# Honeycomb MCP

> Honeycomb's hosted MCP server lets AI agents query a team's traces, metrics and events, run BubbleUp analysis, and create or update Boards, Triggers and SLOs. It uses OAuth or a Management API key and has US and EU endpoints.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/honeycomb-mcp
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/honeycomb-mcp.md (~8,200 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/honeycomb-mcp.min.md (~1,830 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/honeycomb-mcp.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-09

## Overview

**Grade C · 58.3/100 · rank #527 of 842 · #3 in Observability & incidents · not agent-ready · confidence medium**


## Assessment

OAuth with `mcp:read` and `mcp:write` scopes keeps the 34 tools read-only until write access is granted, and per-tool rate limits are published. Tool input schemas are visible only after sign-in, and no injection guidance was found for telemetry content. The product changelogs disallow unnamed crawlers, so release history went unread.

## Facts

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Vendor | Honeycomb (https://www.honeycomb.io) |
| Kind | MCP server |
| Category | Observability & incidents (https://www.anchorterminal.com/categories/observability) |
| Transport | Streamable HTTP |
| Endpoint | `https://mcp.honeycomb.io/mcp` |
| Auth | OAuth or key · OAuth is the documented default. The server at https://mcp.honeycomb.io/mcp answers 401 with a pointer to its protected-resource metadata, and ui.honeycomb.io is the authorisation server, with PKCE S256, dynamic client registration and the scopes `mcp:read` and `mcp:write`. Write tools need `mcp:write`, granted at consent. Unattended agents can send a Management API key as `Authorization: Bearer <KEY_ID>:<SECRET_KEY>`, with Read or Write under Model Context Protocol and access under Environments. Only a Team Owner can create that key, and its scopes can't be changed later. Access is self-serve, but a Team Owner must first enable Honeycomb Intelligence for the team. |
| Pricing | Your plan (Your plan) · No separate charge. Honeycomb MCP is in the feature list of every plan, the Free plan included (20 million events and 100 million metric data points a month). Pro starts at $150 a month for 50 million events and Enterprise is quoted. The signup page asks for an email address or a Google account, and the signup guide names no payment step, so an agent's owner can start without a contract (https://www.honeycomb.io/pricing, checked 2026-10-09). |
| x402 | No · No x402, MPP or L402 in the MCP docs, the pricing page or the terms (checked 2026-10-09). |
| Licence | Proprietary hosted service under Honeycomb's Terms of Service and Honeycomb Intelligence Supplemental Terms. The companion plugin in honeycombio/agent-skill is MIT |
| Tools exposed | 34 |
| MCP registry name | `io.honeycomb/mcp` |
| Source | https://github.com/honeycombio/agent-skill |
| Docs | https://docs.honeycomb.io/integrations/mcp/ |
| llms.txt | https://docs.honeycomb.io/llms.txt |
| Last release | 2026-09-29 |
| GitHub stars | 27 (as of 2026-10-09) |
| What is graded | The hosted remote MCP server at https://mcp.honeycomb.io/mcp (EU https://mcp.eu1.honeycomb.io/mcp). It is closed source. The MIT plugin in honeycombio/agent-skill adds skills, two agents and a setup command, and is not required |
| Tools | 34 in the public reference. Discovery (4), query and analysis (5), traces and spans (3), service map and anomalies (2), semantic conventions (3), Boards (3), Triggers (3), SLOs (3), recipients (2), Canvas (2), AI conversation analysis (2), `refinery_docs` and `feedback`. `get_service_map` is Enterprise only |
| Prompts | MCP prompts such as `honeycomb-onboarding`, `honeycomb-learning` and `otel_analysis`, shown by most clients as slash commands. They need no extra scope |
| Credentials | OAuth authorisation code with PKCE S256 and refresh tokens, scopes `mcp:read` and `mcp:write`, token in the header only. Or a Management API key sent as `Bearer <KEY_ID>:<SECRET_KEY>`, which only a Team Owner can create and whose scopes are fixed at creation |
| Tool subsets | `X-MCP-Toolset` header with `all` (default), `query` or `canvas`. The header narrows what loads and grants nothing |
| Rate limits | Per tool, per minute. 300 for semantic-convention tools and `canvas_agent_poll_response`, 200 for discovery tools, 150 for `get_triggers`, `find_queries` and `get_query_results`, 100 for `run_query`, `get_trace`, `get_dataset_columns` and `get_slos`, 30 for updates, 20 for creates, 10 for `get_service_map`, 50 otherwise. The docs say limits may change |
| Errors | Rate-limit errors read `Rate limit exceeded, please try again after <time>`. The troubleshooting page also covers Unauthorized, missing tools, missing `mcp:write` and unknown environments, datasets or columns |
| Sessions | MCP sessions may time out after 24 hours. OAuth sessions are listed on the account's Integrations tab |
| Plans | Honeycomb MCP is in the Free, Pro and Enterprise feature lists. Free allows 20 million events and 100 million metric data points a month. Pro starts at $150 a month for 50 million events. Enterprise is quoted |
| Requirement | A Team Owner must enable Honeycomb Intelligence for the team. Through MCP the Activity Log environment is shown only to Team Owners |
| Status | Generally available. The docs list MCP among past betas as graduated. Registry entry `io.honeycomb/mcp` 1.0.0, published 29 April 2026 |
| Last dated change read | The tools reference was last modified on 29 September 2026 per the docs sitemap, and the plugin reached 1.2.2 on 20 September 2026. The product changelogs were not read |
| Capabilities | observability.traces, observability.metrics, observability.logs |
| Tags | official, hosted, mcp, oauth, api-key, toolsets, free-tier, eu-region, llms-txt, mcp-registry, status-page, soc2 |
| JSON | https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/honeycomb-mcp.json |

