Openvan.camp Travel Data

@openvancamp/mcp-server

Official MCP server for OpenVan.camp — free, no-auth, machine-readable vanlife and RV travel data for AI agents.

Exposes 30 read-only tools via the Model Context Protocol so you can ask your AI assistant about:

• Whole road trips — plan_road_trip builds an OpenVan.camp roadbook: day-by-day plan with overnights, budget (fuel, tolls, vignettes, ferries), entry and vehicle rules for every country on the way, and a shareable roadbook page
• Fuel prices across all API-supported countries, using the same price keys as /api/fuel/prices
• Toll roads — per-km rates, vignettes, toll bridges and tunnels by country; toll estimate for a route
• Holidays and peak traffic — public and school holidays (regional), official peak traffic days
• Travel hazards — UK FCDO advice level, GDACS natural disasters, NASA FIRMS active fires of the last 48 hours
• Power plugs — plug types, mains voltage and frequency, campsite hook-up connector (CEE17)
• Customs rules — food bans, cash declaration, alcohol and tobacco limits, with official quotes
• VanSky vanlife weather suitability scores (0-100) for countries and cities
• Typical weather (climate) on any day of the year for any city or point — ERA5 2021–2025: temperature, precipitation days, sea temperature, solar radiation, the best month to travel
• VanBasket food price index (world average = 100)
• Currency conversion (150+ currencies)
• Events (expos, festivals, meetups, road trips)
• News stories in 7 languages
• Visa and border rules — entry mode, length of stay, how the days are counted, temporary vehicle import
• License plates of the world — formats, region codes, plate check, and the plate itself as an image

Every tool also returns an interactive card (MCP Apps) that Claude and ChatGPT render right in the chat: weather with the best and toughest cities of the week, fuel and toll tables with a currency switch, visa terms with a leave-by date, event and news carousels, the whole trip plan. Hosts without MCP Apps get the same data as text.

Data is CC BY 4.0. Attribute OpenVan.camp when citing.

---

Install

Claude and ChatGPT (no install)

The server is listed in both directories — open the page and press Connect:

• Claude: OpenVan.camp in the Claude connector directory
• ChatGPT: OpenVan.camp in the ChatGPT app directory

Remote (no-install, for web-based clients)

Connect your MCP-compatible host to the hosted Streamable HTTP endpoint:

https://mcp.openvan.camp/mcp

No authentication. Attribution is automatic (?source=mcp-server-sse). Intended for ChatGPT Apps SDK, browser-based agents, and serverless integrations.

Claude Desktop

Edit ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json (macOS) or %APPDATA%/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json (Windows):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "openvan": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@openvancamp/mcp-server"]
    }
  }
}

Restart Claude Desktop. The tools should appear in the 🔧 panel.

Cursor / Windsurf / Continue

Add to your MCP config:

{
  "openvan": {
    "command": "npx",
    "args": ["-y", "@openvancamp/mcp-server"]
  }
}

Any MCP-compatible host

The server speaks MCP over stdio. Run:

npx -y @openvancamp/mcp-server

---

Tools

Tool	Description
plan_road_trip	Whole trip between 2–10 places via the OpenVan.camp roadbook: day-by-day overnights, budget, per-country entry and vehicle rules (Schengen 90/180), holidays, safety, power, checklist, link to the roadbook
get_country_travel_brief	One country at a glance: entry and allowed stay for your passport, weather, fuel, road rules, holidays for the next 30 days, safety, power plugs, customs, food prices
get_fuel_prices	Current retail fuel prices per country
compare_fuel_prices	Compare one fuel type across 2–10 countries
find_cheapest_fuel	Top cheapest (or most expensive) countries by fuel type, filterable by region
get_country_travel_weather	Campervan travel weather score (0-100), solar yield, 7-day forecast for one country
get_city_travel_weather	Campervan travel weather of one city or town: today and the coming 7 days, place among the cities of the country, comfortable days, worst day, today's score breakdown, advice
get_city_climate	Typical weather on any day of the year in a city or at any point (ERA5 2021–2025): day/night temperature, precipitation days of 35, sea, solar, VanSky climate index, 12 months and the best month
list_best_weather_countries	Top N countries with the best travel weather today or for the coming week (period=week, the site ranking), filterable by region, or sorted by warmth
list_events	Vanlife events (expos, festivals, meetups) with filters
get_event	Details for one event by slug
search_stories	Vanlife news: headline, short summary and link to the story page on openvan.camp (7 languages)
compare_food_prices	Food price index comparison between two countries
get_country_food_prices	Food price index details for one country
rank_food_prices	Countries ranked by food prices (cheapest or most expensive), filterable by region
get_currency_rate	Currency conversion between 150+ currencies
check_visa_rules	Entry rules for one passport and destination, with confidence and source
get_route_visa_rules	Visa rules for a whole route, up to 10 passports, plus the tightest leg
get_vehicle_import_rules	Temporary import rules for a foreign-plated vehicle
list_license_plate_countries	Countries with license plates: international code, regions, example plate
get_license_plate_country	Plate format and every region code of one country
check_license_plate	Validate a plate number and resolve its region code
get_license_plate_image	Illustrative image of a standard civilian plate (PNG inline + SVG/PNG links)
get_toll_rates	Toll reference for one country: per-km rates by vehicle class, vignettes, bridges and tunnels
estimate_route_tolls	Toll cost for a route of 2–10 place names as a EUR range, flags partial results
get_holidays	Public holidays, school holidays (with ISO 3166-2 regions) and peak traffic days for up to 400 days
get_travel_hazards	FCDO travel advice level and current GDACS disasters with alert level in one country
get_active_fires	NASA FIRMS satellite fire detections of the last 48 hours in a bounding box up to 10°×10°
get_power_plugs	Plug types (IEC A–N), voltage and frequency, campsite hook-up connector in Europe
get_customs_rules	Customs rules on entry by car: food, cash, alcohol, tobacco, fuel canister, with source quotes

