Redpanda Cloud Management MCP Server Quickstart

beta

In this quickstart, you’ll get your Claude AI agent talking to Redpanda Cloud using the Redpanda Cloud Management MCP Server.

If you’re trying to deploy your own MCP server as a managed service inside your cluster, see Remote MCP Server Quickstart.

After completing this quickstart, you will be able to:

Authenticate to Redpanda Cloud with rpk
Install the MCP integration for Claude
Issue natural language commands to manage clusters

Prerequisites

At least version 25.2.3 of rpk installed on your computer
Access to a Redpanda Cloud account
Claude or Claude Code installed

For other clients, see Configure the Redpanda Cloud Management MCP Server.

Set up the MCP server

Verify your rpk version
```
rpk version
```
Ensure the version is at least 25.2.3.
Log in to Redpanda Cloud
```
rpk cloud login
```
A browser window opens. Sign in to grant access. After you sign in, rpk stores a token locally. This token is not shared with your AI agent. It is used by the MCP server to authenticate requests to your Redpanda Cloud account.
Install the MCP integration. Choose one client:
```
# Claude desktop
rpk cloud mcp install --client claude

# Claude Code (IDE)
rpk cloud mcp install --client claude-code
```
This command configures the MCP server for your client. If you need to update the integration, re-run the install command for your client.

Start prompting

Launch Claude or Claude Code and try one of these prompts:

“Create a Redpanda Cloud cluster named dev-mcp.”
“List topics in dev-mcp.”
“Create a topic orders-raw with 6 partitions.”

The MCP server does not expose API endpoints that result in delete operations by default. Use --allow-delete only if you intentionally want to enable delete operations. See Enable delete operations.