## Score breakdown (methodology v0.4, October 2026 research run)

Assessed 2026-10-09 from public evidence against the published checklist (https://www.anchorterminal.com/benchmark/#checklist). Confidence: medium. Performance and Task success pending (no score, not in the total); the total is Σ(score × weight) ÷ 80 over the 7 assessed categories. "This run" is each category's share of the 100 points.

| Category | Weight | This run | Score (0–100) | Points |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% | 20 | 65 | 13.0 |
| Performance | 10% | pending | pending | n/a |
| Schema & documentation | 13% | 16.2 | 57 | 9.3 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% | 16.2 | 53 | 8.6 |
| Security & auth | 14% | 17.5 | 71 | 12.4 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% | 12.5 | 30 | 3.8 |
| Task success | 10% | pending | pending | n/a |
| Maintenance & community | 7% | 8.8 | 61 | 5.3 |
| Transparency & trust (editorial 64, provenance 71) | 7% | 8.8 | 68 | 6.0 |
| Negative events | up to −15 | up to −15 | none recorded | 0 |
| **Total** | | | | **58.3 → C** |

### Why each score

- Reliability 65: Scored as a hosted MCP server. status.honeycomb.io is an Atlassian Statuspage with 14 components for US1, EU1, the website and the sandbox. It has no MCP component, though MCP incidents are posted there (17). Four incidents in the 90 days to 9 October 2026, all marked minor. Querying failures for about 30 minutes on 31 July, with a postmortem. Triggers failing intermittently in the EU on 27 and 28 July. US1 queries over older data erroring for 67 minutes on 10 August. Canvas not loading for 38 minutes on 21 August. The 10 August outage hit the query path the server depends on for over an hour, so we score between minor-only and one major (15). Per-tool limits are published with numbers (15). Rate-limit errors carry the time to retry after. No backoff guidance or idempotency keys for the nine write tools were found (8). No SLA found in the terms, and honeycomb.io/sla returns 404 (0). The docs list MCP as graduated to general availability (10).
- Performance: Pending. Latency is measured per call by our probes, which haven't run yet, so this run doesn't score it. Its weight is shared across the assessed categories until the first probe window closes.
- Schema & documentation 57: The server is closed source and `tools/list` needs sign-in, so we could not read the input schemas. Partial credit for a contract that exists but is not public (12). docs.honeycomb.io publishes llms.txt and a Markdown twin of every page (10). The tools reference says what each of the 34 tools returns and when an agent reaches for it, for example calling `get_workspace_context` first and `list_boards` before `update_board`. These are docs, not the definitions the model sees (14). Parameters are mentioned only in passing, such as `metric_name` and `usage_mode`, with no types, enums or required fields published (4). A use-cases page and a troubleshooting page document the Unauthorized, rate-limit, permission and not-found errors with causes and fixes (9). The registry entry carries version 1.0.0 and Honeycomb links a UI changelog and an API changelog, but both hosts disallow unnamed crawlers, so we could not confirm MCP entries (8).
- Agent ergonomics 53: 34 tools is above the 30 line (5). The `X-MCP-Toolset` header loads `query` or `canvas` subsets, and the docs don't say how many tools each holds (add 8, so 13). Size controls are described per tool, such as up to 100 datasets or 100 columns a call, subtree zoom on `get_trace` and query limits. Pagination parameters aren't documented (10). Errors are documented with causes and fixes, and the rate-limit message names the retry time. No error code list was found (12). The reference labels each tool read or write and `update_slo` keeps omitted fields. No idempotency keys were found, and we couldn't confirm readOnlyHint or destructiveHint annotations (8). `get_workspace_context` takes no parameters, relative time is the default, and setup is one command or link in nine documented clients. SDKs don't apply (10).
