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GitHub vs grep.app MCP server
Verdict from our tests: grep.app passed more of our tasks (6 of 6) than GitHub (6 of 8). Both are in our developer tools and code category.
| GitHub | grep.app | |
|---|---|---|
| Overall | Partial | Works |
| Tasks passed | 6 of 8 | 6 of 6 |
| Sign-in | Token | None |
| Median task time | 592 ms | 325 ms |
| Slowest task | 1.0 s | 666 ms |
| Gotchas | 3 | 1 |
| Date tested | Oct 16, 2026 | Oct 16, 2026 |
GitHub: task by task
- Works connect (fine-grained PAT) (898 ms)
- Needs app setup connect (OAuth)
- Works list tools (592 ms)
- Works read (get_me) (506 ms)
- Works read (get_file_contents README.md) (1.0 s)
- Partial create in sandbox (issue_write via Tools tab) (336 ms)
- Works create in sandbox (issue_write via Apps tab form) (1.0 s)
- Works error handling (nonexistent repo) (547 ms)
GitHub gotchas
- After a failed OAuth attempt, click "Clear stored OAuth state" in the Inspector before switching to a token, or the connection keeps failing.
- OAuth does not work in clients that rely on dynamic client registration. Use a fine-grained personal access token instead, or a client with a pre-registered GitHub OAuth app.
- issue_write is an MCP Apps interactive form. Calling it as a plain tool shows a form and creates nothing, so clients without MCP Apps support cannot create issues this way.
Set up GitHub: Claude | Claude Code | Cursor | VS Code | ChatGPT
grep.app: task by task
- Works connect (no auth) (584 ms)
- Works list tools (202 ms)
- Works code search ("StreamableHTTPClientTransport(") (416 ms)
- Works regex search in one repo (666 ms)
- Works search with no matches (325 ms)
- Works error handling (number as query) (157 ms)
grep.app gotchas
- In our first run this call failed after about 15 s with an HTML error page instead of an MCP response. A retry worked in under 1 s.
Set up grep.app: Claude | Claude Code | Cursor | VS Code | ChatGPT
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