Connect Pixabay to Microsoft Copilot via MCP

💡 No install? Use cloud.anythingmcp.com directly. Sign in, click Connectors → Pixabay, paste your credentials, mint an MCP API key — done. No Docker, no git clone, no local server.

Pixabay + Microsoft Copilot

Search over 4 million royalty-free stock photos, illustrations, vector graphics, and videos via the Pixabay API.

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:

PIXABAY_API_KEY

Step 1 — Get credentials

Setting up takes a few minutes. You need a free Pixabay account.

1. Create a free account at https://pixabay.com if you do not have one.
2. While signed in, open https://pixabay.com/api/docs/ and find your API key in the green box under Search Images. It is your numeric user id, a hyphen and a hex token, e.g. 12345678-abcdef0123456789abcdef012.
3. Paste it into PIXABAY_API_KEY. The connector sends it as the key query parameter on every request.
4. Install the connector and run pixabay_search_images with a keyword such as nature.

What it finds: pixabay_search_images searches photos, illustrations and vector graphics by keyword, language, image type, orientation, category, minimum size, colors, Editor's Choice and SafeSearch, or fetches one image by id. Each result has a preview (150px), a web-size (640px) and a large (up to 1280px) image URL, plus size, views, downloads, likes, tags and the artist. pixabay_search_videos searches video clips by keyword, video type, category, minimum size, Editor's Choice and SafeSearch, and returns direct MP4 links in large, medium, small and tiny sizes.

Licence: content on Pixabay is released under the Pixabay Content License: free for commercial and non-commercial use, with no attribution required.

Limits: 3 to 200 results per page (default 20), and at most 500 results per search. Each API key gets 100 requests per minute and 5,000 per hour; above that Pixabay answers 429. Higher limits can be requested from Pixabay support.

Common errors: 401 means Pixabay rejected the key: copy it again from the API docs page while signed in. 429 means the rate limit was reached: wait before trying again.

The connector is read-only.

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 Microsoft Copilot

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.

Microsoft Copilot uses MCP servers through agents built in Copilot Studio: you add AnythingMCP to an agent as a tool, then publish the agent to Microsoft 365 Copilot and Teams. Copilot Studio connects from Microsoft's cloud over Streamable HTTP, which AnythingMCP supports.

1. In Copilot Studio, open your agent (or create one), go to Tools and choose Add a tool → New tool → Model Context Protocol.
2. Enter a Server name (for example AnythingMCP), a Server description that says what the connector does, and the Server URL https://cloud.anythingmcp.com/mcp/YOUR_SERVER_ID. Copilot Studio uses the description to decide when to call the server.
3. Under authentication, choose API key, set Type to Header and the header name to X-API-Key, then select Create.
4. In Add tool, choose Create a new connection, paste an MCP API key from AnythingMCP (MCP Servers → your server → API keys) and select Add to agent.
5. Try it in the agent's Test pane: ask for something that needs the Pixabay tools.
6. Select Publish, then Channels → Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams, keep Make agent available in Microsoft Copilot selected and choose Add channel. See agent in Teams installs it for you; in Microsoft 365 Copilot, type @ and pick the agent.

Prefer per-user sign-in? Choose OAuth 2.0 → Dynamic discovery instead of an API key: each user then signs in to AnythingMCP the first time the agent calls it.

Self-hosting? Use your instance's public HTTPS address instead of https://cloud.anythingmcp.com. Copilot Studio connects from Microsoft's cloud, so localhost does not work.

Available tools

FAQ

Which Copilot is this for? Microsoft 365 Copilot at work, through agents built in Copilot Studio. The Microsoft Copilot app for personal accounts has no option to add your own MCP server.

What do I need? A work account with access to Copilot Studio (a license or a trial) to build the agent. People who use it in Microsoft 365 Copilot or Teams need access to the agent: share it with them, or ask an admin to publish it to the organization. If your organization applies data policies to Power Platform connectors, they cover MCP servers too.

The agent doesn't call the tools. Check that the header name is exactly X-API-Key and that the key belongs to the same MCP server as the URL, and make the server description specific: Copilot Studio uses it to decide when to call the server. Publish the agent again after each change; in an open chat, type "start over" to get the new version.

Next steps

• Connector landing page
• Connect to Claude
• Connect to ChatGPT