Neo4j MCP Canary — The canary goes first so the rest of us know what's coming

Neo4j MCP Canary is a fast-moving, experimental release of the Neo4j MCP server for customers who want to explore emerging capabilities before they are considered for the official server.

Based on the source of the official Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for Neo4j, this variant is here for exploring potential new capabilities with experimentation.

As it is a labs project, be aware that:

• It is not formally supported.
• It may contain breaking changes between its own releases and with the official Neo4j MCP server.
• It should be tested before using.

You are welcome to contribute — we are always open to new ideas, especially in this canary channel.

Do not assume the canary will work for your situation. Test first.

Prerequisites

• A running Neo4j database instance; options include Aura, Neo4j Desktop, or self-managed.
• APOC plugin installed in the Neo4j instance (required — get-schema uses apoc.meta.schema).
• Any MCP-compatible client (e.g. VSCode with MCP support).
• To use Query API that provides HTTP(S) communication between the MCP Server and Neo4j server, the Neo4j Server must be 2026.07 / 5.27 or later.

⚠️ Known Issue: Neo4j 5.26.18 has a bug in APOC that causes the get-schema tool to fail. This is fixed in 5.26.19 and above. If you're on 5.26.18, please upgrade. See #136 for details.

Installation

There are several ways to install this package.

# pip
pip install neo4j-mcp-canary

# pipx (isolated install, binary on PATH)
pipx install neo4j-mcp-canary


# uv (recommended)
uv tool install neo4j-mcp-canary

# uvx — run without installing
uvx neo4j-mcp-canary

You verify the installation with:

neo4j-mcp-canary -v

Usage

Canary MCP now has a wide set of capabilities that require more surface to describe that what is available in this description. You are guided to the main GitHub repository where you will find the full documentation set.

Telemetry

By default, neo4j-mcp-canary collects anonymous usage data to help improve the product. This includes information such as the tools being used, the operating system, and CPU architecture. No personal or sensitive information is collected.

To disable telemetry, set NEO4J_TELEMETRY=false (accepted: true / false; default: true). You can also use the --neo4j-telemetry CLI flag.

Reporting feedback

Issues / feedback: open a GitHub issue with reproduction details (omit sensitive data).