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Pitfall ChatGPT Plus MCP Availability

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Jm Rohmer edited this page Aug 20, 2026 · 1 revision

Pitfall: ChatGPT Plus MCP Availability

Symptom

On the ChatGPT Plus account tested on 2026-08-20, a custom connector completes OAuth and authenticated MCP initialize, but ChatGPT sends neither notifications/initialized nor tools/list. The UI reports that no actions are available.

ChatGPT remains an MCP-compatible client. This page records a plan-specific, dated availability result; it does not claim that Pro, Business, Enterprise, or Edu accounts fail.

Evidence

  • The same behavior was reproduced with read, write, and admin, including a strict read client using ?profile=reader.
  • Static OAuth and fresh DCR clients, rotated secrets, and real deployments of v1.8.8, v1.9.0, v1.9.1, and v1.9.2 all reached the same boundary.
  • The unchanged v1.9.1 binary had completed a real ChatGPT tool call on 2026-08-17, then failed without a server release from 2026-08-20 onward.
  • MCPJam completed discovery, DCR, PKCE, token exchange, initialize, and tools/list against the same deployment and loaded 32 read tools.
  • Claude.ai also remained operational against the server.

This isolates the incident from server version, credentials, granted scope, Cloudflare, and the MCP/OAuth implementation. Server logs cannot distinguish a ChatGPT plan restriction from another client-side eligibility check.

Official documentation conflict

Two OpenAI pages disagree as of 2026-08-20:

The second page is the current plan-availability warning. The first page is kept here because the contradiction is itself relevant diagnostic evidence.

Operator response

  1. Verify that /authorize, /token, and MCP initialize succeed.
  2. Check whether notifications/initialized and tools/list follow.
  3. Run the same endpoint through a neutral MCP client such as MCPJam.
  4. Record the ChatGPT plan and test date; do not generalize one plan's result.
  5. If the control client works, report the evidence to OpenAI Support.

Do not loosen redirect URI validation, grant broader scopes, rotate working credentials repeatedly, or roll back the server solely for this symptom.

Recovery gate

Mark the affected plan usable again only after a real ChatGPT reconnect reaches tools/list and completes a representative tool call. Keep ChatGPT in the compatibility matrix throughout; update only the dated plan-specific status.

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