Onthecheap MCP server

onthecheap-mcp

MCP server for the On the Cheap network — local guides to free and cheap things to do across 14 US cities. Daily event listings with times, prices and venues, plus a searchable archive of deals and guides.

Developed and maintained by AI (Claude Code). Use at your own discretion.

No credentials required. Every site is public, so the server reads them server-side over plain HTTPS. There is nothing to configure beyond which city you want, and no browser extension involved.

Install

npx onthecheap-mcp

Or as a Claude Code plugin:

/plugin marketplace add chrischall/onthecheap-mcp
/plugin install onthecheap-mcp

Choosing a city

One server reads the whole network. Every tool takes a site argument naming the city to read — there is no default and no configuration step:

Common aliases work too — milehigh, raleigh, rva, kc, southflorida. otclistsites reports the same list.

site is required rather than defaulted on purpose: a server that quietly fell back to one city would answer a question about Denver with Charlotte's data and give no sign anything was wrong. An unknown key is refused with the valid ones listed.

Tools

All tools are read-only. Every tool except otclistsites takes a required site argument. The two event tools reject national, which has no local events calendar — it is still searchable via the other tools.

Examples

What's free in Charlotte this Saturday?

Find kids' events in Lake Norman in August

Compare free things to do in Denver and Portland next weekend

Two things worth knowing

Retired deals are excluded by default. Each site parks expired offers in an expired category, so searches skip them and you don't get deals that no longer exist. Pass include_expired: true to search the archive. The category's id differs on every site, so it's resolved by slug at request time — a hardcoded id silently disables the filter elsewhere.

Shortened. The full README is on GitHub.