A small travel price tracker shipped an MCP connector in about a week, got listed in Claude's directory, and says it picked up 24,000 accounts without spending a cent on ads.
The post went up on r/mcp this week from the founder of SlickTrip, a flight and hotel price tracker. In September he built an MCP connector for it with Claude Code. It went live in Claude's directory at the end of September. And then, in his words, it took off.
It's one founder's numbers and nobody outside the company has checked them. But it's a rare data point on whether anyone finds your MCP server once it's live.
What's actually new
Here's the timeline as the founder tells it. For about two weeks after launch SlickTrip was trending in the directory and getting up to 1,500 sign-ups a day. It has since settled at about 250 a day. Total so far is 24,000 new accounts, no ads.
He credits the listing, and specifically what happens inside a chat. When someone asks Claude about flights or hotels, he says Claude recommends SlickTrip right next to Expedia and Booking.com. He also says 20,000+ people have the tools connected, so every time they ask Claude about a trip, Claude can call SlickTrip.
ChatGPT went the other way. SlickTrip is live in that store too, but the founder said he'd been waiting a month for approval, and until you're approved the app search doesn't find you. Later in the thread he corrected himself a bit: he did get approved after a couple of weeks, but he isn't verified, so ChatGPT can't surface SlickTrip in chat suggestions the way Claude does. His takeaway: if you're launching an MCP server right now, launch on Claude first.
For an agent that connects through MewCP, use the SlickTrip MCP page in the MewCP gateway. It provides the hosted server configuration with managed authentication, credentials kept out of the model's context, and access to SlickTrip's tools through one gateway endpoint.
Why it matters if you build agents
The interesting part isn't the sign-up count, imo. It's where the users come from. Say someone asks Claude "what's the cheapest way to get to Lisbon in March". If the model reaches for your tool in that moment, you've got distribution that no landing page gives you. The founder assumes a good chunk of his current daily sign-ups come from exactly that, Claude recommending SlickTrip mid-chat, with the early spike coming from sitting at the top of the directory list. He's guessing on the split though and says so.
So the directory is kinda an app store where the model is the store clerk, deciding mid-conversation. Clear tool names and descriptions matter more, because the model is the one reading them.
The SlickTrip page also shows some good habits for a connector that strangers will install. Tools that only read are marked read-only. Tools that create or change an alert are marked as writes, and stopping an alert is marked destructive, so the assistant can tell them apart and confirm with the user first. SlickTrip never books, cancels or moves money, and the connector only touches the signed-in user's own records.
One thing to know about those markings in MCP: they're hints from the server. The client decides whether to respect them. That's fine when the client is Claude asking a human, but if you're building your own agent that calls servers like this one, you probably want a hard rule and not a hint. A gateway like MewCP lets you choose which tools each agent can use, down to "read and send, but not delete", and anything switched off is stopped before it reaches the app. Same idea on the account side btw. SlickTrip had to build per-user sign-in into its connector, and if your own product's agent acts for many users, MewCP runs each call on the accounts that user connected, nobody else's.
What people are saying
The r/mcp thread was mostly builders comparing notes on approval queues. One commenter had been waiting three weeks for directory approval and had just emailed to ask what was holding it up. The founder's answer in another reply was that directory approval took about two weeks for Claude and three for ChatGPT. Another builder said OpenAI changed its approval process partway through their review, and they had to modify their app and resubmit to get unblocked.
The money question came up fast. Asked how he makes money from MCP usage, the founder said both the web app and the connector are free, he has some ideas but nothing soon. His win for now is having 24,000 users who reach for SlickTrip whenever they ask Claude about travel. One commenter compared it to running a bus service from someone else's bus stop. FWIW the SlickTrip page says it earns an affiliate commission from some sellers when a booking follows its links, so there is some revenue path.
On cost, the founder said he needed a Claude business account, about thirty dollars per user he thinks, with two users. A commenter noted you'd lose the connector if you cancel, so call it $60 a month forever. The founder said 300 users a day is worth it.
Asked if people use the tools or connect and forget, he shared internal numbers: 30,000 session loads a day and about 1,500 usage. He didn't define either.
Open questions
A bunch of this is unverified. All the numbers come from the founder's own post and replies, with no dashboard or third party behind them. They also don't fully line up: the post says about 250 sign-ups a day now, and a later reply says 300. The post says 24,000 accounts and 20,000+ with tools connected, which may or may not be the same group.
The ChatGPT story shifted inside the thread too, from waiting a month, to 40 days, to approved but not verified. His feeling that Claude "gives everyone a two-week spike" at launch isn't something Anthropic has said, and the paid-plan detail is from his reply, not an official source.
Still, a week of work for a shot at in-chat recommendations is a cheap bet. Just budget for the approval wait.
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