On September 25 (US time), Anthropic announced a developer portal for the Claude plugin directory. Anyone on a paid Claude plan can now submit a plugin, follow it through review, and, once it is live, see installs, listing views, and the search terms people typed before they found the listing. Two days earlier Anthropic had launched Claude Marketplace with more than 2,000 plugins and connectors on day one. In one line: the AI assistant now has an app store, and it hands developers a search report.
This did not come out of nowhere. When the Model Context Protocol (MCP) launched in November 2024, it was an open spec for connecting AI models to outside tools. OpenAI and Google adopted it in 2025, and that December it moved to the Agentic AI Foundation under the Linux Foundation. By the July 28, 2026 specification release, the official Tier 1 SDKs were seeing close to half a billion downloads a month, with the TypeScript and Python SDKs each past 1 billion total downloads. The new spec is stateless, so servers no longer hold sessions open and run on ordinary load-balanced infrastructure. Cheap supply means a flood of tools, and a flood of tools means platforms need a directory, a ranking, and a review process. Search optimization is spreading from web pages to AI tool listings.
Other platforms got there first. OpenAI opened ChatGPT app submissions on December 17, 2025, when VentureBeat put ChatGPT at 800 million+ users. The third-party directory Smithery shows more than 23,000 MCP servers on its homepage, and the MCP community runs an official Registry. The difference is control: Smithery is an open list, while Claude and ChatGPT run reviewed directories with trust labels. The category is consolidating, with traffic and trust moving to each platform's own directory and third-party lists becoming developer tooling.
Will small businesses feel it? If customers use your data or workflows every day (orders, bookings, quotes), yes: they may start expecting to check them from inside Claude. Below: the details, actions for three kinds of readers, a platform comparison, and a build-it-yourself route that needs no SaaS subscription.
The details and the numbers
According to Anthropic's directory publishing docs, a listing is either a single MCP connector (you supply a remote server URL) or a plugin bundle (a public GitHub repository that can hold skills, commands, agents, and MCP server references). The key rules:
- Who can submit: Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise plans only; free accounts cannot. Pro is US$20 a month billed monthly. There is no partner program to join first.
- Review: every plugin version gets automated validation and a security scan, and a person reviews each new listing. Connectors are scanned and listed as Community by default; Anthropic may escalate them to Verified review. Review time is not fixed.
- Reach: one listing appears on claude.ai, the desktop and mobile apps, Cowork, and Claude Code.
- Data: installs by product surface and version, runs per skill and MCP server, error rates, listing views, and the search terms that led to them.
- First come, first served: the first organization to submit a given GitHub folder owns that listing, and a connector's URL slug is permanent once published.
The winners are SaaS products and stores that already have an API they can put into the conversation. The losers are brands with website content but nothing an assistant can call.
What to do now, by role
Business owners
- List the three things customers most often call or message about (order status, stock, rescheduling). That is the scope of version one.
- Test demand through the Community tier before committing a large budget.
Marketers and SEO practitioners
- Write the listing name and description the way you would write a title tag and meta description: use the verbs customers search for, not a slogan.
- Export the search-term report monthly and use it to fill gaps in your site's FAQ and content.
Developers and agencies
- Audit the client's existing API and ship read-only tools first. Hold back write actions until permissions are designed.
- Listings belong to the submitting organization, so agree on who submits before you do it for a client.
Platform and tool comparison
| Platform | Who can list | Review | Data for developers | Best fit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude plugin directory | Paid plans (Pro from US$20) | Automated scans plus human review of new listings | Installs, runs, error rates, search terms | B2B tools, workflows |
| ChatGPT App Directory | OpenAI developer platform account | Reviewed after submission | Not listed in the submission announcement | Consumer services |
| Smithery | Open listing | Review process not published | Varies | Developer use, testing |
| Official MCP Registry | Open source, free | Community maintained | No marketing data | Discoverability for other MCP clients |
What the launch posts leave out
- A search report is not control over ranking. The docs say Anthropic decides the Verified label and where a listing is placed during review, and there is no application for either. You see the data; the ranking rules stay private.
- The 2,000 listings lean heavily on big brands. The Marketplace post names Atlassian, Google, Microsoft, Notion, and Salesforce. For a small brand, being found through directory search looks a lot like chasing App Store downloads from zero in 2010.
- A plugin is a live API. Server changes take effect immediately with no scheduled re-review, so maintenance is an ongoing cost, not a one-off project.
The no-subscription route for small businesses
- In a Laravel project, the official laravel/mcp package (
composer require laravel/mcp) turns existing Eloquent queries into MCP tools, with Sanctum or OAuth 2.1 for authentication. - Test locally with
php artisan mcp:inspector, then add the server to your own Claude account as a custom connector and try it with real tasks. - Register the same server in the open-source official MCP Registry so other AI clients can find it too, instead of tying yourself to one platform.
- ☐ Listed the three questions customers ask most
- ☐ Confirmed which APIs can be exposed read-only
- ☐ Decided which organization account will submit
- ☐ Drafted a keyword-aware listing name and description
FAQ
Does a small business have to pay to list a plugin in the Claude directory?
The submitter needs a Pro, Max, Team, or Enterprise plan; Pro is US$20 a month billed monthly. Anthropic lists no separate listing fee, and there is no partner program to join first.
What is the difference between an MCP connector and a plugin bundle?
A connector is one remote MCP server submitted by URL. A plugin bundle lives on GitHub and can hold skills, commands, and server references. Anthropic recommends submitting both and pairing them.
What data do you get after publishing?
Plugins show installs, versions, runs, and error rates. Connectors get a dashboard with server health and usage by tool. Listings also show views and the search terms behind them.
My take
The popular line is that every brand should rush to build an AI plugin, the way every company needed an app in 2010. I think the opposite. Over the next 18 months, most small-business plugins will almost never be found by strangers searching the directory, and anyone treating them as an acquisition channel will be disappointed. The value is retention: letting existing customers check an order or move a booking from inside Claude and cutting support back-and-forth. The companies that should build one already have steady customers and data, not a new brand hoping to go viral.
A second call: the search-term report is most useful as free keyword research you feed back into your own website.
For ScriptWalker, a Taiwan-based Laravel and Flutter studio, the opportunity is a fixed-scope service that turns an existing Laravel back office into an MCP connector: API audit, read-only tools, OAuth, directory submission, and a monthly usage report, starting at NT$60,000. It depends on back-end permission design, which is where a development shop has the edge over a pure marketing agency. To check whether your system is a fit, get in touch:
- Email: [email protected]
- Phone: 0916-224-047
- LINE: @ufv9089p
Sources
- Primary: Anthropic: Build plugins for Claude (Sept 25)
- Primary: Anthropic: Claude Marketplace (Sept 23)
- Primary: Claude docs: Publish to the directory, Manage your listing after publishing
- Primary: Claude release notes
- Primary: MCP blog: The 2026-07-28 Specification
- Primary: OpenAI: Developers can now submit apps to ChatGPT
- Primary: Laravel docs: Laravel MCP
- Third-party: BleepingComputer on Claude Marketplace
- Third-party: Unite.AI on the submission portal
- Third-party: VentureBeat on the ChatGPT App Directory
- Third-party: Smithery MCP directory