AI agents are good at reading, writing and deciding, and bad at one boring thing that keeps showing up in real work: the file is in the wrong format. The contract is a DOCX and the system wants PDF. The screenshot is HEIC. The recording is WAV and the transcription API wants MP3. The file-convert.online MCP server gives any MCP-capable agent a set of tools to fix that itself, using the same conversion engine that powers the website.
What an MCP server does for file conversion
MCP, the Model Context Protocol, is the open standard through which AI clients discover and call tools. A client such as Claude Code, Cursor or Claude Desktop connects to a server, reads its tool list and lets the model call those tools during a conversation. The FileConvert server exposes eight tools that together cover the complete workflow: fetch or upload a file, start a conversion, watch its progress, get the result, check the remaining credits.
The practical effect is that a prompt like "convert these three MOV clips from the shared drive to MP4 and put the links in the ticket" becomes something the agent can just do. It calls convert_file for each URL, polls get_job_status, collects get_download_url results and moves on. No SDK, no glue code, no format id tables: formats are named by extension.
What it can convert
More than 110 formats in six categories, all through the same tools:
- Documents: pdf, docx, doc, odt, rtf, txt, xlsx, xls, csv, pptx, ppt. Document to PDF is the single most requested conversion by agents, closely followed by PDF to DOCX for editing.
- Images: png, jpg, webp, gif, heic, svg, tiff, bmp, psd, ico. Converting phone photos (HEIC) and vector assets (SVG) into formats every tool accepts is the everyday case.
- Audio: mp3, wav, m4a, flac, aac, ogg, opus. Useful in front of transcription and voice pipelines that accept a narrow set of inputs.
- Video: mp4, mov, mkv, avi, webm, wmv. Heavier jobs, priced accordingly, still finished server-side without the agent holding the bytes.
- Archives: zip, 7z, tar, gz, bz2, xz, rar, iso and more.
- Ebooks: epub, mobi, azw3, fb2, djvu, htmlz.
Conversions run within a category (image to image, document to document). The catalogue is available to the agent at any time through list_formats and to you at file-convert.online.
The tools, briefly
- convert_file(source_url, source_format, target_format): fetches a public URL with SSRF protection, uploads it and starts the job in one call.
- upload_file(filename, content_base64) then start_conversion(file_id, source_format, target_format): the path for files the agent holds locally, such as an attachment in a chat.
- get_job_status(job_id): Pending, Processing, Completed or Failed with the reason. Most jobs complete in seconds.
- get_download_url(job_id): a shareable link to the result, no authentication needed, valid for about an hour by default.
- get_balance(): credits left and where to get more.
- list_formats() and get_upload_url(): discovery and raw-HTTP helpers for agents that want them.
Every tool description is written for the model, and the server sends usage instructions on connect, so an agent that has never seen FileConvert follows the right sequence on the first try. Errors are phrased the same way: an exhausted balance says what a conversion costs and where to top up; an unsupported extension lists the closest matches; a rate limit says to back off. The full reference is the README at file-convert.online/blog/file-convert-mcp-server-readme.
How it compares to other file conversion MCP servers
Two open-source servers come up in every search for this topic, and both are excellent at what they do.
- Microsoft's markitdown-mcp converts documents into Markdown for LLM consumption. It runs locally, has no authentication and produces one output format. It is the right tool when the goal is to feed a PDF or a PowerPoint to a model as text.
- mcp-pandoc wraps Pandoc, again locally, for conversions between document markup formats such as Markdown, DOCX, HTML and LaTeX. It needs Pandoc and often extra tools installed on the machine running the agent.
FileConvert is different in three ways. It is hosted, so nothing is installed next to the agent and the same endpoint works from a laptop, a CI runner or an n8n cloud workflow. It is authenticated with per-account API keys, which makes it usable in teams and in products. And it covers images, audio, video, archives and ebooks in addition to documents, with the heavy lifting (video transcoding, image processing) done on our servers. If you only need documents to Markdown on your own machine, markitdown is a fine choice; if you need real files in real formats from anywhere, this server is built for that.
Cloud converters such as CloudConvert reach agents mostly through third-party automation platforms rather than a native MCP endpoint. FileConvert's MCP server is first-party, documented with an OpenAPI twin, and priced with a free daily allowance so you can evaluate it without a card.
Security and privacy
A server that fetches URLs on behalf of an AI is an obvious target for server-side request forgery, so convert_file refuses private, loopback, link-local and cloud metadata addresses, pins DNS answers per request, re-validates every redirect and caps downloads at 200 MiB. API keys are stored hashed and can be revoked in a minute. Files are private to the account and deleted automatically when their retention window ends: about an hour for results by default, extendable to 14 days through the REST API when a workflow needs it.
Pricing
Conversions cost credits by category: 1 for images, 2 for documents, audio, archives and ebooks, 5 for video. Free accounts get 10 credits a day whenever their balance is empty, which is enough to try the integration for real. Plans with monthly allowances and higher rate limits are listed at file-convert.online/pricing, and get_balance tells the agent where it stands before it starts a batch.
Get started in two minutes
Create an account, generate a key at file-convert.online/account/api-keys, and add the server to your client. With Claude Code it is one command:
claude mcp add --transport http fileconvert https://file-convert.online/api/mcp/v1/mcp \
--header "Authorization: Bearer fc_live_YOUR_KEY"For Cursor, Windsurf, VS Code, Claude Desktop, ChatGPT and n8n see the client setup guide at file-convert.online/blog/add-file-conversion-mcp-server-to-claude-cursor-vscode, or follow the quickstart at file-convert.online/blog/file-convert-mcp-server-quickstart. Prefer plain HTTP? The REST API behind the tools is described at https://file-convert.online/api/mcp/openapi.json.