ToolHive is Stacklok’s open-source platform for running Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers securely, at any scale from a laptop to Kubernetes. Released under the Apache-2.0 license with more than 2,300 GitHub stars and active development in 2026, it answers the question every team hits after the first MCP experiment: how do we run these servers in production without the security and operations chaos?
ToolHive runs every MCP server in an isolated container with a minimal permission profile, so a compromised or sloppy server cannot reach your local credentials. When configured with an identity source it enforces authentication and access policy per request, and it emits the audit logs and OpenTelemetry traces platform teams need for observability. Developers connect clients like Claude Code, Cursor and GitHub Copilot with one click, while platform engineers get a Kubernetes operator to declare MCP workloads and policies as code. Its semantic tool search also cuts the token overhead of large tool catalogs dramatically.
ToolHive’s core is free and open source under the Apache-2.0 license for individuals and self-hosting. Stacklok also offers commercial enterprise offerings for organizations that need supported, centrally managed MCP deployments.
ToolHive is for platform engineers, security teams and enterprises standardizing on MCP who need to give developers safe access to MCP servers โ and for individual developers who want one-command, sandboxed MCP servers locally.