- Security & auth 71: OAuth authorisation code with PKCE S256, dynamic client registration, client ID metadata documents, refresh tokens and the scopes `mcp:read` and `mcp:write`, with the token accepted in the header only. Sessions are listed on the account's Integrations tab. The alternative is a Management API key whose scopes are fixed at creation and which can be disabled or deleted (28). Tools are read-only until `mcp:write` is granted at consent or on the key, API keys are limited to chosen environments, the Activity Log environment is shown through MCP only to Team Owners, and there is no delete tool. No confirmation step for writes was found (15). Trace, log and span content is untrusted text, and no injection guidance was found in the MCP docs (2). The Activity Log records OAuth sessions with requested and granted scopes and one event per query run with its source, MCP included. The compliance page describes activity logging as for enterprise customers (11). SOC 2 Type II each year, annual third-party penetration tests, HIPAA BAAs and a bug bounty by email with discretionary rewards. No security.txt, the trust centre is open only to Pro and Enterprise customers, and the bounty scope names ui.honeycomb.io and api.honeycomb.io, not the MCP hosts (15).
- Payments & pricing 30: No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Plan prices are public, Free and Pro from $150 a month for 50 million events, and MCP is in every plan with no per-call price (10). The Free plan is described as free forever and the signup guide asks for an email address or Google account with no payment step (20). A person signs up in a browser, a Team Owner enables Honeycomb Intelligence, and then OAuth consent or a Team Owner's API key is needed (0).
- Task success: Pending. Task success needs the category task suites run through each tool, which haven't run yet, so this run doesn't score it. Its weight is shared across the assessed categories until then. A data provider's data-quality score is published on its listing now and becomes half of this category when it's scored.
- Maintenance & community 61: The product changelogs at changelog.honeycomb.io and api-changelog.honeycomb.io disallow unnamed crawlers, so we didn't read them and scored from what else is dated. The docs sitemap gives 29 September 2026 for the tools reference, the companion plugin reached 1.2.2 on 20 September, and the AI policy page was updated on 21 September. Docs dates are weaker evidence than a release note (20). The plugin repository has 14 commits since 11 July, with fixes released on 21 August, 26 August and 20 September, and one explicit version bump. Half credit without the changelog (10). A support site, a community Slack and a `feedback` tool reach the team, and the plugin repository merged an outside contributor's fix on 17 July and has five open issues (10). `io.honeycomb/mcp` 1.0.0 is in the official MCP registry under the vendor's domain namespace, published 29 April 2026 (15). The plugin repository runs structural and scenario test workflows. The server itself is closed (6).
- Transparency & trust 68: The hosted server is closed, under published Terms of Service and Honeycomb Intelligence Supplemental Terms. The companion plugin is MIT (17). The privacy notice, the DPA and an AI policy page dated 21 September 2026 are public. The AI page says MCP's model provider is whichever the client uses, and that Honeycomb uses no provider that trains foundation models on input. Telemetry is deleted after the retention window, 60 days for most customers. The terms also let Honeycomb use customer data to improve its services, and the AI page says Honeycomb may fine-tune pre-trained models (22). The self-hosted server carries a deprecation notice dated 21 August 2025. No deprecation policy was found, the AI terms allow any Honeycomb Intelligence feature to be changed or ended at any time with commercially reasonable efforts at notice, and the docs say rate limits may change (6). The subprocessor list is public with purposes and countries, the DPA promises 30 days' notice of new subprocessors, and customers choose a US or EU data location (19).

