Claude Connectors Guide (2026)

If you have been using Claude only inside its chat window, you have been using maybe 20% of what it can do. Connectors are the rest. Each one is a small, scoped permission that lets Claude reach into a specific app you already use (your inbox, your calendar, your Slack workspace, your GitHub repos), pull the relevant data, and either summarize it, draft a response, or perform an action you confirm. The 414 connectors live behind a single settings panel. This guide walks through what they are, how to add one, what you can actually do with them, what is safe to assume about privacy, and the full directory organized so a non-technical reader can find the right starting point.

Connectors are how Claude stops being a clever chat partner and becomes a real workmate. Once your AI can read your inbox, your repo, your CRM, and your docs, the conversation shifts from “help me draft this” to “do this for me.”

What is a Claude connector?

A connector is a permission-controlled bridge that lets Claude communicate with one specific external service on your behalf. Anthropic builds and reviews the official connectors with the underlying vendor. When you add one, Claude does not get blanket access to your account; you grant a specific set of permissions (read inbox, draft replies but never send, see calendar events, etc.), and you can revoke them at any time from the same settings panel.

Under the hood, most connectors use either OAuth (the same authorization standard you use when you click “Sign in with Google” on a third-party app) or an API key you generate inside the source app and paste into Claude. The OAuth ones tend to be the consumer-grade integrations (Gmail, Calendar, Notion); the API key ones tend to be developer-grade (Supabase, Snowflake, Sentry).

If you have used the Model Context Protocol (MCP), connectors are Anthropic’s polished, partner-vetted layer on top of that same idea. MCP is the open standard; connectors are the curated integrations.

Which apps does Claude connect to in 2026?

As of May 2026, Anthropic and its partners ship 414 connectors across roughly thirty distinct work categories. The full list is below in the directory section. The headline groups, in plain English:

• Email, calendar, and meeting tools (Gmail, Outlook/Microsoft 365, Google Calendar, Zoom, Fathom, Read AI, Fireflies)
• Team chat and files (Slack, Microsoft Teams, Google Drive, OneDrive, Box, Dropbox)
• Project and task management (Linear, Asana, monday.com, ClickUp, Notion, Atlassian Jira/Confluence)
• CRM and sales (HubSpot, Salesforce, Apollo.io, Attio, Clay, ZoomInfo)
• Marketing and analytics (Klaviyo, Mailchimp, Mixpanel, PostHog, Ahrefs, Semrush)
• Design and creative (Figma, Canva, Miro, Adobe Creative Cloud, Descript, ElevenLabs)
• Engineering and DevOps (GitHub, Sentry, Vercel, Cloudflare, Datadog, Supabase, Snowflake)
• Automation platforms (Zapier, Make, n8n, Composio, Tines)
• Finance and accounting (Stripe, PayPal, QuickBooks, Xero, Brex, Ramp, Mercury)
• Legal tech (Docusign, PandaDoc, Ironclad, CoCounsel, NetDocuments)
• Research and reference (PubMed, Wolfram, FactSet, PitchBook, Morningstar, Consensus)
• Travel, bookings, and everyday life (Expedia, Booking.com, Tripadvisor, Resy, StubHub, Instacart)

Anthropic adds new partners every few weeks. The directory near the bottom of this page is the May 2026 snapshot; the canonical live list lives in your Claude settings panel.

How do I add a connector to Claude?

Five steps. Allow about three minutes for most consumer connectors, longer for enterprise ones that require admin approval.

1. Open Claude in a desktop browser or the Claude desktop app. Mobile works for some, but the setup flow is cleaner on desktop.
2. Open the toolbox icon in the bottom-left of the Claude sidebar, click Customize, then click Connectors.
3. Click the + in the top-right of the connectors panel. Choose Browse connectors to see the Anthropic and Partners directory, or Add custom connector if you have a private MCP server URL.
4. Find the connector you want in the directory (search or scroll). Click the + on its card. The OAuth flow opens. Sign in to the source app (Gmail, Slack, etc.), review the scopes Claude is requesting, then approve.
5. Test with a small prompt. For Gmail: “Read the subject lines of my five most recent unread emails.” For Slack: “Show me the last 10 messages in #general.” If Claude returns the data, the connector is live.

