Claude Connectors: Link Your Apps and Data to Claude

Claude Connectors are secure integrations — built on the open Model Context Protocol — that link external apps and data sources to Claude so it can read your files, search your tools, and take actions in-chat. You enable them under Settings > Connectors, browse the directory, click Connect, and complete a one-time OAuth sign-in per app.

That single mechanism turns Claude from a chat box you feed by hand into a workspace that reaches your data where it already lives. We run this site with Claude daily, and Connectors are the feature that ends the copy-paste tax. Below: what Claude Connectors are, the types available, the protocol underneath, how to set them up, security, and when a connector beats a plain upload.

What are Claude connectors?

A connector is a packaged bridge between Claude and one external service — Google Drive, Gmail, GitHub, Notion, Slack, Jira, and hundreds more. Once you connect an app, Claude can pull a document, search a channel, or take an action inside that service without you exporting anything by hand. Ask "summarize the open issues in my repo" or "find the invoice from March in Drive," and Claude reaches in and gets it.

Two properties make Claude Connectors trustworthy rather than scary:

1. They inherit your permissions. A connector never grants Claude more access than you already have. It can only read the channels, files, and records you can see in the source system — nothing more.
2. They are scoped and revocable. Each connector is authorized through OAuth, listed in your settings, and disconnected with one click whenever you want.

There are two flavors. Directory connectors are prebuilt integrations Anthropic and its partners publish — you just click Connect. Custom connectors point Claude at your own remote server, which we cover further down. Both are examples of Claude app connectors that extend what the assistant can reach beyond its own training data.

Common connector types at a glance

The directory spans hundreds of integrations across productivity, developer, and business categories. You won't use most of them; you'll live in three or four. Here are the common types and what Claude does once each is connected.

Some connectors are interactive: they render live interfaces — dashboards, task boards, design views — directly inside the conversation instead of returning plain text. The mix keeps growing, so the directory is worth a browse before you assume a tool isn't supported.

The Model Context Protocol underneath

Every connector runs on the same foundation: the Model Context Protocol, the open standard Anthropic introduced in late 2024 and released for anyone to implement. MCP defines how an AI model and an external tool talk — how the model discovers what a service offers and how it calls those capabilities. The wider industry adopted it fast, which is why the same connector pattern now shows up across many AI products, not just Claude.

Here's the distinction people trip on: MCP is the protocol; a connector is the product. MCP is the open wire format. A connector is the packaged, OAuth-based integration built on top of MCP that you add through Claude's UI with one click. You never touch protocol details for a directory connector — Anthropic and its partners did that work. You only meet MCP directly when you build a custom connector.

That layering matters for two reasons. First, because connectors share a protocol, the skill of wiring one transfers to all of them. Second, MCP is also how tools plug into Claude Code and Claude Cowork, so the same integration can serve chat, agentic knowledge work, and coding. Cowork in particular leans on connectors to reach live data mid-task — we cover that agent in What Is Claude Cowork?.

How to use Claude connectors: setup in under a minute

Connecting a directory app is genuinely quick — about 30 seconds per app once you know the path. Here is the Claude connectors setup, step by step, straight from Anthropic's connector documentation:

1. Open Settings. In claude.ai or the desktop app, go to Customize > Connectors (older builds label it Settings > Connectors).
2. Click the "+" next to Connectors. This opens the directory of available integrations.
3. Browse or search for the app you want — Gmail, GitHub, Notion, whatever fits the task.
4. Review the connector's description and the permissions it requests, then click Connect (or Install).
5. Complete the OAuth sign-in. You're bounced to the service's own login, you approve access, and you're returned to Claude.
6. Confirm and use it. The connector now appears in your list; invoke it in chat via the "+" menu or by typing "/".

That's the whole loop to connect apps to Claude. Directory connectors work on every plan — Free, Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise — so you don't need to pay to reach Google Drive or Gmail. What paid plans and usage limits change is how much agentic work you can do once connected, not whether the connector exists.

Adding a custom connector

When the tool you need isn't in the directory — an internal API, a proprietary database, a niche SaaS — you point Claude at your own remote MCP server. The path:

1. Go to Customize > Connectors and click the "+", then Add custom connector.
2. Give it a name and paste your remote MCP server URL.
3. Authenticate, and the connector joins your list like any other.

A few facts save hours here. Claude reaches your custom connector from Anthropic's cloud, not from your local machine, so the server must be reachable over the public internet — a localhost URL will never connect. The transport has to be Streamable HTTP (or legacy SSE); a stdio-based local server won't work through the web UI. And on the Free plan you're limited to one custom connector, while paid plans lift that cap.

Custom connectors overlap conceptually with the request-routing setups some Claude Code power users build; if you're wiring Claude Code to alternative model backends rather than data sources, that's a different kind of plumbing we cover in Claude Code Router.

Connectors vs uploads: which to use when

New users often reach for a connector when a file upload would do, or vice versa. The rule is simple: upload for a one-off snapshot, connect for living data.

If you'll reference the same source repeatedly — your issue tracker, your docs, your CRM — a connector pays for itself immediately. If you just need Claude to read one PDF today, upload it and move on. For persistence between chats without a live tool, Claude's Memory feature is the complementary piece, and the full feature map lives in our pillar, Claude AI Features.

Security, permissions, and token cost

Connectors touch real accounts, so the security model deserves a straight explanation. Three things hold:

• Claude inherits your permissions. You can only sync content you already have permission to view in the source. A connector is a window into your existing access, never a skeleton key.
• Transfers are encrypted, and access is revocable. Data moves over encrypted channels, connected services process it under their own terms, and you can disconnect any connector instantly from settings.
• Organizations get controls. On Team and Enterprise, owners can govern what each connected service is allowed to do — but these controls can only tighten access, never exceed what the source system permits.

Those admin controls map cleanly onto the three action types a connector can perform:

One practical caveat we learned the hard way: each active connector consumes context tokens in every chat, because Claude has to load the connector's available tools. Enable only the connectors relevant to the task at hand and disconnect the rest — a dozen idle connectors quietly tax every message. Treat your connector list like your browser tabs: prune it.

Claude pricing at a glance

For the full breakdown of every plan, see our how much Claude costs guide.