Connect SerpApi to Microsoft Copilot via MCP

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

SerpApi + Microsoft Copilot

Give your AI live search engine results with SerpApi: Google web search, News, Images, Maps, Shopping, Scholar and Trends, plus YouTube and Bing, as clean structured results, and check your plan's remaining searches.

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:

SERPAPI_API_KEY

Step 1 — Get credentials

1. Sign up at https://serpapi.com (the free plan needs no card) and confirm your email address.
2. Open https://serpapi.com/manage-api-key and copy your private API key.
3. Paste it into SERPAPI_API_KEY and install the connector. The key is stored encrypted, added to each request by the connector and sent only to serpapi.com.
4. Start with serpapi_get_account: it is free and shows your plan, the searches used and left this month, and the hourly limit.

Billed to your own SerpApi plan: every successful search spends one search from your SerpApi plan; the free plan has 250 a month. An identical search repeated within an hour comes from SerpApi's cache for free, failed searches are free, and checking the account or looking up locations costs nothing.

What it does: Google web search with the answer box, knowledge graph, AI overview, People also ask, top stories and local results when Google shows them; Google News, Images, Maps (places with rating, address, phone, website and opening hours), Shopping (offers with seller and price), Scholar (papers with citation counts) and Trends (interest over time, by region, related topics and queries); plus YouTube and Bing. Results come back as structured data, trimmed to the useful parts.

Localising: a search can come from a specific city and use the Google edition of a country and language. serpapi_search_locations finds the exact location names SerpApi accepts.

Untrusted content: titles and snippets come from the open web. The AI treats instructions found inside them as data, not as orders.

Common errors: 401 means the key is wrong or was regenerated. 429: the plan's searches for the month are used up, or the hourly limit is reached; serpapi_get_account shows which. 400: a required parameter is missing or a value is invalid, such as an unknown country or location. 403: the account may not run the request, for example because it is suspended.

The connector does not cover SerpApi's other engines (such as flights, hotels, jobs or product reviews), asynchronous searches, the search archive or raw HTML.

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 SerpApi 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

Example prompts

• "Where does our website rank on google.de for 'custom claude connector', and what does the AI overview say?"
• "Find coffee roasters in Hamburg on Google Maps with a rating above 4.5, with phone and website."
• "Compare Google Trends interest in 'heat pump' and 'solar panels' in Germany over the last 12 months."
• "How many searches are left on our SerpApi plan this month?"

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
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