Pieter Levels added MCP and JSON API endpoints to Nomads.com on Sept. 6, 2026, one day after setting lifetime signup at $1. He announced the interfaces in a post on X and described them as ready for agents.
The release lets AI clients search city data, review meetups and add trips to member profiles. Levels said the MCP and API work in much the same way, with the MCP intended for AI clients. Members can add past trips through POST on /api/trips or through /mcp instead of entering them by hand.
The release followed the pricing change reported by Go Big News on Sept. 5. Levels said the $1 charge was intended to reduce spam. He also said the site had 43,252 paid members after about 12 years and remained fully bootstrapped. The join page lists a one-time $1 lifetime membership and a $19.99 lite plan, and shows 45,114 members.
The MCP documentation says the server requires no authentication and costs nothing to connect. It covers 1,374 cities with live data and four cost types per city. Its tools are search_cities, get_city, list_meetups, get_trips and add_trip, with setup notes for Claude, ChatGPT, Grok and other streamable HTTP clients.
The JSON API documentation says the interface is designed to help AI assistants and developers find cities for remote work. GET routes cover search, the top 100 cities, individual cities by slug, meetups, the full city list and member trips. Meetup responses include the date, venue and attendance count, but not attendee identities. Trip histories are private to each account.
POST /api/trips requires a username, key, start and end dates, and either a city slug or coordinates. Coordinates are matched to the nearest Nomads.com city within 80 kilometers. Both interfaces cap searches at 100 results and traffic at 60 requests per hour for each IP address. They return curated fields and do not permit bulk exports. An llms.txt file updated Sept. 6 lists the same tools, API and limits.
A Nomads.com FAQ still says the company closed an earlier API in 2016 after six clones used its data. It also says licensed weather and traffic feeds cannot be redistributed.
Nomad List began as a spreadsheet comparing places by internet speed, weather and living costs. Other users added data after Levels shared it on Twitter, and he later built a paid community that initially operated on Slack. The service changed its name to Nomads.com on its 10th anniversary in 2024.
