MCP Gateway

Table of contents

The MCP Gateway is Docker's open-source enterprise-ready solution for orchestrating and managing Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers securely across development and production environments. It is designed to help organizations connect MCP servers from the Docker MCP Catalog to MCP Clients without compromising security, visibility, or control.

By unifying multiple MCP servers into a single, secure endpoint, the MCP Gateway offers the following benefits:

  • Secure by default: MCP servers run in isolated Docker containers with restricted privileges, network access, and resource usage.
  • Unified management: One gateway endpoint centralizes configuration, credentials, and access control for all MCP servers.
  • Enterprise observability: Built-in monitoring, logging, and filtering tools ensure full visibility and governance of AI tool activity.

Who is the MCP Gateway designed for?

The MCP Gateway solves problems encountered by various groups:

  • Developers: Deploy MCP servers locally and in production using Docker Compose, with built-in support for protocol handling, credential management, and security policies.
  • Security teams: Achieve enterprise-grade isolation and visibility into AI tool behavior and access patterns.
  • Operators: Scale effortlessly from local development environments to production infrastructure with consistent, low-touch operations.

Key features

  • Server management: List, inspect, and call MCP tools, resources and prompts from multiple servers
  • Container-based servers: Run MCP servers as Docker containers with proper isolation
  • Secrets management: Secure handling of API keys and credentials via Docker Desktop
  • Dynamic discovery and reloading: Automatic tool, prompt, and resource discovery from running servers
  • Monitoring: Built-in logging and call tracing capabilities

Install a pre-release version of the MCP Gateway

If you use Docker Desktop, the MCP Gateway is readily available. Use the following instructions to test pre-release versions.

Prerequisites

Install using a pre-built binary

You can download the latest binary from the GitHub releases page.

Rename the relevant binary and copy it to the destination matching your OS:

OSBinary nameDestination folder
Linuxdocker-mcp$HOME/.docker/cli-plugins
macOSdocker-mcp$HOME/.docker/cli-plugins
Windowsdocker-mcp.exe%USERPROFILE%\.docker\cli-plugins

Or copy it into one of these folders for installing it system-wide:

  • /usr/local/lib/docker/cli-plugins OR /usr/local/libexec/docker/cli-plugins
  • /usr/lib/docker/cli-plugins OR /usr/libexec/docker/cli-plugins
Note

You may have to make the binaries executable with chmod +x:

$ chmod +x ~/.docker/cli-plugins/docker-mcp
  • C:\ProgramData\Docker\cli-plugins
  • C:\Program Files\Docker\cli-plugins

You can now use the mcp command:

docker mcp --help

Use the MCP Gateway

Run:

docker mcp gateway run

To view all the commands and configuration options, go to the mcp-gateway repository.