Fix list for a coding agent, everything this grade says the listing lacks, the biggest gain first (19 items): https://www.anchorterminal.com/fixes/honeycomb-mcp.md (JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/fixes/honeycomb-mcp.json)

### What we couldn't check

- unchecked: changelog.honeycomb.io and api-changelog.honeycomb.io, whose robots.txt disallows every path to unnamed crawlers. Release cadence, breaking changes and the general availability date of the MCP server rest on docs dates, the registry and the plugin repository
- unchecked: tool input schemas, the size of the tool definitions and whether tools carry readOnlyHint and destructiveHint, since `tools/list` needs a Honeycomb account
- unchecked: how many tools the `query` and `canvas` toolsets load
- unchecked: the registration date of honeycomb.io. No RDAP service answered for the .io registry
- unchecked: whether signup asks for a card. The signup guide names no payment step and we did not open the signup form
- unchecked: documents inside the trust centre, which is open only to Pro and Enterprise customers
- The terms forbid using any technology or means not authorised by Honeycomb to access the service or extract data. The MCP server is an authorised route, and the clause matters before our probes run
- The lead was right on the endpoints, OAuth and the Honeycomb Intelligence requirement. It did not mention the Management API key route or that MCP is in the Free plan

### Sources

- MCP concepts and security model: <https://docs.honeycomb.io/integrations/mcp/concepts> (seen 2026-10-09)
- connection guide, API key auth and toolset header: <https://docs.honeycomb.io/integrations/mcp/configuration-guide> (seen 2026-10-09)
- tools reference, rate limits and scopes: <https://docs.honeycomb.io/integrations/mcp/tools> (seen 2026-10-09)
- troubleshooting and errors: <https://docs.honeycomb.io/integrations/mcp/troubleshooting> (seen 2026-10-09)
- prompts reference: <https://docs.honeycomb.io/integrations/mcp/prompts> (seen 2026-10-09)
- docs index for agents: <https://docs.honeycomb.io/llms.txt> (seen 2026-10-09)
- docs sitemap, page modification dates: <https://docs.honeycomb.io/sitemap.xml> (seen 2026-10-09)
- beta and early access list, MCP graduated: <https://docs.honeycomb.io/troubleshoot/product-lifecycle/experimental-features> (seen 2026-10-09)
- AI policies: <https://docs.honeycomb.io/security-compliance/ai-policies> (seen 2026-10-09)
- compliance and data privacy: <https://docs.honeycomb.io/security-compliance/compliance-data-privacy> (seen 2026-10-09)
- security and data protection: <https://docs.honeycomb.io/security-compliance/security-data-protection> (seen 2026-10-09)
- bug bounty programme: <https://docs.honeycomb.io/security-compliance/bug-bounty-program> (seen 2026-10-09)
- Management API keys and scopes: <https://docs.honeycomb.io/configure/teams/manage-api-keys> (seen 2026-10-09)
- Activity Log datasets: <https://docs.honeycomb.io/configure/teams/investigate-activity> (seen 2026-10-09)
- signup guide: <https://docs.honeycomb.io/get-started/create-account> (seen 2026-10-09)
- OAuth protected-resource metadata: <https://mcp.honeycomb.io/.well-known/oauth-protected-resource> (seen 2026-10-09)
- OAuth authorisation server metadata: <https://ui.honeycomb.io/.well-known/oauth-authorization-server> (seen 2026-10-09)
- pricing and plan comparison: <https://www.honeycomb.io/pricing> (seen 2026-10-09)
- Terms of Service: <https://www.honeycomb.io/terms> (seen 2026-10-09)
- Honeycomb Intelligence Supplemental Terms: <https://www.honeycomb.io/ai-terms> (seen 2026-10-09)
- Privacy Notice: <https://www.honeycomb.io/privacy> (seen 2026-10-09)
- Data Processing Addendum: <https://www.honeycomb.io/dpa> (seen 2026-10-09)
- subprocessor list: <https://www.honeycomb.io/subprocessors> (seen 2026-10-09)
- security.txt (404): <https://www.honeycomb.io/.well-known/security.txt> (seen 2026-10-09)
- status page: <https://status.honeycomb.io> (seen 2026-10-09)
- incident history, May to October 2026: <https://status.honeycomb.io/history> (seen 2026-10-09)
- US1 cold query outage, 10 August 2026: <https://status.honeycomb.io/incidents/fqv171nyvhyf> (seen 2026-10-09)
- MCP tool access degraded, 19 June 2026: <https://status.honeycomb.io/incidents/qkgzs5msfltc> (seen 2026-10-09)
- trust centre front page: <https://trust.honeycomb.io/> (seen 2026-10-09)
- MCP registry search: <https://registry.modelcontextprotocol.io/v0/servers?search=honeycomb> (seen 2026-10-09)
- companion plugin repository: <https://github.com/honeycombio/agent-skill> (seen 2026-10-09)
- deprecated self-hosted server: <https://github.com/honeycombio/honeycomb-mcp> (seen 2026-10-09)

