Access Pexels Photos and Videos

Pexels MCP Server

A Model Context Protocol server that provides access to the Pexels API for searching and retrieving photos, videos, and collections.

Available Tools

• photos_search - Search photos
• photos_curated - List curated photos
• photo_get - Get a photo by id
• videos_search - Search videos
• videos_popular - List popular videos
• video_get - Get a video by id
• collections_featured - List featured collections
• collections_media - List media in a collection

Usage

Using uv (recommended)

1. Install uv.

2. In your MCP client code configuration or Claude settings (file claude_desktop_config.json) add pexels mcp server:

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

   uv will download the MCP server automatically using uvx from pypi.org and apply to your MCP client.

Using pip for a project

1. Add pexels-mcp-server to your MCP client code requirements.txt file.

   pexels-mcp-server
   

2. Install the dependencies.

   pip install -r requirements.txt
   

3. Add the configuration for your client:

   {
       "mcpServers": {
           "pexels": {
               "command": "python3",
               "args": ["-m", "pexels_mcp_server"],
               "env": {
                   "PEXELS_API_KEY": "<Your Pexels API key>"
               }
           }
       }
   }
   

Using pip globally

1. Ensure pip or pip3 is available on your system.

   pip install pexels-mcp-server
   # or
   pip3 install pexels-mcp-server
   

2. MCP client code configuration or Claude settings, add pexels mcp server:

   {
       "mcpServers": {
           "pexels": {
               "command": "python3",
               "args": ["pexels-mcp-server"],
               "env": {
                   "PEXELS_API_KEY": "<Your Pexels API key>"
               }
           }
       }
   }
   

Debugging

You can use the MCP inspector to debug the server. For uvx installations:

npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector uvx pexels-mcp-server

Or if you've installed the package in a specific directory or are developing on it:

git clone https://github.com/garylab/pexels-mcp-server.git
cd pexels-mcp-server
npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector uv run pexels-mcp-server -e PEXELS_API_KEY=<the key>