Is PubMed Search MCP server safe?
Yes, with the usual care.
Safe to use. Minor gaps such as a missing repository or slower maintenance.
No critical or high findings in the latest scan.
How PubMed Search compares
Against every graded Web search MCP server, from our own scans and uptime checks. Updated after each scan run.
- Safety score
- 75/100
- higher than 45% of 3,472 Web search servers
- Tools that change things
- 5%
- typical: 0%. Fewer write tools means less an agent can break
What its tools let an agent do: 36 read · 3 create · 1 change · 1 delete
Public scan report
scanner v0.1.10 · 2026-10-27 · same rubric, same numbers if you re-run it
1 medium
- Code scan230 source files scanned20/25
- –Live reliabilityno gateway calls yet and no remote to proben/a
- –Tool poisoningtools not inspected (local package is not executed); not countedn/a
- Auth qualitystatic API keys via environment variables6/15
- Maintenancelast push 7 days ago15/15
- Maintainer identityregistry namespace matches repository owner; GitHub account older than a year8/10
Findings (1)
- mediumsubprocess with shell=True
exec.shell-truepubmed_search_mcp-0.8.0/pyproject.toml: …d it "B603", # subprocess without shell=True — scripts intentional "B311", # p…
Overall 75/100. Components that don't apply are left out of the denominator. Any critical finding is an F.RubricAppeal a findingJSON
Other servers that do what PubMed Search does
- PubmedSearch PubMed/Europe PMC, fetch articles and full text (PMC/EPMC/Unpaywall), citations, MeSH terms.not reviewedEstablishedA
- ArxivSearch arXiv papers, download full text, semantic search, citation graphs, and alerts via MCP.not reviewedWidely usedA
- obseiSelf-hosted customer feedback with PII stripped at ingest: search, stats and themes with citations.not reviewedEstablishedA