## Who's behind it (provenance 71/100, checked 2026-10-09)

| Check | Finding | Points |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Legal entity named | Hound Technology, Inc. d/b/a Honeycomb | 20/20 |
| Domain age | honeycomb.io, no registry record we could read | 0/15 |
| Endpoint on the vendor's domain | mcp.honeycomb.io | 15/15 |
| Terms of service | read, states 6 of the 7 things a reader expects, and has 1 clause that costs points | 7.1/10 |
| Privacy policy | read, states 7 of the 8 things a reader expects | 9.3/10 |
| Status page | status.honeycomb.io | 10/10 |
| Changelog | published | 10/10 |
| security.txt | not found | 0/10 |

The Terms of Service (effective 22 May 2025) name Hound Technology, Inc. d/b/a Honeycomb, are governed by California law, and incorporate the Honeycomb Intelligence Supplemental Terms at honeycomb.io/ai-terms and the Data Processing Addendum at honeycomb.io/dpa.

The Privacy Notice (last updated 24 July 2025) covers the website and the services, and says it does not apply to content customers submit under a customer account. The DPA (last updated 22 May 2025) governs that content.

The MCP server answers at mcp.honeycomb.io and mcp.eu1.honeycomb.io, and the OAuth server at ui.honeycomb.io, all honeycomb.io subdomains.

www.honeycomb.io/.well-known/security.txt and /security.txt return 404. Reports go to security@honeycomb.io under a bug bounty programme whose stated scope is ui.honeycomb.io and api.honeycomb.io.

changelog.honeycomb.io and api-changelog.honeycomb.io disallow every path to unnamed crawlers in robots.txt, so neither was read.

The .io registry has no RDAP service that answered, so the domain's registration date is not recorded.

### Terms and privacy, as read

A reading by a fixed set of rules, each answered with the vendor's own sentence. Not legal advice.

**Terms of service** (https://www.honeycomb.io/terms), read 2026-10-08, dated 2025-05-22, states 6 of the 7 things a reader expects.

- To know. Says the terms or the service can change without notice (costs points). "We may make changes to the Terms or to the Service from time to time without prior notice to Customer."
- To know. Says access can be ended without notice or for any reason. "Customer agrees that we, in our sole discretion and for any or no reason, may terminate Customer’s User Account and access to the Service."
- Gives the date it was last updated. Last updated 2025-05-22.
- Names the governing law or courts. The law of the State of California.
- Says how changes to the terms are announced. Says it gives notice of a change.
- Not found in the text. Refers to a service level or uptime commitment.
- Also in the text (2026-10-08). During and after the term, Honeycomb may use customer data and data derived from it to improve its services and for development in connection with other Honeycomb products. "Honeycomb will have the right (during and after the term hereof) to (i) use such Customer Data (and data derived therefrom) to improve and enhance the Services and for other development, diagnostic and corrective purposes in connection with the Services and other Honeycomb offerings"
- Also in the text (2026-10-08). Honeycomb may name the customer as a customer and show its name and logo on its websites and in published marketing materials. "Customer hereby agrees that Honeycomb shall have the right to identify Customer as a customer of the Service, and display Customer’s name and logo (if any) in connection with such identification, on the Honeycomb websites and in our other published marketing materials."
- Also in the text (2026-10-08). After termination the customer loses access to its data through the service and Honeycomb may delete all of it. "After any termination hereof, Customer will no longer have access to Customer Data through the Service, and we may delete all such Customer Data."

**Privacy policy** (https://www.honeycomb.io/privacy), read 2026-10-08, gives no date, states 7 of the 8 things a reader expects.

