Zapier MCP, Zapier SDK, and Zapier CLI: What's the difference?

If you've been paying attention to new products in the tech space, you may have noticed three initialisms popping up a lot: MCP, SDK, and CLI.

Zapier has dedicated products for each: Zapier MCP, Zapier SDK, and Zapier CLI. All three connect AI to Zapier's ecosystem of more than 9,000 apps, and they all run on the same governed access layer. But the right one for you depends on where you like to build.

Here's what each one does, how they work, and why you should use one (or a combo) based on your needs.

Skip ahead

• Zapier MCP vs. Zapier SDK vs. Zapier CLI at a glance

• What is Zapier MCP?

• What is Zapier SDK?

• What is Zapier CLI?

• Using MCP and SDK in the same agent

• Which should you choose?

Zapier MCP vs. Zapier SDK vs. Zapier CLI at a glance

Here's a quick summary, but keep reading for more details.

What is Zapier MCP?

Zapier MCP is a built-in tool that connects AI clients—chat tools like Claude and ChatGPT, but coding agents as well—to more than 30,000+ pre-built actions across more than 9,000 apps in the Zapier library. It uses the open-source Model Context Protocol. If you're not familiar with that, don't let the name intimidate you. It's just a connector that lets AI apps and external tools communicate with each other.

Setting this up starts with opening the Zapier MCP dashboard, where you pick the tools you want your AI client to use. Then you select the actions you want to enable (like, say Create Spreadsheet Row or Send Channel Message) and then connect your app accounts. That's it.

Suppose you're in charge of updating stakeholders on the status of a project. Instead of opening Coda, manually checking what's done or in progress or blocked, then pulling up Outlook to write the email, you can handle the whole process from your AI client. Whenever an update is warranted, just ask AI to pull all rows recently updated from your Coda table, check out how the tasks are going, and draft a status update email for you to review.

In fact, we have a template for this exact scenario if it applies to you:

The key benefit of Zapier MCP is that it meets you where you already work. Setup takes just a few clicks, and using it is as simple as chatting with your AI client like you normally do. That makes it a great choice if you want to give AI secure access to your tools without coding or asking your IT team to build a custom integration for you.

What is Zapier SDK?

The Zapier SDK is a TypeScript package. It gives you programmatic, code-level access to Zapier's app ecosystem from inside a code project. So instead of prompting AI with a conversation, you write TypeScript that calls Zapier actions directly, makes authenticated API requests, and manages connections, all through Zapier's infrastructure.

You might be writing that code yourself in a terminal and text editor. Or you can do it through an AI coding tool like Cursor or Claude Code—in which case, you can describe what you want conversationally and have the agent write and run the code for you.

There are two main ways to access the Zapier SDK: through pre-built actions and custom API requests.

Pre-built actions

Pre-built actions are much like the actions you'd call in Zapier MCP. The difference is in how you invoke them.

In Zapier MCP, you pre-select which actions your AI can call, then describe what you want to happen conversationally. Your AI reads the names and descriptions of those actions and makes its best guess about which one fits your request and what to put in each field (like which Slack channel to post in or what text to include in an email). It usually gets it right, but it's going off the vibe of your words rather than a strict set of rules. That means it can occasionally pick the wrong action or fill in a field incorrectly, and you won't know until after it runs.

The SDK takes that guesswork out. Every app and action comes with generated "types," which are basically blueprints that tell your coding tool exactly what each action expects as inputs. That means your tool can catch mistakes before the code ever runs, rather than finding out something went wrong after the fact. You can still describe what you want conversationally in an AI coding agent. The agent just has a stricter blueprint to follow.

Custom API requests

Every app has an API, which is essentially a menu of things you can ask it to do programmatically. Zapier's pre-built actions cover the most common items on that menu. But every app's API menu is bigger than what Zapier has mapped to pre-built actions. Custom API requests let you order off-menu.

Zapier's fetch capability is what makes that possible without the usual headaches. Normally, making a direct API call means managing authentication yourself. You'd have to store credentials securely, refresh tokens when they expire, and format everything correctly for each service. Fetch handles all of that. When you make a request, it looks up your stored credentials for that app and attaches them automatically before the request goes out. Your credentials never touch your local machine.

