Connecting remote MCP servers to MCP Gateway

Remote MCP servers are hosted outside your environment, and MCP Gateway can connect to them over HTTP or SSE. To add a remote server in the MCP Gateway control plane, provide the server name and its URL.

Step 1: Add remote server

Add each remote MCP server to your configuration with its name and URL.

{
  "notion": {
    "type": "streamable-http",
    "url": "https://mcp.notion.com/mcp"
  }
}

{
  "linear": {
    "type": "sse",
    "url": "https://mcp.linear.app/sse"
  }
}

{
  "atlassian": {
    "url": "https://mcp.atlassian.com/v1/sse"
  }
}

Tip

• MCP Gateway supports sse or streamable-http for type.
• type is optional and can be inferred from the URL:
  • The /sse suffix is inferred as type sse.
  • The suffix /mcp is inferred as type streamable-http.

Header-based authentication

For servers that require authentication via HTTP headers, include a headers object in your server configuration:

{
  "my-api-server": {
    "url": "https://api.example.com/mcp",
    "headers": {
      "Authorization": "Bearer your-api-token",
      "X-API-Key": "your-api-key"
    }
  }
}

The headers object allows you to include any custom HTTP headers required for authentication. For example, API keys, bearer tokens, and other authorization headers that your MCP server requires.

Step 2: Authenticate

Once connected, authenticate each remote server.

• Click Authenticate and follow the instructions for each server.
• If a server is unreachable or returns an error, MCP Gateway will log a warning.

Tip

Use the MCP Gateway control plane to inspect connected servers and debug issues.