All tools are readOnlyHint: true and openWorldHint: true (they call the public openvan.camp API). Safe to allow by default.

---

Renamed in 0.7.0: get_vansky_weather → get_country_travel_weather, list_vansky_top → list_best_weather_countries, get_vanbasket → get_country_food_prices, compare_vanbasket → compare_food_prices. The hosted server at mcp.openvan.camp still accepts the old names.

Example prompts

• "Plan a campervan trip from Munich to Venice with a German passport."
• "What's the weather for a motorhome in Málaga this week?"
• "What's the cheapest diesel in Europe right now?"
• "Compare fuel prices between Germany, France, and Spain."
• "Is Spain a good place to van-camp this week? What about solar yield?"
• "Find upcoming vanlife festivals in Germany this summer."
• "Convert 500 EUR to Turkish lira using today's rate."
• "How expensive is food in Portugal vs Turkey?"
• "Which Russian region is plate code 199? Show me a plate with it."
• "Are there school holidays or peak traffic days in France next week?"
• "Any wildfires near Valencia right now?"
• "Can I bring cheese and sausage into Norway by car?"

---

How it works

The server is a thin TypeScript wrapper around the public OpenVan.camp REST API:

MCP host ─► @openvancamp/mcp-server ─► https://openvan.camp/api/*

plan_road_trip creates a roadbook through POST /api/roadbook/from-places, waits for the route build and computes the plan with the roadbook's own engine (engine/, a copy of the openvan.camp roadbook code made by npm run sync-engine), so the answer matches the roadbook page.

Every outbound request automatically appends ?source=mcp-server for attribution tracking and sets a descriptive User-Agent (openvan-mcp/<version>). This helps us credit MCP integrations in public reports and segment traffic.

Configuration

Environment variables (optional):

• OPENVAN_API_URL — override the base URL (default https://openvan.camp)
• OPENVAN_SOURCE — override the attribution tag (default mcp-server)

Rate limits

120 requests / minute per IP. Responses include X-RateLimit-Remaining headers. If you hit the limit, contact [email protected] to request a higher quota for your integration.

---

Development

git clone https://github.com/openvancamp/openvan-camp-public-api.git
cd openvan-camp-public-api/mcp-server
npm install
npm run build
npm start

Smoke-test via stdio:

printf '%s\n%s\n%s\n' \
  '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"initialize","params":{"protocolVersion":"2024-11-05","capabilities":{},"clientInfo":{"name":"test","version":"0.0.0"}}}' \
  '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","method":"notifications/initialized"}' \
  '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":2,"method":"tools/list"}' \
  | node dist/index.js

---

License

MIT for this server. Data returned by the server is licensed CC BY 4.0 — please attribute OpenVan.camp when using it.

Links

• Website: https://openvan.camp
• AI agents landing: https://openvan.camp/ai
• OpenAPI schema: https://openvan.camp/.well-known/openapi.json
• Claude connector: https://claude.ai/directory/connectors/openvan-travel
• ChatGPT app: https://chatgpt.com/plugins/plugin_asdk_app_69e458a2ea748191a71a07f7f673234c
• Telegram bot: https://t.me/OpenVanCampBot
• How to connect (for readers): https://openvan.camp/en/assistant
• Contact: [email protected]