Can AI agents use vatnode?

Yes – vatnode publishes an official MCP server (vatnode-mcp) that works with any MCP-compatible client such as Claude, Cursor, or ChatGPT. Rate lookups and offline format checks run locally with no key; only live VIES validation needs a vatnode API key.

What the agent can do

The server exposes five tools:

• validate_vat_number – live VIES validation: validity, registered company name and address, registration date, and the VIES consultation number as a record of the check. This is the only tool that needs a key.
• get_country_vat_rates – standard, reduced, super-reduced and parking rates for one country, plus the VAT number format.
• list_eu_vat_rates – rates for all 27 EU member states plus XI for Northern Ireland.
• check_vat_format – offline syntactic check against the country’s pattern; it does not call VIES.
• list_supported_countries – the supported VAT jurisdictions and which of them are EU members.

Where your key goes

The server runs on your machine via npx, so your key goes directly to the vatnode API with no third-party proxy. The key stays in your own client config. The four keyless tools never make a network call.

Setup

Add an mcpServers entry that runs npx -y vatnode-mcp and, for live validation, set VATNODE_API_KEY in its env block. Restart the client and the tools appear in its tool picker. The MCP page has the config blocks for Claude Desktop and Cursor.

Scope

Live validation covers the EU-27 plus Northern Ireland (XI). UK domestic, US, Norwegian and Swiss VAT validation are out of scope. A client that does not support MCP can use the HTTP API directly with the agent brief at https://vatnode.dev/SKILL.md.