How to Connect Claude to WordPress (Free Plugin, Step by Step)

Your hosting decides the route, so find your row in the table below before you click anything.

Which route fits your site 🧭

One acronym first: Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open-source standard for connecting AI applications to external systems, which is exactly the job here. After that, it is all about where your site lives.

WordPress.com is an official partner in Claude’s connectors directory, and the connector now goes beyond reading: Full access lets Claude create, update, and manage your sites.

One adjacent tool deserves a sentence: WordPress’s MCP Adapter. It adds no OAuth server of its own, so claude.ai’s normal sign-in cannot connect to it without an extra OAuth layer; Claude’s Request headers option, which Anthropic calls a limited beta, could send a Basic authentication header instead. Whether that Basic-header route works is untested here. Guides that skip MCP and pair an application password with the REST API work for clients that send HTTP requests themselves, such as Claude Code with a shell, but claude.ai’s OAuth sign-in has no field for an application password.

And one naming trap before the steps: some WordPress AI plugins embed an AI provider inside wp-admin and send the requests out from your site; WPShout covers that work separately in its WordPress release coverage. This guide is about the opposite direction: a Claude custom connector that lets Claude reach into your site.

What you need before you start 🧰

You need three things, and three account details are worth checking first.

• A self-hosted WordPress site on a public HTTPS address; the plugin used below needs WordPress 6.0 or newer and PHP 7.4 or newer.
• An administrator account on the site.
• A Claude account that can add custom connectors: availability and limits depend on your Claude plan, and Anthropic’s custom connectors guide lists the current terms.
• On Team and Enterprise workspaces, an Owner or Primary Owner adds the connector first (on Enterprise, also a custom role with Manage access to Libraries), and members then connect to it.
• Use the web app or Claude Desktop for this setup: Anthropic calls them the primary path for custom connectors, and installing connectors on mobile is still in beta.
• Claude itself may cost money depending on your plan; the plugin below is free.

How to connect Claude to WordPress, step by step 🔌

The captures below come from a test store running WordPress 7.1.3 and Easy MCP AI 2.2.2, taken on 2026-10-22. If a label has moved by the time you read this, the logic still holds.

Step 1: Install Easy MCP AI

Easy MCP AI is a free plugin that turns your site into an MCP server: Claude connects straight to your site over OAuth 2.1, with no hosted relay and no vendor account. Easy MCP AI is built by Themeisle, the team behind WPShout.

All 280+ tools are included, and there is no paid tier or vendor quota. The same plugin also connects ChatGPT, and WordPress.org listed 20,000+ active installs on 2026-10-22.

In wp-admin, go to Plugins > Add New Plugin, search for Easy MCP AI, click Install Now, then Activate.

👉 Get Easy MCP AI free from WordPress.org

Step 2: Open the connect card on the Dashboard

Open Easy MCP AI > Dashboard: the connect card walks you through three steps, choose a client, add this site, confirm it works. If the site has no API key and no OAuth grant yet, the card is already open; otherwise click the Connect an AI client button.

The card’s first screen asks which app you want to connect. On the test copy, Claude.ai was one of eight featured tiles, with a Show all 18 clients link for the rest.

Pick the Claude.ai tile: Step 2 offers a Connect to Claude (1-click) button that opens claude.ai with your server pre-filled, and further down the card lists your MCP server URL, your site’s https address followed by /wp-json/easy-mcp-ai/v1/mcp, with a Copy URL button for adding it by hand.

Step 3: Add the connector in Claude

To add it by hand on an individual account, open Customize > Connectors > + Add > Add custom connector on claude.ai (on Team and Enterprise, an Owner adds it under Organization settings > Connectors instead); the connect card’s manual steps still say Settings > Connectors, a screen that now only points to Customize.

In a live test on 2026-10-22 (an individual claude.ai account on the web, the test store reached through a temporary tunnel), the 1-click link opened the Add custom connector dialog pre-filled with the site’s name and MCP URL, under a red notice that the connector was suggested by an external link. Check both fields, then click Continue.

Claude then checks the server. In that test it detected Sign in now for authentication and Register automatically as the OAuth client (the plugin advertises automatic registration; Claude’s published identity was not detected), so keep the detected settings and click Add.

Once you complete the sign-in in Step 4, the remote connector is available in Claude Desktop and Cowork without adding it again. Claude Code has its own tile on the connect card, and if your tool of choice is Cursor, a separate walkthrough covers connecting Cursor to WordPress in detail.

Step 4: Approve access on your site

After you click Add, the connector is saved but not connected yet; click Connect on its page to start the sign-in, which takes you to your own WordPress site. Sign in as the WordPress user Claude should act as, because every tool call then runs with that user’s capability checks.

The consent page offers three access levels, Read-only, Full access, and Custom, plus a permissions grid with Select all and Clear buttons. For most jobs, pick the Custom access level, click Clear first, and tick only the rows the task needs, for example Posts & Pages read and write for editorial work.

Before you tick anything, two things are worth knowing. First, a write row covers its whole category, so Posts & Pages write can also delete posts and pages. Second, Full access includes REST write, while a Custom grant leaves it out unless you tick that row, so keep it unticked for content work. Select all never ticks a privileged row, and any bulk change sets the grant to Custom.

