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The LiteLLM gateway acts as an MCP (Model Context Protocol) proxy — it forwards requests from AI clients to MCP servers and injects upstream credentials at the wire level. Agents never hold real MCP server credentials.

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Configuration

MCP servers are declared in config.yaml using the same dict-keyed format as LiteLLM: 
mcp_servers:
  github:
    url: https://api.github.com/mcp
    auth_type: bearer_token
    auth_value: os.environ/GITHUB_TOKEN
  postgres:
    url: http://localhost:5432/mcp
    auth_type: api_key
    auth_value: os.environ/POSTGRES_MCP_KEY
  public_tool:
    url: https://example.com/mcp
    auth_type: none

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Endpoints

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Route to a specific server

/mcp/{server_id}

curl -X POST $LAP_URL/mcp/github \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $MASTER_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"method":"tools/list"}'

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Auto-select server

/mcp
The gateway selects the server using (in priority order):
  1. x-litellm-mcp-server: <name> header
  2. ?server=<name> query parameter
  3. First configured server (if only one)
curl -X POST "$LAP_URL/mcp?server=github" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $MASTER_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"method":"tools/call","params":{"name":"search_repos","arguments":{"q":"litellm"}}}'
All MCP endpoints require Authorization: Bearer <master-key>.

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Supported auth types

TypeDescription
noneNo auth injected
api_keyAdds x-api-key: <value> header
bearer_tokenAdds Authorization: Bearer <value> header
basicAdds Authorization: Basic <base64> header
authorizationAdds a raw Authorization: <value> header
tokenAdds Token <value> header

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Referencing secrets

Auth values starting with os.environ/ are read from environment variables at boot: 
auth_value: os.environ/MY_MCP_TOKEN
This keeps credentials out of config.yaml and version control.

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Current limitations

These features from LiteLLM’s hosted MCP are not yet supported:
  • Multi-server aggregation behind a single /mcp endpoint
  • Per-request upstream credentials via x-mcp-{server}-{header}
  • oauth2 and aws_sigv4 auth types
  • sse and stdio transports (HTTP only)