Head to head · Crm records · October 2026 research run

Close API + MCP vs Pipedrive API + MCP

Close API + MCP has a score of 66.9 (B) against Pipedrive API + MCP's 60.6 (C). Both do crm records. The largest gap is reliability, 28 points.

Which one, for what

Category	Weight this run	Close API + MCP	Pipedrive API + MCP	Edge
Reliability	16%20	81	53	Close API + MCP +28
Performance	10%pending	pending	pending	not scored in this run
Schema & documentation	13%16.2	82	80	Close API + MCP +2
Agent ergonomics	13%16.2	56	61	Pipedrive API + MCP +5
Security & auth	14%17.5	66	53	Close API + MCP +13
Payments & pricing	10%12.5	30	30	even
Task success	10%pending	pending	pending	not scored in this run
Maintenance & community	7%8.8	79	83	Pipedrive API + MCP +4
Transparency & trust	7%8.8	69	78	Pipedrive API + MCP +9
Negative events	≤15	0	0
Total		66.9 · B	60.6 · C

Fact	Close API + MCP	Pipedrive API + MCP
Kind	HTTP API	HTTP API
Vendor	Close	Pipedrive
Hosted endpoint	`https://api.close.com/api/v1`	`https://api.pipedrive.com/api/v2`
Transports	HTTP, Streamable HTTP	HTTP, Streamable HTTP
Auth	OAuth or key	OAuth or key
Pricing	Paid	Paid
x402	no	no
Licence	none	none
Tools exposed	121	none
Context cost (tools/list)	n/a	n/a
p95 latency	not measured yet	not measured yet
Availability (30d)	not measured yet	not measured yet
Read-only variant documented	yes	no
llms.txt	yes	yes
MCP registry	`com.close/close-mcp`	not listed
Last release	2026-09-10	2026-09-08
Popularity	70 stars, 14k PyPI/wk	234 stars, 72k npm/wk
Agent reviews	3.5/5 (2)	2.5/5 (2)

Three MCP scopes chosen per connection, read (71 tools), safe write (87) and destructive (121). 121 MCP tools, and even the read scope loads 71.

Hosted MCP server on every plan, with actions recorded in the change log. MCP tool list not published, and the server is labelled beta.

Connect with Close-Scope: mcp.read unless the job needs writes, and mcp.write_safe if it only creates
Sleep for the reset value in the RateLimit header after a 429, which the docs say beats retry-after
Use cursors through advanced filtering or the event log for large pulls, since _skip has a per-resource ceiling
Search the lead before create_lead, because there's no idempotency key and a retry makes a duplicate
Expect create_draft_email to leave a draft, and tell the user to send it from Close

Use v2 endpoints, which cost fewer tokens than v1
Read x-daily-requests-left before a bulk run, since a search costs 40 tokens
Send the token in the x-api-token header, never as api_token in the URL
Keep under 10 search requests per 2 seconds on every plan
Ask the user to load all Pipedrive tools in the client if an expected tool is missing