Access Pexels Photos and Videos

Pexels MCP Server is an MCP server that provides access to the Pexels API for searching and retrieving photos, videos, and collections. It exposes the core Pexels API surface as MCP tools so an AI assistant can search or browse stock media directly.

Use it when you want an AI assistant to search or browse Pexels for stock photos and videos, pull curated or popular media, fetch a specific photo or video by id, or list featured collections and their media, instead of searching the Pexels website manually. It requires your own Pexels API key, supplied as the PEXELS_API_KEY environment variable, so it's a fit for anyone who already has, or is willing to get, a Pexels API key rather than a keyless tool. It is scoped strictly to Pexels' own photo, video, and collection catalog, not a general image-search or stock-media aggregator covering other providers.

photos_search searches photos, photos_curated lists curated photos, and photo_get retrieves a specific photo by id. videos_search searches videos, videos_popular lists popular videos, and video_get retrieves a specific video by id. collections_featured lists featured collections, and collections_media lists the media within a given collection.

With uv, the recommended approach, add the server to your MCP client configuration or Claude's claude_desktop_config.json:

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "pexels": {
            "command": "uvx",
            "args": ["pexels-mcp-server"],
            "env": {
                "PEXELS_API_KEY": "<Your Pexels API key>"
            }
        }
    }
}

uv downloads the server automatically from PyPI via uvx. Alternatively, add pexels-mcp-server to a requirements.txt and pip install it, running it with python3 -m pexels_mcp_server, or install it globally with pip or pip3 and configure the client the same way. To debug, run the MCP Inspector against a uvx install with npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector uvx pexels-mcp-server, or against a cloned checkout, git clone https://github.com/garylab/pexels-mcp-server.git, with npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector uv run pexels-mcp-server -e PEXELS_API_KEY=<the key>, useful when developing on the server locally rather than installing the published package.

Developers who want an AI assistant to search or browse Pexels photos, videos, and collections directly, provided they have a Pexels API key. It is licensed under the MIT License, so it is free to use, modify, and distribute under the license's terms, and it is published on PyPI as pexels-mcp-server for straightforward installation.