How to Connect AliExpress Affiliate to Cursor via MCP

💡 No install? Use cloud.anythingmcp.com directly. Sign in, click Connectors → AliExpress Affiliate, paste your credentials, mint an MCP API key and you're done. No Docker, no git clone, no local server.

AliExpress Affiliate + Cursor

Let your AI research AliExpress products for affiliate marketing: search and hot products with prices and commissions, product and SKU details, shipping cost, coupons, affiliate links with your tracking ID and the orders and commissions they earned.

Prerequisites

See the full setup instructions baked into the connector (visible in the in-app store when you select the connector). The required environment variables for this connector are:

ALIEXPRESS_APP_KEY, ALIEXPRESS_APP_SECRET, ALIEXPRESS_TRACKING_ID

Step 1 — Get credentials

Setting up takes about 15 minutes, plus AliExpress's review of your developer profile and app category. You need an AliExpress Portals affiliate account.

1. Sign up as an affiliate at https://portals.aliexpress.com and create a tracking ID there. It goes into every affiliate link so the commission is yours: put it in ALIEXPRESS_TRACKING_ID.
2. At https://openservice.aliexpress.com click Create Account (or sign in), open your profile and choose the developer type Affiliate (individual) or Affiliate (corporation). AliExpress reviews the profile.
3. In the App Console click Create, apply for the Affiliates app category, then create the app. The connector does not use the callback URL, so any https address of yours works.
4. On the app's overview page copy the App Key into ALIEXPRESS_APP_KEY and the App Secret (click View) into ALIEXPRESS_APP_SECRET.
5. A new app runs in test status with a small call quota. Click Apply Online in the console when you are ready.
6. Install the connector and run aliexpress_affiliate_list_categories to check the keys.

One Open Platform account cannot hold both an Affiliate and a Dropshipping app: for dropshipping, use the AliExpress Dropshipping connector with its own account.

Signed requests: every call is signed with HMAC-SHA256 using the App Secret, which never leaves AnythingMCP. AliExpress refuses a timestamp more than two hours off, so the server clock must be right.

Product research: the AI searches products open to affiliates by keywords, category, price range, delivery time or promotion, or lists hot products with a raised commission. Each result has prices, discount, commission rate, sales in the last 30 days, rating, shop and a promotion_link with your tracking ID. For a product it reads the details of up to 50 ids at once, every variant (SKU) with its stock for a destination country, the shipping cost and delivery time of a SKU, and the coupons that apply right now.

Campaigns and links: the AI lists the featured promotions running now and their products, and turns up to 50 AliExpress product, store or campaign URLs into affiliate links with your tracking ID.

Earnings: the AI lists the orders that came through your links in a time window, by status, with the paid amount and the estimated and paid commission, or reads orders by id.

Read-only: every tool only reads, link generation included.

Formats: the price filters min_sale_price and max_sale_price are in cents of target_currency; prices in answers are decimal strings with their currency next to them. commission_rate and discount are percentages as text ("7.0%"). Order times and promotion windows are Pacific time. Product ids are long numbers, kept as text. Pages hold up to 50 items.

Common errors: InvalidAppKey or IncompleteSignature means the App Key and App Secret are wrong or not of the same app; InsufficientPermission means the app lacks the API, so check its app category and permission group in the console; call-limit codes mean the quota is used up, which happens quickly in test status. Inside a result, resp_code 405 means nothing matched and 402 a bad parameter.

Step 2 — Install the adapter

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/HelpCode-ai/anythingmcp/main/docker-compose.quickstart.yml -o docker-compose.yml
printf 'JWT_SECRET=%s\nENCRYPTION_KEY=%s\n' "$(openssl rand -hex 32)" "$(openssl rand -hex 32)" > .env
docker compose up -d

Step 3 — Add the connector in Cursor

Your server URL: in AnythingMCP, open MCP Servers → the server this connector is on, and copy its URL (https://cloud.anythingmcp.com/mcp/…). Use it wherever this guide shows YOUR_SERVER_ID.

Cursor reads MCP servers from ~/.cursor/mcp.json. Add this entry:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "anythingmcp": {
      "url": "https://cloud.anythingmcp.com/mcp/YOUR_SERVER_ID",
      "headers": { "X-API-Key": "YOUR_MCP_API_KEY" }
    }
  }
}

1. Create an MCP API key in AnythingMCP under MCP Servers → your server → API keys, and paste it in place of YOUR_MCP_API_KEY.
2. Save the file and restart Cursor.
3. Open Cursor → Settings → MCP and check that anythingmcp is listed and connected.
4. Start chatting: the agent can now call the AliExpress Affiliate tools.

Available tools

Example prompts

• "Search AliExpress for wireless earbuds between 10 and 30 USD and show the five with the highest commission rate."
• "Which hot products in the phone accessories category pay the highest commission right now?"
• "What does shipping product 1005006123456789 to Germany cost, and how long does delivery take?"
• "Which coupons apply to product 1005006123456789 in Italy today?"
• "Turn these three AliExpress links into affiliate links with my tracking ID."
• "How much commission did my links earn last week? Group the orders by status."

FAQ

Does Cursor support custom MCP servers on the free tier? Yes, MCP is available on Hobby, Pro and Business plans.

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