If the connector is on the API-key path (Supabase, Snowflake, Sentry, most developer tools), you generate a key in the source app’s admin panel and paste it into Claude instead of going through OAuth. The end state is the same.

Detailed step-by-step walkthroughs for the most-used connectors live in our How to Use Claude AI guide and in the individual connector posts linked from the directory below.

What can I actually do with Claude connectors?

The simplest framing: connectors do not change what Claude can think. They change what Claude can see. The intelligence is the same; the inputs are bigger. Here is a representative set of real prompts that become possible only with connectors:

• Gmail: “Summarize my unread emails into a one-paragraph briefing. For the three that need a reply, draft something professional but warm.”
• Google Calendar: “What are my next three meetings? Who am I meeting with and what was our last interaction?”
• Slack: “Summarize today’s #engineering channel in five bullets. Flag any decisions that were made.”
• Google Drive: “Find the most recent draft of the Q2 plan and pull out the three biggest open questions.”
• GitHub: “Show me open pull requests assigned to me, prioritized by which ones are blocking other people.”
• HubSpot: “Find leads added this week who match our ICP. Draft a personalized first-touch email for each.”
• Linear: “Pull all bug tickets opened in the last seven days and group them by component.”
• Notion: “Read the meeting notes from yesterday’s offsite and create five action items in my task database.”
• Stripe: “Summarize this month’s revenue, broken down by product. Compare to last month.”
• Zoom + Fathom: “Pull the transcript of yesterday’s client call. List every commitment I made and draft a follow-up email.”

Two patterns dominate: read-then-summarize (Claude pulls a chunk of your data and condenses it into something useful) and read-then-draft (Claude pulls the data, then writes a reply, email, or document grounded in what it just saw). Almost every connector use case is a variation on one of those two.

The most leveraged use case across the entire catalog is what we call the meeting-to-action loop: meeting capture connector pulls the transcript, Claude extracts decisions and action items, Slack or email connector drafts the follow-ups. Once that loop is wired up, it pays for the Claude subscription monthly.

Are Claude connectors safe?

Yes, with informed caveats. Three things to internalize before adding sensitive connectors:

• Scopes are real and respected. When you grant Claude “read inbox, draft replies, never send,” that is what it can do. It cannot escalate. Most damage scenarios people worry about (Claude sending an email by itself, deleting files) require permissions you did not grant.
• Data passes through Anthropic during the request. Claude needs to see your inbox content to summarize it. Per Anthropic’s privacy policy, data accessed via connectors is not used to train models (for paid plans) and is not retained beyond what is needed to complete the request. If you have a stricter compliance requirement (PHI, ITAR, GDPR special category data), check Anthropic’s Trust Center and your organization’s policies before connecting.
• You should revoke aggressively. If you no longer use a connector, remove it from Settings → Connectors. Each active connector is one more attack surface and one more access path you have to keep tracking.

For high-trust contexts (legal, medical, financial), start with read-only connectors and add the write-capable ones only after you have watched what Claude actually does with the read access for a week.

How much do Claude connectors cost?

The connector itself is free for every paid Claude plan (Pro at $20/month, Max at $100/month, Team, and Enterprise). What costs money is the underlying app subscription: you need a paid Gmail/Workspace account to use the Gmail connector, a Slack workspace for the Slack connector, a HubSpot plan for the HubSpot connector, and so on. Claude does not charge per connector and does not meter connector usage separately from your regular Claude token budget.

Free Claude users do not see the connector directory. This is the single biggest reason to upgrade to Pro if you have been on the free plan and you have started running into the limits.

See our current breakdown at What’s New in Claude 2026 for the latest pricing tiers and any changes since this page was last refreshed.

Which Claude connectors are most popular?

Anthropic ranks the most-installed connectors directly inside the Directory. As of May 2026, the official top eight (in order) are:

1. Google Drive · search, read, and upload files instantly
2. Gmail · draft replies, summarize threads, search your inbox
3. Google Calendar · manage your schedule and coordinate meetings
4. Canva · search, create, autofill, and export Canva designs
5. Figma · generate diagrams and better code from Figma context
6. Notion · search, update, and power workflows across your Notion workspace
7. Atlassian Rovo · access Jira and Confluence from Claude
8. Microsoft 365 · SharePoint, OneDrive, Outlook, and Teams in one connector

The ranking shifts as Anthropic ships new partners and as the underlying apps trend. The directory shows live popularity badges (Most popular, #2 popular, etc.) the moment you open it.

