Zendesk MCP

Zendesk MCP on this page means connecting an AI assistant such as Claude to your Zendesk tickets through an MCP server. As of October 26, 2026, Zendesk documents an MCP client (Zendesk calling other MCP servers from its workflows) but has not published setup documentation for the MCP server it announced in May 2026. The practical route for Claude today is the open-source reminia/zendesk-mcp-server, a community project that reads and updates tickets and authenticates each person with their own Zendesk login over OAuth.

The timing matters: Zendesk is retiring API tokens. From October 27, 2026 no account can create a new API token, and on April 30, 2027 every remaining token stops working. Many older Zendesk MCP guides start with "create an API token", so set up any server on OAuth.

Quick facts (as of October 26, 2026)

Three things called "Zendesk MCP"

If you want Claude to work your support queue, you want a server. If you want Zendesk's own AI agents to look up an order in another system, you want the client.

Setup with OAuth

1. Register a public OAuth client. In Admin Center go to Apps and integrations, APIs, OAuth clients. Choose client kind Public, add the redirect URL http://localhost:4567/callback and, optionally, limit allowed scopes to tickets:read tickets:write ticket_attachments:read users:read hc:read. Copy the client's Identifier.
2. Build the server. Clone the repository and run uv venv && uv pip install -e ..
3. Configure it. Copy .env.example to .env and set ZENDESK_SUBDOMAIN (for https://acme.zendesk.com that is acme) and ZENDESK_CLIENT_ID. Keep .env out of version control.
4. Authorize once. Run uv run zendesk-auth. A browser opens, you approve access, and tokens are stored in ~/.config/zendesk-mcp/tokens.json. Use uv run zendesk-auth --manual if the browser cannot reach your machine.
5. Add it to Claude Desktop:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "zendesk": {
      "command": "uv",
      "args": ["--directory", "/path/to/zendesk-mcp-server", "run", "zendesk"]
    }
  }
}

The server refreshes Zendesk access tokens on its own, which last 30 minutes by default and 48 hours at most. You only re-run zendesk-auth if tokens are revoked or the refresh token goes unused past its 90-day lifetime. The README also documents building a Docker image; you authorize on the host first and mount the token folder as a writable volume.

Read-only setups and scopes

The README maps each OAuth scope to the tools that need it. For read-only use, set ZENDESK_OAUTH_SCOPES to tickets:read users:read hc:read, which leaves out the scope the create and update tools need. Scopes are a ceiling, not a grant: the agent can never do more than the person who authorized it is allowed to do in Zendesk, and comments it posts are authored by that person.

API tokens are being retired

Zendesk's announcement of June 1, 2026 sets out three phases:

Zendesk's reason is security: an API token "can be used to impersonate any user in your account, including admins" and cannot be scoped. The reminia server still accepts ZENDESK_EMAIL and ZENDESK_API_KEY until then, logs a deprecation warning, and prefers OAuth as soon as ZENDESK_CLIENT_ID is set.

Rate limits that matter for agents

Zendesk's Support API allows 200 requests a minute on Team, 400 on Professional and 700 on Enterprise (Suite Enterprise Plus allows 2,500). Writes have tighter endpoint limits: 30 updates to the same ticket by the same user within 10 minutes, and 100 ticket update requests a minute per account (300 with the High Volume add-on). An agent told to retag a week of tickets can hit the account limit, and that limit is shared with your other integrations.

Using Zendesk as the MCP client instead

Zendesk's own help center covers connecting Zendesk to external MCP servers so their tools can run as steps in action flows. Key points from that article:

• Admins add connections in Admin Center under Apps and integrations, Connections.
• OAuth is the only supported authentication method, and only HTTP servers are supported. A local stdio server like the one above cannot be connected.
• Zendesk discovers up to 250 tools per server, with no limit on the number of servers.
• MCP tool actions in action flows use action credits, and step outputs are kept for seven days.
• External MCP connections may send data outside your selected region.

Use cases

• Summarizing a long ticket thread and drafting a reply for an agent to review, using the draft-ticket-response prompt.
• Turning a bug report into a new ticket with priority, type and tags set.
• Updating status, priority or assignee on a batch of tickets after a human approves the plan.
• Answering questions from Help Center articles through the knowledge base resource.

Limitations

• Community maintained. Zendesk does not support it, and the repository lists no releases.
• Comments are public by default. create_ticket_comment defaults to public: true, so a reply goes to the customer unless the agent sets it to false. Ask for internal notes explicitly.
• No search tool in the README. get_tickets pages through the latest tickets, up to 100 per page, sorted by created, updated, priority or status.
• Local only. It runs on each person's machine over stdio, so it suits individual agents, not a shared hosted service.
• Ticket text is untrusted input. Customer messages can contain instructions; treat them as data, not commands.

Who it is for

A good fit if:

• You use Claude Desktop or Claude Code and want to read, triage and update Zendesk tickets without copying text.
• You want each person to act under their own Zendesk role rather than a shared admin token.

Not the right tool if:

• Your support inbox is in Intercom: see the Intercom MCP server page instead.
• You mainly need CRM context alongside tickets: see the HubSpot MCP setup or the Salesforce MCP server.
• You want one connection across many apps: a hub such as the Zapier MCP server may fit better.

Before you give any server write access to customer data, go through what to check before installing an MCP server.

What we could not verify

• Zendesk's own MCP server. Some third-party guides describe an endpoint at /api/mcp on each Zendesk subdomain. We found no Zendesk documentation for it on October 26, 2026, so we do not describe it here.
• Marketplace apps. Hosted MCP apps sold on the Zendesk Marketplace exist, but their pages did not load for us, so we do not cover their tools or prices.
• Attachment tool. The README's scope table mentions get_ticket_attachment, but the tools list does not describe it.
• Last commit date. GitHub did not show the date of the latest commit when we checked.

How this page was put together

We read Zendesk's help center articles on MCP connections and the API token removal, Zendesk's API rate limits page, Zendesk's Relate 2026 announcement, and the reminia/zendesk-mcp-server README on October 26, 2026, and checked what the top search results and People Also Ask questions cover. We compared published documentation; we did not run the server.

Sources

• GitHub: reminia/zendesk-mcp-server README
• Zendesk help: Connecting to MCP servers and using MCP tools in action flows
• Zendesk help: Announcing the removal of API tokens as an authentication method
• Zendesk developer docs: Rate limits
• Zendesk newsroom: Relate 2026 announcement (May 19, 2026)