Bind the connection to a user whose role fits the job, an editor for content work rather than an administrator. When the grid looks right, click the Approve & Continue button.

Step 5: Check the connection

Back in Claude, start a new chat and enable only this connector from the + menu, in the Connectors section. The connect card’s third step offers a copyable check prompt that asks the AI to read the site without changing anything; it reads like this:

Example prompt: Use Easy MCP AI to read my WordPress site at https://your-site.example with the wp_get_site_settings tool, and tell me its name and address. If that tool isn’t available, use wp_list_posts and tell me how many posts it returns. If it fails, show me the error. Don’t change anything.

Before you run it, go back to the Dashboard: now that a grant exists, the card has closed, so click Connect an AI client and pick the Claude.ai tile again, then use the card’s connection-check button to reach the third step, where the copy prompt lives and the card waits for the first call. Then judge the result on the Dashboard, not only in the chat: the card switches from waiting to showing that Claude.ai is connected only when a tool call from Claude actually arrives, so that switch, together with a reply that names your site and its address, is the proof the connection works.

Try a first real task ✍️

A good first task is small, bounded, and easy to verify: finish one existing draft and leave everything else alone. On a store, it might look like this:

Example prompt: Open my draft post about holiday gift boxes and turn the notes into a finished short post, in the same tone as my three published posts. For each box, list the products it contains with their current prices from my shop. Don’t invent a box price, a discount, or a shipping date: wherever the notes say something still needs confirming, write [TO CONFIRM]. Keep it a draft and don’t change anything else on the site.

Store note: the dedicated WooCommerce tools start off, so switch the group on under Easy MCP AI > Tools > Abilities, and make sure the Step 4 grant includes WooCommerce read (if you approved without it, edit the grant’s scope under Easy MCP AI > Connections); a grant that includes REST access can also reach WooCommerce’s own REST routes with the group off, under WooCommerce’s permission checks.

Then verify the result yourself: the post is still a draft, every price matches the shop, and anything unconfirmed is marked [TO CONFIRM]. The site keeps a record, too. The Audit log records every MCP tool call while it is on, and it is on by default. Change history keeps before/after snapshots of changes made through MCP, and since 2.1.0 the AI can restore many of them, such as an edit to a post.

Keep Claude on a short leash 🔒

Anthropic’s own advice: review every tool approval request carefully, and only click “Allow always” when you trust the server and the tool to run unsupervised.

One Claude feature deserves extra care: during the research process, Claude can invoke tools from your connectors automatically without further approval, so disable any write tools before a Research run.

Prompt injection is the other standing risk. Anthropic warns that malicious MCP servers may include hidden instructions, and on a WordPress site the same logic applies to content: text the AI reads, comments, form entries, product reviews, can carry instructions. For untrusted-content tasks, use a read-only grant.

On the site side, turn on the Ask before destructive actions switch under the Easy MCP AI > Settings > Access & safety card: Easy MCP AI then pauses its own delete, uninstall, and other destructive tools for your approval. It is off by default, so treat it as a deliberate switch. Pause AI access on the Dashboard is the emergency stop: every tool call is refused and the tool list comes back empty until you resume.

None of these controls rescues a bad grant, though. The foundation is a narrow Custom grant bound to a low-privilege user. To review what Claude did, open Easy MCP AI > Activity > Audit log; to cut it off, revoke the grant on the OAuth tab under Easy MCP AI > Connections, or remove the connector under Customize > Connectors in Claude.

Why Claude won’t connect (and the fixes) 🔧

When Claude will not connect, start with reachability: Claude connects to your site “from Anthropic’s cloud infrastructure, rather than from your local device,” so your server must be reachable over the public internet. Localhost sites, VPN-only sites, and firewalled staging copies all fail at this step. For a firewalled site, Anthropic’s own advice is to allowlist its IP addresses so inbound connections from Claude can reach your server.

OAuth also requires HTTPS on live sites. If your site sits behind Cloudflare Flexible SSL, requests reach the server over plain HTTP and the OAuth sign-in refuses to issue tokens, though existing API tokens keep working. The best fix is switching the Cloudflare SSL/TLS mode to Full (Strict). Only behind a trusted proxy that sets the X-Forwarded-Proto header, add this line above the stop-editing comment in wp-config.php:

if ( isset( $_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_PROTO'] ) && 'https' === $_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_PROTO'] ) { $_SERVER['HTTPS'] = 'on'; }Code language: PHP (php)

Two more host-level culprits: some hosts strip the Authorization header, and some firewall setups block /wp-json/ outright. The diagnostics on the Easy MCP AI Dashboard identify the likely cause and suggest a fix; if the sign-in itself broke, disconnect and re-approve the connector, and if the endpoint returns 404, re-save Settings > Permalinks to flush the rewrite rules.

And run one MCP plugin per site: the connect card itself warns that AI clients may get confused when multiple OAuth endpoints answer on one site.

Bottom line 💬

If your site is on a paid WordPress.com plan, or is a self-hosted site on a Jetpack AI or Jetpack Complete plan, use the WordPress.com MCP server through the route in the table above instead of adding another plugin. On any other self-hosted site, a free MCP plugin and a custom connector get Claude talking to WordPress, and the consent screen, together with the WordPress user you sign in as, sets how much it can do.

What would you hand to Claude first: drafting, comments, or the shop?