Which connector should I start with as a beginner?

If you have never used a connector, pick the one that touches the thing you already spend the most time in. For most non-technical readers that is one of four:

• Google Drive. Most popular connector for a reason. Once Claude can see your docs, “find the deck from last quarter” and “summarize this PDF” become five-second prompts.
• Gmail. Ranked #2. Inbox triage, draft replies, and search across years of email. Sets up in about three minutes.
• Google Calendar. Ranked #3. Pairs naturally with Gmail. “What is my day?” becomes a useful prompt the moment this is connected.
• Notion. Ranked #6, and the most popular non-Google connector. If your meeting notes, project docs, or company wiki live in Notion, this is the one that turns Claude into a knowledge worker on your behalf.

For the actual prompts that get you started fast with each, see our Best Claude Prompts collection or the Library product card below.

The 414 Claude connectors, organized by category

Snapshot date: May 24, 2026. Counts shift as Anthropic adds partners. The category names below match the cluster naming we use in our individual connector posts.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need to be a Pro subscriber to use connectors?

Yes. Free Claude users do not see the connectors directory. Pro ($20/month), Max ($100/month), Team, and Enterprise plans all have access. If you have been a free user and you find yourself wanting two or three integrations, the Pro upgrade pays for itself within a week.

Can I build my own Claude connector?

Yes, via the Model Context Protocol (MCP). MCP is the open standard underneath all official connectors. If the app you want is not in the official 414, you or a developer on your team can build a custom MCP server that exposes the same kind of capability. The official catalog is the curated, partner-vetted layer; MCP is where you go if you want to wire up an internal tool or a niche service.

What is the difference between connectors and MCP?

Connectors are the official, partner-vetted versions of MCP integrations. Anthropic builds them with the source vendor, reviews permissions and scopes, and ships them through the Claude settings panel. MCP is the open protocol that anyone can implement. Think of connectors as the App Store and MCP as Linux.

Will my data be used to train Anthropic’s models?

For paid Claude plans (Pro, Max, Team, Enterprise), Anthropic does not use customer data for model training by default. This includes data accessed via connectors. Connector data is processed to complete your request and is not retained beyond what is needed. The full policy lives in Anthropic’s privacy notice and the Trust Center.

Can I revoke a connector?

Yes. Settings → Connectors → find the connector → click Disconnect. The OAuth token is revoked and Claude loses access immediately. For extra peace of mind, you can also go to the source app (Gmail, Slack, etc.), open its security or app-permissions panel, and revoke Claude’s access there as well. Both paths achieve the same result.

Does using a connector slow Claude down?

A connected request takes a few seconds longer than a pure chat request, because Claude has to call the connector, wait for the data, and then think about it. For most use cases the latency is 2-5 seconds total, which is comparable to opening a file manually. If you are doing a very large pull (read 500 emails, summarize all of them), expect proportionally more time.

Which connector is the most useful?

For non-technical readers, Gmail. Inbox triage and reply-drafting are the highest-frequency knowledge-worker tasks, and Gmail’s API is mature enough that Claude can do the full read-and-draft loop reliably. For developers, GitHub. For sales teams, HubSpot or Apollo.

Sources

• Anthropic: Introducing Connectors · official launch announcement
• Anthropic docs: Claude Connectors reference
• modelcontextprotocol.io · the open standard underneath every connector
• Anthropic Trust Center · current privacy and compliance posture
• Anthropic privacy notice · what happens to data accessed via connectors

You might also like

• How to Use Claude AI · the complete beginner walkthrough
• Best Claude Prompts: 50 Examples · the prompts non-technical readers actually use
• Best AI Prompts by Job and Use Case · 60+ prompt packs organized by role and artifact
• Anthropic Academy: Free Courses · structured learning path from Anthropic
• Anthropic’s Free Skills Library · the layer above connectors
• Prompt to Workflow: The AI Ladder · how to graduate from prompts to skills to plugins to workflows
• How to Edit AI Out of Your Writing · the 29-pattern editorial pass
• What’s New in Claude 2026 · latest features, pricing, roadmap