens through two MCP tools. The flow is almost always: search, then (optionally) pull details on a hit.

A typical search call from an agent looks like this:

airbnb_search({
  location: "Lisbon, Portugal",
  checkin: "2026-09-01",
  checkout: "2026-09-08",
  adults: 2,
  maxPrice: 150,
  propertyType: "entire_home"
})

The result includes a search URL for reference plus the listing IDs you’d feed into the second tool. Every parameter except location (or placeId) is optional — leave them off and you get a broad search you can narrow conversationally on the next turn.

Install (every client)

Two install shapes exist. Claude Desktop gets a one-click bundle; everything else uses the npx stdio command. The install panel below pulls the exact snippet for each client straight from our catalog, so it stays in sync — tap your client’s row and copy.

One-line install · Airbnb

Open server page

Install

Cursor

One-click install

1-Click

VS Code

One-click install

1-Click

Claude Desktop

Copy configuration

Claude Code

Copy CLI command

CLI

Gemini

Copy CLI command

CLI

Codex

Copy CLI command

CLI

Windsurf

Copy configuration

ChatGPT

Add via Settings → Connectors

M

Manual

Copy configuration

Claude Desktop (MCPB one-click)

This is the headline install path, and it’s the reason the server is packaged the way it is. openbnb ships it as an MCP Bundle (a .mcpb file — the packaging format for drop-in MCP extensions). The flow:

1. Download the .mcpb file from the latest GitHub release.
2. Open the file. Claude Desktop shows an installation dialog.
3. Confirm, and configure the extension settings (there’s an Ignore robots.txt toggle and a geocoding toggle — both default to off and most people leave them there).

No terminal, no JSON editing, no npx. For a consumer-facing tool aimed partly at non-engineers, that one-click bundle is the right call — it removes the exact friction (config files, Node installs) that stops normal users cold.

Cursor, VS Code, Claude Code (npx)

Every other MCP client runs the server as a stdio subprocess via npx. Make sure Node.js 18+ is installed, then add this to your client’s mcp.json (in Cursor: Settings → Tools & Integrations → New MCP Server):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "airbnb": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@openbnb/mcp-server-airbnb"]
    }
  }
}

Restart the client and the two tools show up. The same JSON works for Claude Code, VS Code, Windsurf, and any other MCP-aware client — only the config file location differs. Browse every client and its config path at our server directory, or open the canonical Airbnb server page for the live install commands.

Recipes

Five workflows where the Airbnb MCP server earns its keep. We assume it’s installed in your client of choice.

Recipe 1 — Conversational trip search

The obvious one, and still the best. “Find entire-home places in Kyoto for two adults, March 14–19, under ¥25,000 a night.” The agent fills the filters, runs airbnb_search, and hands back a shortlist. Then you refine in plain English — “only ones with a washer,” “closer to Gion” — and it re-searches. It’s the filter UI, driven by sentences instead of clicks.

Recipe 2 — Compare a shortlist side by side

You’ve got three listing IDs you like. Ask: “Pull details on these three and compare house rules, amenities, and exact location.” The agent calls airbnb_listing_details on each and builds a comparison table — cancellation policy, whether pets are allowed, how far from the center — that you’d otherwise assemble by flipping between tabs.

Recipe 3 — Budget sweep across dates

Flexible on timing? Prompt: “Same place type in Barcelona — check the first week of May vs the first week of June and tell me which is cheaper.” The agent runs two searches with different date ranges and reports the price delta. Useful for shoulder-season hunting where a week’s shift moves the price a lot.

Recipe 4 — Feed results into a wider itinerary

Chain it with other MCP servers. The agent searches Airbnb for lodging, then hands the coordinates to a maps or weather server, then drops the trip into your calendar. The Airbnb server is one node in a planning graph — its job is to turn a fuzzy lodging request into structured, linkable results the rest of the chain can use.

Recipe 5 — International search that actually lands right

Airbnb’s own location parser is famously bad at non-US queries. This server geocodes your location string first (more on that below), so “Copenhagen, Denmark” returns Copenhagen — not, as the README dryly notes Airbnb’s raw geocoder does, a town in Wisconsin. If you book abroad, this alone is worth the install.

Local server vs openbnb.ai (be honest about both)

Here’s a thing most guides gloss over: the same maintainer runs a hosted alternative, openbnb.ai, and the README points you to it first. They solve the same problem from opposite ends.

The honest read: if you want control, auditability, and no external dependency, run the local server — it’s the one we’re documenting here and the one on the catalog page. If you don’t want to think about Node or maintenance and you’re comfortable routing through a third-party service, the hosted option removes every install step. Both come from the same author, so it’s not a trust-the-stranger situation either way — it’s a self-host-vs-managed trade-off, the same one you make with any tool.

The caveat nobody puts up front: ToS & fragility

Time for the part the marketing copy skips. This server does not call an official Airbnb API, because there isn’t one for listings. It reads Airbnb’s public web pages and parses them. That has two real consequences, and you should weigh both before building anything serious on top of it.

None of this makes the server bad — it makes it honest about what it is: a clever wrapper around a site that would rather you used the app. Go in with that expectation and you’ll be happy. Expect Stripe-grade reliability from a scraper and you’ll be disappointed. The free, no-key convenience and the ToS/uptime fragility are two sides of the same coin.

Geocoding & privacy

One subtlety worth knowing because it surprises people watching their network traffic: by default, every search without an explicit placeId sends your location string to a third-party geocoder before it ever touches Airbnb. The server uses Photon (a free OpenStreetMap-based service) as primary, falling back to Nominatim. The reason is the international-accuracy fix from Recipe 5 — Airbnb’s own resolver gets non-US cities wrong, so the server resolves them upstream.

Only the location string you typed is sent — no other request fields, no IP geolocation, no tracking IDs. If you want zero third-party traffic, you have two outs: pass an explicit placeId (per request), or set the environment variable DISABLE_GEOCODING=true (globally). The catch: with geocoding off, non-US searches can return wrong results again, because you’re back to Airbnb’s broken resolver. It’s a deliberate trade-off, and the README documents it clearly.

License

The Airbnb MCP server is MIT-licensed. The full text lives at github.com/openbnb-org/mcp-server-airbnb/blob/main/LICENSE. MIT is permissive — fork it, redistribute it, embed it in other work. Note the license covers the server code, not the data it reads: the MIT grant says nothing about your right to scrape Airbnb, which is governed by Airbnb’s terms, not openbnb’s license. Two separate questions; don’t conflate them.

Troubleshooting

Who it’s for (and who it isn’t)

Use it if you want a personal, conversational way to search Airbnb from inside Claude, Cursor, or any MCP client; you value the no-API-key, one-click MCPB install; or you’re building a personal trip-planning agent that chains lodging search with other tools. The international-geocoding fix is a real, concrete win over Airbnb’s own search.

Skip it if you need guaranteed uptime or a stable contract — it’s a scraper and will occasionally break; you’re building a commercial product that depends on Airbnb data (the ToS exposure isn’t worth it without legal cover); or you’d rather not run anything locally, in which case the hosted openbnb.ai is the cleaner fit. New to the protocol itself? Start with our What is MCP guide first.

FAQ

Sources

• Airbnb MCP server repository & README: github.com/openbnb-org/mcp-server-airbnb (MIT, maintained by openbnb-org)
• NPM package: @openbnb/mcp-server-airbnb
• Hosted alternative: openbnb.ai
• Geocoders referenced in the README: Photon and Nominatim
• Community discussion: the server’s thread in r/mcp (highlighted as a no-API-key listings search server)
• Catalog entry: mcp.directory/servers/airbnb