- To know. Says it sells personal data or shares it for advertising. "Certain data collection and processing on our websites and other Services for purposes of interest-based advertising and social media tools may be deemed by applicable state laws, including the CCPA, a “sale” or “sharing” of personal information."
- Not found in the text. Gives the date it was last updated.
- Says how long data is kept. For as long as needed, with no period named.
- Gives a privacy contact. privacy@honeycomb.io.
- Says where data is transferred or stored. Relies on the Data Privacy Framework.
- Also in the text (2026-10-08). The notice does not cover content that customers submit to the services under a customer account. "This Privacy Notice does not apply to content submitted by Honeycomb customers to the Services under a customer account."
- Also in the text (2026-10-08). Some functions are run by third parties, including AI services such as OpenAI for Query Assistant, and personal data may be shared with them. "Certain features and functionality available to users of Honeycomb’s Services are provided by third parties, including certain embedded video services, such as YouTube, and certain AI services that power features like Query Assistant, such as OpenAI."

## Live (updated 2026-10-09 10:42 UTC)

- Right now: up, HTTP 401, 362 ms, checked 2026-10-09 10:42 UTC (mcp-initialize on `https://mcp.honeycomb.io/mcp`, asks for auth)
- Uptime 24h 100.0% (33 probes) · 30 days 100.0% (33 probes) · p50 342 ms · p95 395 ms
- Vendor status page: none, All Systems Operational
- Always current: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/live/honeycomb-mcp.json

## Probe metrics

Not measured yet. Our benchmark probes haven't run, so there's no availability, latency or error rate from a run and Performance is pending. Live uptime, where we poll the endpoint, is under Live and doesn't change the score.

## Prices

| Item | Price | Unit | Note |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Pro plan, 50 million events | $150 | per month (plan) | Starting price. MCP is also in the Free plan at no charge |

Across all listings: https://www.anchorterminal.com/prices/index.md

## Strengths

- OAuth with PKCE, dynamic client registration and two scopes. Write tools need `mcp:write`, granted at consent or on the API key
- Per-tool rate limits are published, from 10 calls a minute for `get_service_map` to 300 for semantic-convention lookups
- Listed in the official MCP registry as `io.honeycomb/mcp` 1.0.0, under the vendor's own domain namespace
- Included in the Free plan (20 million events a month), with separate US and EU endpoints
- The Activity Log records OAuth sessions with granted scopes and each query run with its source, MCP included

## Weaknesses

- Tool input schemas and annotations are visible only through `tools/list` after sign-in. The public reference gives descriptions, not parameters
- No guidance on prompt injection was found, although trace and log content returned to the agent is untrusted text
- The status page has no MCP component. US1 queries over older data failed for 67 minutes on 10 August 2026
- No SLA was found, and the AI terms allow Honeycomb to change or end any Honeycomb Intelligence feature at any time
- A Team Owner must enable Honeycomb Intelligence first, and API key scopes can't be changed after creation

## Before you call it (notes for agents)

1. Use https://mcp.honeycomb.io/mcp for US teams and https://mcp.eu1.honeycomb.io/mcp for EU teams. A team's data lives in one region only
2. If no tools appear after sign-in, ask a Team Owner to enable Honeycomb Intelligence in team settings
3. Send `X-MCP-Toolset: query` or `canvas` to load a subset of the 34 tools. An empty or unknown value makes every request fail
4. Call `get_workspace_context` first, then `find_columns`, before `run_query`. Pass absolute time ranges as epoch timestamps
5. For unattended runs send `Authorization: Bearer <KEY_ID>:<SECRET_KEY>` from a Management key with only Model Context Protocol and Environments scopes

## Connect

Claude Code:

```bash
claude mcp add honeycomb --transport http https://mcp.honeycomb.io/mcp
```

MCP client configuration:

```json
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "honeycomb": {
      "url": "https://mcp.honeycomb.io/mcp"
    }
  }
}
```

Headless / CI:

```json
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "honeycomb": {
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "mcp-remote",
        "https://mcp.honeycomb.io/mcp",
        "--header",
        "Authorization: Bearer $HONEYCOMB_API_KEY"
      ],
      "command": "npx",
      "env": {
        "HONEYCOMB_API_KEY": "\u003cKEY_ID\u003e:\u003cSECRET_KEY\u003e"
      }
    }
  }
}
```

Through letme (picks today, calling later): https://letme.dev/honeycomb-mcp. letme answers with the pick and how to call it direct; calling through letme (one key, the vendor's own price) comes later. How it works: https://www.anchorterminal.com/letme/index.md

