How to connect Claude to Notion. Two ways, step by step.

Most people trying to connect Claude to Notion hit the same wall: they find a tutorial for the manual setup, get lost in a config file they have never seen before, and give up before Claude ever reads a single page. That got easier in July 2026, when Notion shipped native External Agents support, with Claude as one of the first two agents available. You may not need the config file at all.

01Pick your method

Both methods end in the same place: Claude can read (and in some setups, write to) your Notion workspace. They differ in where the connection lives.

02The native connector

In Notion, go to Settings → Notion AI → Agent → Manage external agents. Claude appears as one of the available agents. Authorize it, then choose which pages or databases it can see. That's the entire setup. No file to edit, nothing to install.

03The manual MCP setup

This is the version most existing tutorials cover, and it's still the right call for Claude Desktop or Claude Code, or if you want narrower control over exactly what Claude can reach.

Step 1. Create an internal integration at notion.so/my-integrations. Name it something you'll recognize later ("Claude access" is fine), and copy the integration token it gives you.

Step 2. Open the specific Notion page or database you want Claude to see. Click the ··· menu in the top right, choose Connections, and add the integration you just created. Notion only shares what you explicitly connect, page by page.

Step 3. Point Claude at Notion's MCP server. In Claude Code, the fastest way is the CLI:

# adds Notion's hosted MCP server to Claude Code
claude mcp add notion --transport http https://mcp.notion.com/mcp

If you're on Claude Desktop instead, add the same server to your config file directly:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "notion": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "mcp-remote", "https://mcp.notion.com/mcp"]
    }
  }
}

04Test the connection

In Claude Code, run /mcp and confirm Notion shows up as connected. In Claude Desktop or Claude.ai, just ask it directly: "What Notion pages can you see right now?" If it lists the page you shared in Step 2, you're done.

05When it doesn't connect

This integration has a few known rough edges. If you hit one of these, it's not something you broke.

None of these mean you set something up wrong. They're documented, active issues on Anthropic's and Notion's own trackers as of this writing, not signs you missed a step.