PasteSheet icon PasteSheet logo mark — a spreadsheet grid with a curly brace on a green rounded square PasteSheet

A hosted alternative to self-hosted Sheets MCP

Open-source Google Sheets MCP servers are free but make you run them: a Google Cloud service account, credentials, and a process to host. PasteSheet is the hosted, zero-setup, read-only version — you paste a URL.

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Key facts

  • Google's API requires a Google Cloud project plus OAuth credentials or a service account before it will return a single row. source
  • A self-hosted server is free of licence cost, not free of work: a Cloud project, a service account, the Sheets API enabled, and a process you deploy, patch and keep online. source
  • The Google Sheets API allows 300 read requests per minute per project and 60 per minute per user. Past that it returns 429 RESOURCE_EXHAUSTED. source
  • It needs no Google Cloud project, no OAuth consent screen and no service-account JSON. You paste a share URL, and MCP is included on the Free plan.

What a self-hosted MCP server involves

Community servers like mcp-google-sheets are open source (MIT) and free to run. The catch is everything around them: you create a Google Cloud project, enable the Sheets API, generate a service account or OAuth credentials, then run the server yourself via uvx, Docker, or a hosted process — and keep it patched and online.

For a developer who wants full control and read-write access, that is fine. For everyone else, it is a lot of moving parts before an agent reads a single row — and most of these servers default to read-write.

Where PasteSheet is different

PasteSheet is the managed version of the same idea:

  • No infrastructure: nothing to deploy, patch, or keep online — the MCP server is hosted and edge-cached for you.
  • No Google Cloud: no project, service account, or OAuth client — a sheet shared "Anyone with the link" is read from a pasted URL. See the no-Cloud guide.
  • Read-only by design: the tools cannot mutate the sheet, so it is safe to hand to an agent — no accidental writes or injection risk.
  • Same sheet, three surfaces: the MCP server is also a REST API and an embeddable widget, from one query engine.

Which one you actually want

If you need read-write control, want to self-host for data-residency reasons, and are comfortable managing a service account, a community server is a great free option. If you want a sheet readable by an agent in two minutes with nothing to run, PasteSheet is the hosted alternative — start with the Google Sheets MCP overview.

Compare the setup burden in MCP vs Google's official servers.

What it costs

MCP is included on the Free plan. Connect any public endpoint over MCP with no Google Cloud project and no credit card. Private endpoints and the account-wide workspace server need a paid plan (from Starter ($9/mo)) for the keys and OAuth they authenticate with.

Pro adds full-text search and aggregation (count, sum, avg, group_by) that your AI agent can call through query_rows.

Starter

For indie makers shipping a real app.

$9 /mo
Endpoints
10
Requests / mo
50,000
Row cap
5,000
  • MCP for AI agents
  • Private endpoints & keys
  • Custom cache control
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Frequently asked questions

Why use PasteSheet instead of a self-hosted Sheets MCP server?

To skip the setup. Self-hosted servers need a Google Cloud service account and a process you host and maintain. PasteSheet is hosted, read-only, and connects from a pasted URL with no credentials to manage.

Is PasteSheet open source like mcp-google-sheets?

No. PasteSheet is a hosted service. The trade-off is convenience for control: you get a maintained, cached, read-only endpoint without running or patching anything.

Can I still keep private data private?

Yes. Paid plans provide private endpoints protected by a bearer key — without ever creating a Google Cloud service account or OAuth client.

Sources

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Turn your sheet into an API in minutes

Paste a Google Sheet URL and get a live REST API and MCP server — no backend, no code, free to start.

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