## Similar tools

Ranked by shared capabilities, then score. Same-category tools with no shared capability key are listed last.

| Tool | Grade | Score | Rank | Shared capabilities | x402 | Markdown |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Grafana MCP Server | BB | 74.5 | 69 | observability.metrics, observability.logs, observability.traces | no | https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/grafana-mcp-server.md |
| Datadog MCP Server | C | 56.6 | 566 | observability.metrics, observability.logs, observability.traces | no | https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/datadog-mcp.md |
| Render MCP Server | B | 63.6 | 352 | observability.logs, observability.metrics | no | https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/render-mcp-server.md |
| LaunchDarkly | B | 69.2 | 185 | observability.logs | no | https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/launchdarkly.md |
| PostHog | B | 68.4 | 204 | observability.logs | no | https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/posthog.md |
| Sentry MCP | BB | 70.2 | 153 | same category (Observability & incidents) | no | https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/sentry-mcp.md |

## Panel reviews (0)

Reviewed by the Anchor panel (https://www.anchorterminal.com/reviewers/index.md): .

Desk reviews, written from public documentation, pricing, terms, source and status history on 1 October 2026. No calls made. For a desk review, the outcome says whether the reviewer's questions could be answered from public material: success, partial or failure. How reviews work: https://www.anchorterminal.com/reviews/how-it-works.md

## Notable

- 34 tools in 12 groups, 25 read and 9 write. Write tools cover Boards, Triggers, SLOs, notification recipients, Canvas investigations and feedback, and there is no delete tool (source: <https://docs.honeycomb.io/integrations/mcp/tools>)
- Per-tool rate limits per minute: 50 by default, 100 for `run_query` and `get_trace`, 20 for create tools, 10 for `get_service_map`. Limits apply per API key or per OAuth user (source: <https://docs.honeycomb.io/integrations/mcp/tools>)
- The endpoint answers 401 with a `resource_metadata` pointer, and the authorisation server at ui.honeycomb.io publishes PKCE S256, dynamic client registration and client ID metadata documents (source: <https://ui.honeycomb.io/.well-known/oauth-authorization-server>)
- Honeycomb's AI policy page lists the MCP server's model provider as client-dependent, and says Honeycomb uses no provider that trains foundation models on input (source: <https://docs.honeycomb.io/security-compliance/ai-policies>)
- The self-hosted server in honeycombio/honeycomb-mcp was deprecated on 21 August 2025 in favour of the hosted one (source: <https://github.com/honeycombio/honeycomb-mcp>)
- On 19 June 2026 the status page recorded 42 minutes of degraded MCP write tools, with read tools unaffected (source: <https://status.honeycomb.io/incidents/qkgzs5msfltc>)

## Compare

- [Datadog MCP Server vs Honeycomb MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/datadog-mcp-vs-honeycomb-mcp.md): C 56.6 vs C 58.3
- [Grafana MCP Server vs Honeycomb MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/grafana-mcp-server-vs-honeycomb-mcp.md): BB 74.5 vs C 58.3

## Verify this listing

For the vendor. The badge or a plain link to this page verifies the listing, from a page on honeycomb.io or one of its subdomains, or the README of github.com/honeycombio/agent-skill. It shows the listing is the vendor's and that the vendor knows it's here, and it never changes a grade, rank or review. The vendor sends the page's address to `POST https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/verify` as `{"slug": "honeycomb-mcp", "url": "…"}`, or calls the `verify_listing` tool at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp. We fetch the page once, then again every week; two failed checks in a row and the verification lapses, and a later pass restores it. What we check: https://www.anchorterminal.com/builders/index.md#verify

HTML badge:

```html
<a href="https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/honeycomb-mcp"><img src="https://www.anchorterminal.com/badges/honeycomb-mcp.svg" alt="Honeycomb MCP on Anchor Terminal" height="20"></a>
```

Markdown badge, for a README:

```markdown
[![Honeycomb MCP on Anchor Terminal](https://www.anchorterminal.com/badges/honeycomb-mcp.svg)](https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/honeycomb-mcp)
```

Plain link:

```html
<a href="https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/honeycomb-mcp">Honeycomb MCP on Anchor Terminal</a>
```

## Share this listing

For the vendor. Sharing assets for social media, two PNGs of 1200 × 630 that say Honeycomb MCP is listed on Anchor Terminal, with the vendor's logo and this page's address and no grade or score.

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