So in practice, say you want to pull a custom report from your analytics tool, but Zapier doesn't have a "get custom report" action for it. If that app exposes it as an API endpoint, you can call it directly through the SDK—securely, without managing authentication yourself. This raw API access covers roughly 3,000 apps today, with more coming.

The SDK is great when you:

• Work in code: a text editor, a code project, or anywhere TypeScript runs

• Need sequences with branching logic, loops, and error handling

• Want raw API access to endpoints that aren't covered by pre-built actions

And if you want to expose the SDK itself as an MCP server—so it can work with any MCP-compatible AI client—that's possible too.

What is Zapier CLI?

The Zapier CLI is a command-line interface. It lets you explore apps, discover what they can do, and run actions directly from your terminal—authenticated, with no OAuth setup required. The command to install and run it is npx zapier.

You can ask "what actions does Google Sheets support?" and get a structured answer back. You can inspect exactly what inputs an action expects. And when you're ready, you can run that action on the spot, all from the command line.

It's built on the same foundation as the SDK. You get the same apps, actions, and input shapes. But instead of writing a TypeScript file, you type a command and get a result. That makes it ideal for quick exploration, one-off tasks, or handing commands to an AI agent that works in a terminal environment.

Exploring apps and actions

The CLI shines when you want to understand what's possible before building anything. Say you want to know what you can do with Slack through Zapier. You'd run a command like npx zapier-sdk list-actions slack, and you'd get a structured list of every action available for sending messages, searching users, creating channels, and more.

From there, you can drill into a specific action to see what inputs it needs—which fields are required, which are optional, and what format each field expects. That's especially useful if you're scoping out an integration or figuring out the right action before writing code in the SDK.

You can also filter actions by type (read, write, search), page through apps with large catalogs, and output everything as JSON for piping into other tools.

Running actions and making API calls

Once you know what you want to do, you can execute it right from the terminal. Pass the app, action type, action key, your connection ID, and your inputs, and the CLI runs it against the real API.

And just like the SDK, the CLI also supports custom API requests. Its built-in curl command lets you hit any API endpoint directly, with Zapier injecting your stored credentials automatically. Just point it at a URL and go.

Every command supports --json output, so you can pipe results into jq, chain commands with shell scripts, or feed them into other tools. It's not the same as writing full loops and conditionals in TypeScript, but for interactive exploration and quick jobs, it gets you from idea to execution in seconds.

The CLI is great when you:

• Mainly work in a terminal

• Are prototyping an integration

• Want a terminal-based AI agent to discover and execute actions on demand

• Want to test an integration idea quickly without setting up a full project

How to use Zapier MCP and SDK in the same coding agent

MCP isn't just for chatbots—it works in coding agents too. That means you can run it alongside the SDK in the same project, and let your agent pick whichever tool fits the task.

Let's say you've already set up a Zapier MCP server in your coding agent. That's still great for calling up pre-built actions that are ready to use with zero code required. But if you've hit a wall—maybe you need to work through a long list of records one by one, or reach an endpoint that Zapier doesn't have a pre-built action for, or handle an error in a specific way—that's when adding the SDK alongside MCP helps.

With both connected to the same coding agent, your agent can pick whichever tool fits the task. For quick pre-built actions, your agent will call MCP. For anything that needs custom logic or raw API access, it'll reach for the SDK.

And because the SDK includes a built-in MCP server package, you can also expose your entire SDK setup, including any custom API calls you've built, as an MCP server. That means those SDK-powered capabilities become available not just in code, but from any AI chat client that supports MCP. So the same setup works whether you're running a script or just having a conversation.

Which should you choose?

The right choice usually comes down to where you're working.

If you always have Claude or ChatGPT open, use MCP. If you live in a code editor or AI coding agent, go with Zapier SDK. You get type-safe, deterministic execution, the ability to chain logic and handle errors, and raw API access to endpoints MCP can't reach. If you work from a terminal, Zapier CLI is for you. All it takes is one npx zapier command to start discovering and running actions from the shell. 

And if you want the flexibility to act in your apps no matter what surface you're working on? Install them all.

To get started, head to the Zapier MCP dashboard, the Zapier SDK quickstart page, or the Zapier CLI docs.

This article was originally published in April 2026. It was most recently updated in May 2026.