Use Tanod PDF and document tools in Open WebUI as an MCP server

Updated 2026-10-16

Use when you run Open WebUI and want your models to read PDFs (including scans), convert Word and Office files to Markdown, pull tables out of a PDF or turn a bank statement into transactions, without installing a parser on your server.

Open WebUI supports MCP natively from v0.6.31. Tanod's documents server at https://tanod.dev/mcp/docs speaks Streamable HTTP and needs no sign-up, key or OAuth. Some tools have a free daily allowance per IP; the rest are priced per call and paid with x402, which Open WebUI does not do (see payment below).

What Open WebUI offers

From Open WebUI's docs (Model Context Protocol (MCP), read 16 October 2026):

• Native MCP needs Open WebUI v0.6.31 or later, and only Streamable HTTP is supported. Tanod's servers are Streamable HTTP.
• MCP servers can only be added by an administrator, under Settings > Admin > Integrations, in the External Tool Servers section. The admin can then scope the server to users or groups with Access Control.
• The connection Type must be MCP (Streamable HTTP), not OpenAPI; the docs warn that MCP settings in an OpenAPI connection can crash the page.
• Authentication: choose None. The docs note that choosing Bearer without a key sends an empty Authorization header, which many servers reject.
• MCP does not make a model better at using tools. Use a model with reliable native tool calling.

A test with the official MCP Python SDK (version 2.3.0, Streamable HTTP client) on 16 October 2026: initialize answered, 40 tools listed, and a free pdf_inspect call on the sample PDF returned its page count, 2.6 seconds end to end. I did not run an Open WebUI instance for this guide; the labels above come from its docs, so trust your screen if it differs.

Step by step

1. As an admin, open Settings > Admin > Integrations.
2. Under External Tool Servers, click + Add Connection.
3. Type: MCP (Streamable HTTP). Server URL: https://tanod.dev/mcp/docs. Auth: None. Save, and restart Open WebUI if it asks.
4. Optionally limit the server to some users or groups with Access Control.
5. In a chat with a tool-capable model, enable the Tanod tools and send one of the prompts below.

Three prompts to try

• "Extract the text of https://tanod.dev/samples/sample.pdf and give me a three-line summary." Uses extract_pdf, which has a free daily allowance per IP.
• "Inspect https://tanod.dev/samples/tables-sample.pdf and tell me how many pages and tables it has." Uses pdf_inspect, which also has a free daily allowance. Pulling the tables out as JSON or CSV is extract_pdf_tables, which has no free tier.
• "Convert https://tanod.dev/samples/sample.docx to Markdown and list its headings." Uses convert_document_to_markdown, which has no free tier: expect a payment-required result that the model reports back.

Each tool's description states its price per call and its free allowance, if any. Allowances are per IP address and reset each UTC day. Open WebUI calls MCP servers from its own server, so every user of one instance shares that server's allowance.

Where this fits next to community tools

Open WebUI's community site lists 924 tools (its public search API, read 16 October 2026). Search and scraping lead: Web Search has 57,185 downloads, Enhanced Web Scrape 20,723. For documents, OCR scanned pdf has 13,992 downloads. For bank statements there is nothing: a search for "bank" returns 4 tools, none about statements, and "invoice" returns 1, a PaperlessNGX search tool. Community tools are Python files you import and run on your own server; Tanod is a hosted MCP server you add by URL, and convert_bank_statement turns a statement PDF into dated transactions with balances (how it works).

Payment beyond the free allowance

Open WebUI's MCP connection has no way to pay x402. Calls past the free allowance, and every tool with no free tier, return an x402 payment-required result. For paid volume, call the HTTP API from code with an x402 client: see pay-per-call APIs for AI agents with x402 and paying with MPP on Tempo. Prices are per call in USDC; there is no account or key.

Other Tanod MCP endpoints

Same steps, a different Server URL. The free allowance applies per tool as above; many tools in these families have a free tier, some have none.

• https://tanod.dev/mcp/web: search, page to Markdown, screenshots
• https://tanod.dev/mcp/chain: EVM and Solana reads
• https://tanod.dev/mcp/finance: SEC financials, Treasury yields, ECB FX
• https://tanod.dev/mcp/images: image toolkit
• https://tanod.dev/mcp/ml: speech to text, embeddings, rerank
• https://tanod.dev/mcp/security: contract and package scans, phishing and OFAC checks
• https://tanod.dev/mcp/sky: METAR/TAF, airports, space weather
• https://tanod.dev/mcp/text: text tools
• https://tanod.dev/mcp/util: developer utilities
• https://tanod.dev/mcp/agents: index of x402 endpoints and MCP servers

Using AnythingLLM, Dify or n8n instead? See Tanod document tools in AnythingLLM, in Dify and in n8n. Connection trouble: MCP connection errors explained.

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