Model Context Protocol (MCP) certification: When will it arrive and what will it mean?

The Model Context Protocol (MCP) was rolled out by Anthropic in November of 2024 and has rapidly become a hot topic among developers and enterprises alike. MCP is now a leading standard for connecting large language models (LLMs) with tools and data—and demand for developers who can work with it has skyrocketed.

Nevertheless, there’s still no formal certification of MCP skills offered by Anthropic or any other company or cert organization. Developers and hiring managers have to navigate various online courses and informal credentials instead. Nevertheless, industry observers think a push toward formal MCP certification is in progress—but also see limits to what certificates can really tell us about someone’s ability to work with the technology.

Formal MCP certifications are (probably) coming soon

“We already see that there is now a shortage of people who possess MCP skills that we are hiring for,” says Cameron Rimington, founder and CEO of IronPDF. “But there remains no standard on effective means of testing such competencies.”

A certification would fill that vacuum, says Adnan Masood, chief AI architect at UST. “MCP development skills are rapidly becoming ‘must-have’ in the AI field, and the industry is responding with educational programs to cultivate those skills,” he says. “While a standalone, universally recognized MCP certification doesn’t exist yet, it feels almost inevitable if MCP continues its rise.”

Amy Mortlock, vice president of marketing at ShadowDragon, says things are already brewing at Anthropic, the company that launched the MCP standard. “Anthropic is actively hiring roles that focus on MCP documentation, which suggests bigger plans for making the protocol more consistent and adding to it,” she says. “Development platforms like Zed, Replit, and Sourcegraph are also integrating MCP, and that kind of momentum usually leads to formal certification programs.”

Rimington, by contrast, thinks the first move will come neither from Anthropic nor from traditional certification companies, but with the hyperscale cloud vendors that are deeply invested in how MCP evolves. “I bet the first MCP [certs] will come out of the big three cloud vendors — AWS, Google, and Microsoft,” he says. “They are the providers with the greatest stake in standardizing the way AI systems interact with their systems.”

One thing Mortlock and Rimington agree on is that the fast-changing landscape will drive a relatively quick cert development process. Both see a certification rolling out within the next 12 to 18 months.

MCP courses and certificates available now

Until an official or widely accepted certification emerges, developers and hiring managers are turning to a patchwork of courses and training programs to gauge MCP skills. These offerings aren’t standardized, but they are already serving as a signal of talent in a rapidly growing field.

UST’s Masood says that such courses can provide ambitious developers a leg up. “If someone has invested the time to learn MCP — whether through a Hugging Face course, Coursera specialization, or building open-source MCP connectors—it gives them an edge in this fast-moving domain.” He also urges organizations to treat these credentials as meaningful, along with internal training and real-world work. “From a leadership perspective, I advise our teams to stay ahead of the curve: Encourage developers to take these courses or run internal workshops on MCP. Recognize those certificates and project portfolios — they reflect real, up-to-date knowledge in a space where there’s no traditional certification yet.”

ShadowDragon’s Mortlock thinks that enterprises are already moving in that direction. “Right now, hiring managers look at available courses and certificates to gauge MCP skills, especially ones with practical projects,” she says. “If you’re interested in MCP, taking these courses is smart. They offer a helpful starting point and something to share with employers before certifications are in place.”

Both Masood and Mortlock stressed that even unofficial credentials can carry weight when they come from trusted providers. Mortlock pointed to major platforms moving quickly: “Coursera, for example, offers a ‘Model Context Protocol Mastery’ course, while Hugging Face partnered with Anthropic to deliver a full MCP program that includes a completion certificate. DeepLearning.AI also introduced ‘Build Rich-Context AI Apps with Anthropic.’ Although these aren’t official certifications, they’re respected credentials from well-known names.”

Masood lays out a sequence for learners: “I am recommending our developers to start with Microsoft’s free MCP for Beginners open-source curriculum, then advance to Hugging Face’s Model Context Protocol Course (with Anthropic) that issues fundamentals and full completion certificates. On Coursera, options include Model Context Protocol Mastery and Intro to Model Context Protocol, both offering shareable certificates. For focused practical work, DeepLearning.AI and Anthropic offer MCP: Build Rich-Context AI Apps. Anthropic also hosts its own Introduction to Model Context Protocol course.”

