How to publish an MCP in Perplexity

To submit a connector to Perplexity, you send a connector proposal through a Google Form, and Perplexity’s Plugins marketplace team decides whether to take it further. The help center documents no portal where you paste a server URL and publish. This guide covers what stands out in the proposal form, how to get your MCP server ready first, what happens after you submit, and how the process compares with Claude and ChatGPT. It also shows where MCP Tower fits: testing your server before you propose it, then measuring its traffic once it is live.

Key takeaways:

• The way in is the connector proposal form, described in Perplexity’s Submit a connector proposal article. Questions go to [email protected].
• The form has 68 questions in 7 sections, 51 of them required. It reads like an enterprise vendor questionnaire, from data residency to incident contacts and deprecation notice periods.
• Accepted proposals become single-connector plugins in Perplexity’s Plugins marketplace.
• A proposal is not a guarantee. Perplexity weighs customer value, technical feasibility, security requirements and its product priorities, and publishes no review timeline.
• Make your server work as a Perplexity custom remote connector first. That is also how users can add it while you wait.
• Test OAuth and your tool descriptions in MCP Tower before you submit. Broken sign-in delays review.

What a Perplexity connector proposal is

Perplexity’s help center says the form is for companies “that want to explore building a connector for Perplexity.” Proposals become single-connector plugins: a plugin named after your connector, with its icon, that users install from the Plugins page. Plugins that bundle several connectors or skills are not proposed through this form.

If your goal is to publish an MCP server to Perplexity’s Discover tab, this form is the only route the help center documents, and it promises nothing: submitting a proposal “does not guarantee that Perplexity will build, approve, or make a connector available.” The form does ask for your listing copy, but where Claude and ChatGPT approve a listing you then publish, this reads more like the start of a conversation with Perplexity’s team.

Perplexity uses a Google Form, as Claude did

Perplexity takes connector proposals through a Google Form today. Claude worked the same way in summer 2026, before Anthropic moved connector submissions to its developer portal; the steps for the portal are in how to submit a connector to Claude, and the case for listing there is in the Claude Marketplace as a growth channel.

In my view, Perplexity may follow with a portal of its own. If you submit early, watch for one. In my experience, when Claude switched, form submissions were not carried over and had to be submitted again.

If you are still deciding whether it is worth it, read why Perplexity connectors can be a new growth channel first.

Step 1: make your server work as a Perplexity MCP server

Perplexity already connects to remote MCP servers as custom remote connectors. Whatever happens to your proposal, your server should work this way first. From that article and Perplexity’s troubleshooting guide:

1. The server is remote and served over https://, with Streamable HTTP or SSE.
2. Authentication is none, an API key, or OAuth 2.0. With OAuth, Perplexity detects endpoints and scopes through discovery; without dynamic client registration, the user enters a client ID and secret.
3. Perplexity’s callback URL, shown on the connector setup screen, is on your server’s list of allowed redirect URIs.
4. The server accepts standard MCP requests. The custom connector setup screen has no field for custom headers, apart from the two Cloudflare Access headers.
5. The server exposes at least one tool. Otherwise OAuth can succeed and show no tools.
6. Sign-in returns a token in the format your tools expect.

Custom MCP servers are limited to Pro, Max and Enterprise plans, according to the troubleshooting guide. Add yours from Plugins with Add custom, sign in, and run every tool from a real question. When you add a tool, disconnect and connect again so Perplexity fetches the new list.

Step 2: test OAuth and your tools in MCP Tower

Put MCP Tower in front of your server first (onboarding takes a DNS record), so the hostname you test is the one you will keep. That hostname is what you enter in the form as the production MCP endpoint.

I think prompt injection is the main reason connector directories review so carefully, and Perplexity names security requirements as one of its criteria. Tool names and descriptions go straight into the model’s context, so a description that reads like an instruction to the model is a risk a reviewer has to rule out.

When you add your server to MCP Tower, its Inspect module validates every tool and its description and gives recommendations. You can fix the server and scan again, or change a tool’s title and description in Inspect with an override, without waiting for your developers.

Sign-in is the other common cause of delay. Nobody at Perplexity can judge a connector they cannot connect to, and each round trip on a sign-in bug adds time to a review with no published schedule. MCP Tower signs in to your server the way AI agents do and reports the first place where the flow breaks, with the fix.

Step 3: gather what the proposal asks for

The help-center article lists what to include:

Item	What to prepare
Company	Company name and website
Product	The product or service you want to connect
Connector	A brief description of the proposed connector
Use case	The customer problem or use case it would support
Documentation	Links to API, developer, integration or security documentation
Contact	A contact for partnership and technical discussions

Write the use case the way your users would ask Perplexity: “find last month’s unpaid invoices for Acme” says more than “invoice management”. Link your security documentation explicitly, because security is one of the stated review factors.

That list is the short version. The form itself has 68 questions in 7 sections, from company and submitter to catalog listing, and asks for your company stage, user base, data residency, security certifications, an incident contact and your support commitments. Have the answers ready before you open it. The form says several times, and makes you confirm at the end, that it must not contain passwords, tokens, API keys or private customer data. You name a secure channel for test access, and if you need static OAuth credentials, Perplexity coordinates a secure exchange after technical review.

