State of Model Context Protocol in Software 2026
We surveyed senior technical leaders at software companies to set benchmarks for MCP adoption. Software firms are leading the charge into MCP as they seek to multiply the return on their AI agent investments. Read the report to see where you stand relative to peers.
What’s Inside
Software leaders are moving quickly to put MCP into production, as they seek to secure developer tooling and amplify productivity.
- Nearly half of software companies are using MCP in production, with 19% already in broad production, ahead of both financial services and retail peers
- 49% of respondents tagged MCP adoption as a top-5 company-level initiative, the highest of any industry surveyed
- 35% of software teams have a strong preference for open source MCP platforms
- Software developers are the primary users (80%), followed by data analysts and scientists (68%)
- Top use cases: test generation and coverage (68%), code review and QA automation (67%), debugging production issues (56%)
- Security concerns are the top adoption obstacle at 64%, notably higher than retail or financial services peers, despite software facing less regulatory pressure
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