Connect your AI agent
Give Claude, Cursor and any other MCP client direct access to live Korean car data. One command, no SDK, no wrapper to maintain — the agent gets three tools and calls them itself.
One command
The server is hosted and already running — there is nothing to install, clone or keep updated. Paste this, with a key in place of YOUR_KEY, and the agent has the tools on its next message.
claude mcp add --transport http encar-api \
https://www.encar-api.com/mcp \
--header "x-api-key: YOUR_KEY"Other clients
Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, VS Code and Zed all read the same shape of config. Drop this into the client's MCP settings file.
The transport is Streamable HTTP, which every current MCP client speaks. There is no stdio binary, so nothing runs on your machine and nothing needs permission to execute.
{
"mcpServers": {
"encar-api": {
"type": "http",
"url": "https://www.encar-api.com/mcp",
"headers": { "x-api-key": "YOUR_KEY" }
}
}
}The three tools
The descriptions are written for a model rather than a person, because the description is the only thing it selects on. Names are prefixed so they do not collide with the other servers a user has connected.
| tool | what the model uses it for |
|---|---|
| encar_search_cars | Search live Korean used car listings from Encar.com, South Korea's largest used car marketplace. Proxies GET /cars. |
| encar_get_car | Read one Korean used car listing in full by its Encar listing id, with availability checked live at request time. Proxies GET /car. |
| encar_count_cars | Count how many Korean listings match a set of filters without retrieving them. Proxies GET /count. |
| encar_get_free_key | Get a free Encar API key, instantly, for the other tools on this server. Needs no key of its own. |
What it looks like in use
Nothing has to be phrased as an API call. The model reads the schemas, picks a tool and composes the filters itself — these are real questions it can answer once connected.
- “What diesel SUVs under €20,000 are on the Korean market right now, newest first?”
- “Is Encar listing 38421907 still for sale, and what has it done in kilometres?”
- “How many 2021-or-newer Genesis listings are there, and what is the cheapest?”
- “Build me a table of ten hybrid Grandeurs with EUR prices and mileage.”
The rest of the machine-readable surface
MCP is one of four, and they exist for different readers. An agent that cannot speak MCP can still read the OpenAPI spec and generate its own client; an answer engine quoting the documentation reads llms.txt; a registry or a client discovering the server reads the manifest.
All four are generated from the same definitions as the pages a human reads, so none of them can quietly drift out of date.
- /.well-known/mcp.json — discovery manifest: transport, authentication, tool list
- /openapi.json — the full REST specification, for generating a typed client
- /llms.txt and /llms-full.txt — the documentation as plain text for answer engines
- /sitemap.xml — every page in ten languages
Keys, limits, and being honest about cost
Adding the server needs no key: an agent can connect and list the tools immediately. Calling a tool does, and without one the tool answers with a readable error naming the page that issues a key — so the agent tells its user the next step instead of failing opaquely.
A free key is 100 requests a day. Agent sessions are chattier than a stock page, so a count-first habit matters: encar_count_cars sizes a market in one request where paging results would take twenty.
Questions people ask about this
I am vibe coding this — can I build a Korean car site without knowing the data?
Yes, and that is the normal case here rather than the exception. You bring the front end; the API and the car data behind it are ours to keep working. That means the live listings, the daily EUR conversion, the Korean-to-English and German field translation, the sold-car detection and the uptime. Your agent calls three endpoints, or the three MCP tools, and gets clean JSON back. There is nothing to scrape, no import job to schedule, no proxy pool to rent and no database of yours to keep in sync — which is the part of a car marketplace that actually takes the months.
What do I paste into Claude, Cursor or Codex to get started?
Every page on encar-api.com carries a dock with a one-click prompt for exactly this. It adds the MCP server and briefs the agent on the four fields that are wrong under the obvious reading — price is in units of 10,000 KRW, year is YYYYMM, badge and trim come back partly Korean, and the photo field is a relative path. Those four fail silently, so an agent that has not been told reports a 29,000 EUR car as 4,339 EUR and never notices. With the prompt pasted, a working catalogue is a conversation away.
Who maintains the car data if I only build the front end?
We do. Encar.com changes its payloads, listings sell, prices move and the won moves against the euro; absorbing that is the service. You are not buying a dump that is stale next week — availability is checked at request time, so a vehicle that has gone answers 404 SOLD_OR_REMOVED instead of handing your site a car it can no longer sell. If the upstream shape changes, it changes on our side of the API and your code does not move.
Does the Encar API have an MCP server?
Yes. It is hosted at https://www.encar-api.com/mcp over Streamable HTTP, with three tools: search listings, read one vehicle with live availability, and count matches. Nothing is installed locally — add the URL and an x-api-key header to any MCP client.
Which MCP clients work with it?
Any client that speaks Streamable HTTP, which includes Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, VS Code and Zed. Protocol revisions 2024-11-05 through 2025-06-18 are all answered, so an older client is not left behind.
Do I need an API key to use the MCP server?
To connect and list the tools, no. To call a tool, yes — a free key covers 100 requests a day and is issued instantly with no card. Without one the tools return an error telling the agent exactly where to get a key.
A note on names. Encar API is not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by or connected to Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, Cursor, Codeium or any other maker of language models or AI development tools, and it is not affiliated with Encar.com. The Model Context Protocol is an open specification, and this server implements it the way any other independent service does. Product names appear here only to say which software this server has been built to work with — nominative use, nothing more. No language model is hosted, trained, fine-tuned or resold here: the only thing served is Korean used car listing data, over an open protocol, to whichever client you choose to point at it.
Get your API key
Free tier, 100 requests a day. Enter your email and the key arrives immediately, with everything you need to make the first call.
- 100 requests a day
- No credit card
- Your key never expires
Questions, or Pro and Enterprise volume? Reply straight to the key email — it reaches a person, not a form. Or message us on WhatsApp if that is quicker: +383 49 644 168
Get a key and connect in a minute
Free, instant, no card. One command after that and your agent is reading the Korean market.
Keep reading
Three endpoints, one header, JSON out. Everything below is the complete reference — there is no second, paid tier of documentation.
One number a month, no per-call billing to forecast and no setup fee. The free tier is a real tier, not a trial that expires.
If something is not here, message us — the number at the bottom reaches a person.