Stripe API reference, SDKs and MCP server

Last updated: September 2026 · Data from Stripe's public OpenAPI document, checked 2026-09-26

Browse the Stripe API from Stripe's own OpenAPI document, see what it contains at a glance, and find the official SDKs and MCP server in one place.

What the Stripe API covers

The Stripe API is a REST API for accepting payments and running the money side of an online business. The obvious parts are payments (PaymentIntents, Checkout Sessions, refunds, disputes) and billing (products, prices, subscriptions, invoices). Around those sit a lot of less obvious products: Connect for platforms that pay out to other businesses, Issuing for creating cards, Treasury, Terminal for in-person payments, Radar for fraud rules, Tax, and Financial Connections for linking bank accounts.

That breadth shows up in the document. Counting operations by their first path segment, the biggest areas are customers (47 operations), test_helpers (44), treasury (33), issuing (32), accounts (30) and billing (29). The test_helpers group is worth knowing about: those endpoints only work in test mode and let you simulate things that normally take days, such as advancing a test clock through a billing cycle.

Stripe now ships two API generations side by side. Almost everything lives under /v1/, where request bodies are form-encoded (application/x-www-form-urlencoded), which is why raw curl examples use -d flags instead of JSON. A newer /v2/ namespace takes JSON bodies and currently holds 32 operations, mostly under core (accounts and event destinations) plus a few in billing and commerce. Stripe explains the split in its API v2 overview.

Stripe OpenAPI document at a glance

We computed these numbers from latest/openapi.spec3.json in stripe/openapi (the file Stripe's README recommends for new projects) on 2026-09-26.

Stripe also publishes a preview/ folder with public preview endpoints and a legacy openapi/ folder that is v1 only (431 path items, 612 operations). Note that the version string in the repository can run ahead of the docs: on the day we checked, Stripe's versioning page listed 2026-08-26.dahlia as current, while the document on master already said 2026-09-30.endive.

Authentication

Every request needs an API key, and every request must go over HTTPS. Stripe's authentication docs describe three kinds of server-side key:

• Test mode secret keys start with sk_test_ and work against a sandbox.
• Live mode secret keys start with sk_live_ and can reach every resource on the account.
• Restricted keys (rk_live_ in live mode) carry only the permissions you give them. You can create as many as you need, in test and live mode. Stripe recommends these over the full secret key in live mode.

You send the key as the username in HTTP Basic auth with an empty password (curl -u sk_test_...:), or as Authorization: Bearer .... That is exactly what the two security schemes in the OpenAPI document describe. Keep keys out of source code and client-side apps; read them from a secrets vault or an environment variable, as the examples below do.

Versioning

Stripe versions its API by date plus a release name. Since 2024-09-30.acacia, Stripe releases a new version every month without breaking changes, and twice a year it starts a new major release that can contain breaking changes.

Which version a request uses depends on how you call the API. Raw HTTP requests use your account's default version (set in Workbench) unless you send a Stripe-Version header. Recent official SDKs pin the API version that was current when that SDK version was released, so upgrading the SDK is how you move to a newer API version. Webhook endpoints have their own version, set when you create the endpoint. If you use a pinned SDK, create your webhook endpoints with the same version or the payload shapes will not match your types.

Official Stripe SDKs

These examples use Stripe's own official server-side SDKs, not SDKs generated by Scalar. Stripe maintains libraries for Node.js, Python, Go, Ruby, PHP, Java and .NET; the three shown here are MIT licensed. Each example creates a customer.

npm install stripe

// Official Stripe library: https://github.com/stripe/stripe-node
import Stripe from 'stripe'

const stripe = new Stripe(process.env.STRIPE_SECRET_KEY)

const customer = await stripe.customers.create({
  email: 'jenny.rosen@example.com',
})

console.log(customer.id)

pip install stripe

# Official Stripe library: https://github.com/stripe/stripe-python
import os

from stripe import StripeClient

client = StripeClient(os.environ["STRIPE_SECRET_KEY"])

customer = client.v1.customers.create(
    params={"email": "jenny.rosen@example.com"},
)

print(customer.id)

go get -u github.com/stripe/stripe-go/v86

// Official Stripe library: https://github.com/stripe/stripe-go
package main

import (
	"context"
	"fmt"
	"log"
	"os"

	"github.com/stripe/stripe-go/v86"
)

func main() {
	sc := stripe.NewClient(os.Getenv("STRIPE_SECRET_KEY"))

	customer, err := sc.V1Customers.Create(context.TODO(), &stripe.CustomerCreateParams{
		Email: stripe.String("jenny.rosen@example.com"),
	})
	if err != nil {
		log.Fatal(err)
	}

	fmt.Println(customer.ID)
}

Latest releases on 2026-09-26: stripe-node v22.6.2, stripe-python v15.6.1, stripe-go v86.4.2. Use a sk_test_ key while you try these out.

Stripe MCP server

Stripe runs its own official MCP server at https://mcp.stripe.com. Use that one if you want an AI agent to work with your Stripe account. According to Stripe's MCP docs, it authenticates with OAuth or with an agent API key, and from October 31, 2026 it stops accepting full-access secret keys and restricted keys that do not carry the Agent tag. For example, in Claude Code:

claude mcp add --transport http stripe https://mcp.stripe.com/

Scalar does not host an MCP server for Stripe's API, and you do not need one.

Host an MCP server for your own API with Scalar

If you are building an API of your own (perhaps one that sits in front of Stripe), you can give it the same kind of agent access without writing server code. Scalar generates an MCP server from your OpenAPI document and hosts it for you at mcp.scalar.com, so there is nothing to deploy or patch when your API changes.

claude mcp add \
  YOUR_MCP_SERVER_NAME \
  https://mcp.scalar.com/mcp/YOUR_MCP_SERVER_ID \
  --header "Authorization: YOUR_PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN" \
  --transport http

The same OpenAPI document can also produce your API reference and SDKs (TypeScript, Python, Go and CLI are generally available).

Official Stripe documentation

• Stripe API reference
• Stripe OpenAPI repository and its changelog
• API changelog and upgrade guide
• Server-side SDKs
• Stripe MCP server

Frequently asked questions

Related

• Learn: What is MCP? · Generate an MCP server from OpenAPI
• Docs: MCP servers guide
• Product: Scalar Agent — a hosted MCP server from your own OpenAPI document, with OAuth and nothing to deploy

Stripe is a trademark of Stripe, Inc. This page is not affiliated with or endorsed by Stripe. Statistics were computed by Scalar from Stripe's public OpenAPI document on 2026-09-26, and facts about authentication, versioning, SDKs and the MCP server come from Stripe's documentation as linked above, checked the same day. If something is wrong or out of date, please open an issue.