Remotion MCP Servers Compared (2026): Which Are Free?

Last updated: November 11, 2026. Remocn wrote this page, and Remocn is one of the servers compared. Facts about the other servers come from their own pages, repositories, npm and PyPI, and from live tools/list calls; see Sources.

Short answer: snapcn has a Remotion MCP server, but it needs a snapcn Pro key (from $179 a year). The Remocn MCP server at https://remocn.dev/mcp is free, needs no key and no account, and Remocn is MIT licensed. Remotion's own docs MCP server is gone: it shut down on October 26, 2026, and its npm package @remotion/mcp is deprecated.

Other free options exist, and some do things Remocn's server doesn't. React Video Editor hosts a template catalog MCP that answered without a key in our test. chuk-motion and PratyushChauhan/remotion-mcp-server are free, self-hosted and render MP4. Remocn's server is read-only: it plans and finds components, and you render with Remotion yourself.

Remotion MCP servers compared

Checked on November 11, 2026. Prices change; follow the links before you commit.

Remotion's own advice after the shutdown is to use its Agent Skills and the /remotion-docs skill, which is not an MCP server.

Which Remotion MCP servers are free?

Sorted by what "free" means in practice:

• Free, hosted, no key: Remocn (https://remocn.dev/mcp) and React Video Editor (https://www.reactvideoeditor.com/api/mcp). Add the URL to your client and call it.
• Free, you run it: chuk-motion, PratyushChauhan/remotion-mcp-server, and Instavar's local tools. They run on your machine; chuk-motion and PratyushChauhan's server also render MP4.
• Free server, paid service behind it: remotion-media-mcp, which calls kie.ai's paid API, and Instavar's hosted Studio tools.
• Paid: snapcn's MCP server, which needs a Pro key.
• Gone: Remotion's docs MCP.

Every one of them sits on Remotion, which keeps its own licence: free for teams of up to 3 people, with a paid Company License above that.

Does snapcn have an MCP server?

Yes. snapcn's Remotion MCP server runs locally with npx -y @snapcn/mcp@latest, and it needs Node 18 or newer and a snapcn Pro key from your snapcn account. Pro costs $179 a year or $279 once, per snapcn's pricing page, which lists the MCP server among Pro's features. It has six tools: search, component docs, video planning, a frame preview, recording analysis and rules.

If you want a free MCP server for a Remotion component library, Remocn's is free with no key. The two overlap: both search a component catalog, return a component's docs and plan a video.

Remocn vs snapcn vs React Video Editor

The three hosted or catalog-style servers answer the same question, "which piece goes in my video?", from different catalogs.

Pick snapcn when you want the agent to see rendered frames of your composition during the session, or to analyze a screen recording, and you already pay for Pro. Remocn's server can't do either.

Pick React Video Editor when you want whole templates as TSX rather than components you assemble.

Pick Remocn when you want a free hosted server, MIT components you own as source files, and a storyboard per beat with each component's natural length in frames.

Each server in detail

Remocn MCP server

A hosted catalog of Remocn's Remotion components. search_components finds components by what they do, get_component returns a component's docs as Markdown, plan_video turns a brief into a storyboard with suggested components per beat, and preview_component returns a live preview link that plays inline in clients that support MCP Apps. All four tools are marked read-only.

What it doesn't do: it never sees your code, writes no files and renders no frames. Your agent runs the install command and writes the composition, and you render with npx remotion render or Remocn Studio. Setup for every client: Remocn MCP server.

snapcn MCP server

A local server for the snapcn library. Its strength is snapcn_preview, which "renders frames of your composition with your own Remotion CLI and returns the images", so the agent can check its own work visually. It needs a Pro key.

React Video Editor MCP server

A hosted server over a template catalog. Its tool description calls it "the free Remotion (React) video template catalog". It returns template source, not components and not renders. RVE's video editor is a separate paid product.

chuk-motion

IBM's Python MCP server, published on PyPI as chuk-motion and described as a "design-system-first approach to AI-powered video generation". It exposes around 50 component tools that add pieces to a project, plus project, theme and render tools, and it renders MP4 through the Remotion CLI. Pick it when you want the MCP server itself to build and render the project.

Instavar MCP server

@instavar/mcp-server makes "local videos with Instavar templates for Remotion or HyperFrames for free". Its 15 free tools plan, scaffold and explain rendering; they "do not render, upload or publish media". With an API key, hosted Studio tools create and render videos, which may cost money.

remotion-media-mcp

Not a component catalog. It generates the media that goes into a Remotion project (images, video clips, music, sound effects, speech and subtitles) and saves the files to public/. It needs a paid kie.ai API key.

PratyushChauhan/remotion-mcp-server

A self-hosted server that scaffolds projects from templates and renders them to MP4 through the Remotion CLI, with a render queue. Pick it when an MCP tool call should produce a finished MP4.

mcp-use remotion-mcp-app

Not in the table above because it is an MCP App rather than a catalog or render server: the model writes Remotion code and a player shows the result inside Claude or ChatGPT. Its README describes no MP4 export. Source: github.com/mcp-use/remotion-mcp-app.

Which one should you use?

• You want ready-made components and a storyboard, free: Remocn.
• You want the agent to look at rendered frames while it works: snapcn, with Pro.
• You want an MCP call to output an MP4: chuk-motion or PratyushChauhan/remotion-mcp-server.
• You want whole templates as code: React Video Editor or Instavar.
• You need generated images, music or voiceover in the project: remotion-media-mcp.
• You want Remotion's own docs in the agent: Remotion's Agent Skills, now that the docs MCP is gone.

They combine. Remocn's server and Remotion's skills answer different questions, and a render server can sit next to a catalog server.

Add the free Remocn MCP server

Claude Code:

claude mcp add --transport http remocn https://remocn.dev/mcp

Cursor, in .cursor/mcp.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "remocn": {
      "url": "https://remocn.dev/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Claude Desktop and claude.ai: Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector, URL https://remocn.dev/mcp, OAuth fields empty. VS Code, Codex and stdio-only clients are on the MCP server page.

Then install what the agent picks into your Remotion project:

npx shadcn@latest add @remocn/typewriter

Sources

Checked on November 11, 2026.

• Remotion docs MCP: remotion.dev/docs/ai/mcp ("shut down on October 26, 2026") and the deprecation notice on @remotion/mcp in npm
• snapcn: snapcn.dev/remotion-mcp-server and snapcn.dev/docs/pricing
• React Video Editor: reactvideoeditor.com/remotion-templates/mcp, and a tools/list call to its endpoint without credentials
• chuk-motion: github.com/IBM/chuk-motion (redirected from chrishayuk/chuk-mcp-remotion) and the chuk-motion package on PyPI
• Instavar: github.com/instavar/mcp-server and @instavar/mcp-server on npm
• remotion-media-mcp: github.com/stephengpope/remotion-media-mcp and remotion-media-mcp on npm
• PratyushChauhan/remotion-mcp-server: its GitHub README
• Remocn: a tools/list call to https://remocn.dev/mcp and this site's registry

FAQ

What's next

• Remocn MCP server: tools, setup per client and a worked example
• Plugin: the /remocn:video workflow for Claude Code and Codex, which bundles the MCP server
• After Effects alternatives for developers: where Remotion and Remocn fit among programmatic video tools