Top MCP courses and certificates

Anthropic: Introduction to Model Context Protocol
Microsoft: MCP for Beginners (free, open-source curriculum)
Hugging Face and Anthropic: Model Context Protocol Course (fundamentals and full completion certificates)
Coursera: Intro to Model Context Protocol and Model Context Protocol Mastery
DeepLearning.AI and Anthropic: MCP: Build Rich-Context AI Apps

What certification can’t tell you

Even as demand grows for formal recognition of MCP skills, some in the industry doubt that certification alone could ever be a be-all end-all measure of capability. The technology is still maturing, the skill sets it requires are broad, and the ultimate value of MCP is highly context-dependent. Until those realities stabilize, a certification — or, for that matter, a certificate saying you’ve completed a course — can only go so far.

Ilse Funkhouser, Head of AI Engineering and CPO at Careerspan, cautions that the field is simply too unsettled for a certification to mean much right now. “Given how new this technology is, it’s likely still one-to-two years out before being certified is truly valuable,” she says. “Relatively few people have experience building MCP servers. Even fewer have experience with MCP clients. The technology is changing so rapidly that we need a certificate program with a shelf-life greater than three or four months when major shifts inevitably occur.”

Funkhouser thinks these problems are already arising around the training offerings currently available. “Current courses and certificates in emerging tech typically focus far too much on implementation, creating a huge shelf-life problem,” she says. “These early certificates can actually hurt hiring managers by providing false signals about skills that become obsolete quickly.”

Monojit Banerjee, lead in the AI platform organization at Salesforce, thinks showing mastery of MCP may be too narrow a focus. “A certification focused solely on understanding the protocol might not assess development skills for MCP,” he explains. “For example, Cisco Certified Network Associate is a very popular certification program for professionals in the IT and networking fields. In this certification, one must be proficient in TCP. However, only having knowledge about TCP is not enough to become a successful network expert.”

Heather Downing, developer advocate at InfluxData, raised similar concerns. “I don’t see formal certification becoming mandatory. You don’t see job requirements for ‘API certification,’ and MCP will follow the same pattern,” she says. “Security professionals who understand safe AI architecture will drive the real standards through audits and compliance frameworks. Since both best practices and the spec are constantly changing, being ‘MCP certified’ in 2025 just means you spent a few hours on coursework. What matters is staying current.”

Banerjee says that knowing how MCP clients and servers work is not the same as being able to use it effectively. “To assess MCP development skills,” he says, “we should also ensure that the person is well aware of MCP Gateway integration, server-sent events, security posture such as OAuth2 integration, and how to use various libraries such as FastMCP for rapid production-scale development.” He also points out that “many industry-standard certificates are valid for two years or more. With the rapidly changing landscape of LLMs and the overall AI space, including MCP, this is simply too long, as many things will change within this time frame.”

Any hiring process must include practical assessments, Banerjee concludes. “The hiring manager and panel should also have a way to evaluate practical knowledge of implementing MCP tools, with hands-on exercises tailored to the organization’s specific goals. This will help both the candidate and the hiring team find the correct fit.”

Downing is even more blunt. “For evaluating candidates, skip the certificates,” she says. “Focus on technical interviews by experienced engineering managers who can assess real understanding. Look for candidates who demonstrate adaptability and continuous learning and you’ll find the right developers for the task.”

 “Can candidates explain how they would design a protocol for an AI agent to securely access a database?” IronPDF’s Rimington adds. “More than any existing certification, this ability gives a clearer insight into their MCP readiness. We are interested in applicants that have strong experience in REST API development, webhook implementations and data streaming, because those skills are directly relevant to the tasks of MCP. Those who are able to build good integration layers across heterogeneous software systems usually are learning MCP patterns very fast, after they understand an AI context.”

Certification can’t teach judgment

For Careerspan’s Funkhouser, the sign of true mastery of a technology lies in the ability to assess it in context. “A valuable MCP certification needs to address the critical question: Can you accurately determine if this technology is actually needed for the business need? Early adopters need to be great advocates both for and against using MCP. “

 “Remember,” she adds. “MCP solely exists to cater to agentic systems—systems that are inherently probabilistic and exploratory, which means unpredictable resource usage and costs. For the rest of the world, we have REST, gRPC, SOAP, GraphQL, etc., that serve predictable consumers with known usage patterns. MCP’s single-consumer focus on AI agents creates a potential money sink because you’re building infrastructure specifically for the most resource-intensive and unpredictable type of consumer.”

That tension captures the real challenge: a certificate might prove that someone understands how MCP works, but it can’t show whether they know when it should be used. Until the technology stabilizes, employers will need to balance the signals from emerging training programs with deeper evaluations of judgment, adaptability, and hands-on skill.