The best reference MCP servers in 2026

The best reference MCP servers right now are Google Maps Grounding Lite, Everything (test server) and MarkItDown MCP, out of 5 we have reviewed. Each is ranked by our rating, with its price, our verdict and who it suits.

By Sheela · Updated Nov 7, 2026 · How we review

How we ranked: by our rating out of 5, from reviews built on each product's own pricing, documentation and policies plus independent benchmarks where they exist, each checked on the date shown in the review. We take no affiliate commission.

1. 1
   

   Google Maps Grounding Lite

   Real Google Maps data for an agent at a modest per-call price, provided your product can live with Google's attribution and no-training rules.

   Best for: Developers adding reliable place, weather and travel-time answers to assistants on a model they can show does not train on inputs.

   Price: Maps Grounding Lite SKU: 10,000 free events a month, then $7 per 1,000, falling to $2.80 above 5 million. Resolve requests are free. Needs a billing-enabled Cloud project.

   Read our Google Maps Grounding Lite review
   4.0/5
2. 2
   

   Everything (test server)

   Indispensable as a test fixture for MCP client authors and, by design, useless for anything else.

   Best for: Developers building or testing MCP clients, hosts and gateways, especially against the 2026-07-28 revision.

   Price: Free and open source.

   Read our Everything (test server) review
   3.9/5
3. 3
   

   MarkItDown MCP

   A one-tool document converter that earns its place, provided it runs in a container that can see only the files you mean it to.

   Best for: Developers who want an agent to read PDFs and Office documents locally without uploading them anywhere.

   Price: Free and open source (MIT).

   Read our MarkItDown MCP review
   3.9/5
4. 4
   

   Time (reference server)

   Worth adding for the time zone conversion alone, since offsets across daylight-saving changes are exactly the arithmetic models get wrong.

   Best for: Anyone whose assistant keeps getting the time or time zone conversions wrong.

   Price: Free and open source.

   Read our Time (reference server) review
   3.6/5
5. 5
   H

   HITRAN MCP

   A careful, well-documented bridge from an agent to HITRAN that a spectroscopist can check line by line, but it is a month-old, one-person project with almost no users yet.

   Best for: Spectroscopists, gas-sensing engineers and atmospheric science students who already use HITRAN and want an agent to fetch data and compute spectra with citations attached.

   Price: Free and open source (GPL-3.0). A free HITRAN account and API key are needed for most downloads.

   Read our HITRAN MCP review
   3.4/5