What stands out in the form

Perplexity sees every tool

For key tools, the form asks what each does, its scopes and whether it reads data or changes an external system, then adds: “Perplexity will discover the complete inventory from the MCP server.” Reviewers see the tools you left off the list too, which is why the Inspect pass in Step 2 covers every tool.

Answer-quality evaluation materials

An optional question asks which of these you can share: prompt and expected-answer evaluations, tool-selection or tool-use evaluations, and synthetic or de-identified datasets. Of the directories I cover, ChatGPT’s test cases come closest, but Perplexity is the one that names tool selection. A required question also asks for synthetic data and test roles, including permission failures and expected results. Write a few prompts, each with the tool you expect the model to pick and the answer you expect. Your tool descriptions decide the pick, so test them against those prompts.

Detailed auth questions

The form asks for the method (OAuth 2.1, OAuth 2.0, API key or none), Dynamic Client Registration or a static client ID and secret, whether Perplexity’s callback URL must be allowlisted, each scope with the tool that needs it, token refresh, revocation and expiry, and whether your side must approve production use. MCP Tower’s OAuth checks cover client registration, the scopes each tool declares and token refresh. They follow the MCP specification and the published requirements of ChatGPT and Claude, and MCP Tower has not verified Perplexity’s behavior, so add Perplexity’s callback URL from its setup screen to your allowed redirect URIs yourself.

Versioning and deprecation

A required question asks how you version, how much notice you give and where you announce changes. MCP Tower rescans your server once a day and emails your Admins and Editors when a tool or argument is added, changed or removed, down to a changed description, so you notice when the inventory Perplexity reviewed has moved. Have your rate limits, timeouts and MCP protocol version written down too.

No marketing superlatives

The catalog listing asks for a display name, a tagline of at most 80 characters and a description that should “avoid unsupported claims and marketing superlatives,” plus brand assets, setup documentation, terms of service and a support URL. Describe the connector the way you would to a colleague.

Step 4: submit the connector proposal

Open the proposal form and fill it in. If you have questions first, Perplexity asks you to email [email protected] with your company name, a short description of the connector and links to your technical documentation.

Step 5: wait for the Plugins marketplace team

The Plugins marketplace team reviews each proposal and contacts you if it is a potential fit. Perplexity documents no review timeline or status page, so plan your launch announcements around a reply, not a date. While you wait, users on eligible plans can still add your server as a custom remote connector, and you can link to setup instructions from your own docs.

Perplexity vs Claude vs ChatGPT submission

Most teams list on more than one assistant. Here is how the three processes compare, from each vendor’s documentation and my own Claude and ChatGPT submissions:

	Perplexity	Claude	ChatGPT
Where you submit	Google Form at pplx.ai/connector-form-submission	Developer portal at claude.ai/directory/manage	ZIP upload at platform.openai.com/plugins
What you provide	68 questions, from company to auth to listing	Listing, use cases, example prompts, test account	5 positive and 3 negative test cases, video, demo account
Who lists it	Perplexity’s team, if it takes the proposal on	You select Publish after approval	You choose when to publish after approval
First approval	No published timeline	3–4 months in my experience	3 months or more in my experience
Analytics for you	None documented	Beta dashboard, Claude traffic only	None

The biggest difference is control. On Claude and ChatGPT you write the listing and the test material, the reviewer checks it, and approval lets you publish. On Perplexity you write the listing and the test material too, but Perplexity’s team decides whether to build and list the connector at all. The step-by-step guides are in how to submit a connector to Claude and how to submit a plugin to ChatGPT. The same series covers submitting an app to Gemini and submitting a connector to Muse, as well as submitting a plugin to Grok and publishing to the official MCP Registry.

After launch: measure what Perplexity sends you

The Perplexity help-center pages I read describe no usage dashboard for connector owners. Once your connector is live, whether as a listing or a custom connector, you have only your own data.

This is the second place MCP Tower comes in, the first product built for this job. It sits in front of your server as a proxy: you publish its URL, every call passes through to your server, and MCP Tower records which agent made it (with how far that label can be trusted), which tool it called, how long it took and what failed. It also tracks clicks on links in tool results and widget interactions, and checks your server’s uptime even when nobody is using it. MCP Tower does not yet identify Perplexity as a named agent, but its calls are still recorded and measured. Onboarding needs a DNS record and no SDK.

Summary

1. Make your server work as a Perplexity custom remote connector: HTTPS, supported auth, the callback URL allowed, standard headers, at least one tool.
2. Test OAuth and validate your tools in MCP Tower, and fix what it reports.
3. Gather answers for the 68-question form: company, workflows and example queries, server and auth details, data handling, test access, evaluation materials, contacts and the listing.
4. Submit the proposal form, or email [email protected] with questions.
5. Wait for the Plugins marketplace team; there is no published timeline.
6. Measure every call once the connector is live.

Submitting a connector to Perplexity asks for as much detail as Claude or ChatGPT, and more on operations and security, while giving you less control over the outcome. Test the server in MCP Tower before you propose it, so the first person at Perplexity who connects to it has a working sign-in, and keep it behind MCP Tower after launch to see how agents use it.

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