MCP or the API?

EDITED's retail data is reachable two ways: the EDITED MCP server and the REST API. They're different ways in, built for different jobs — and they don't cover quite the same ground (more on that below). It's not a ranking, and not a choice you're locked into. This page helps you pick the right one for what you're doing.

Looking for the protocol-level explainer — what MCP is as an open standard? That's Concepts → What is MCP?. This page is about which EDITED surface to reach for.

Start with what you're doing

The fastest way to choose is to start from the job, not the technology:

• Exploring, asking questions, prototyping, or letting an agent work → reach for MCP.
• Integrating EDITED data into your own systems, automating a pipeline, or pulling data at scale → reach for the REST API.

That's the 80% answer. It isn't a hard rule — you can run production agents on MCP, and serious builders use both — but if you remember one thing, start from the verb.

The surfaces

Three programmatic surfaces — and they don't all reach the same data:

EDITED MCP — an interactive, self-describing interface built for exploration and agent/LLM workflows. Structured tool calls, normalized results, discovery built in. It reaches all three EDITED data domains — Competitive Market Data, Trend & Research, and Messaging & Promotions. Start at the Quickstart and How to query.

Query API (REST) — synchronous request/response for programmatic stats and option-level detail, over Competitive Market Data. The right choice when you want an exact aggregation, or to pull specific records into your own code. Reference docs are being brought onto the portal — in progress.

Jobs API (REST) — asynchronous bulk extraction over Competitive Market Data: submit a job, poll for it, download the results. The right tool for large historical, over-time pulls. Reference docs are being brought onto the portal — in progress.

MCP is the only programmatic route to Research and Promotions

The REST API — Query and Jobs — covers Competitive Market Data. EDITED's Trend & Research and Messaging & Promotions are available programmatically only through MCP; there's no REST API for them. So if your work touches research or promotions data, MCP isn't the convenient choice — it's the only one.

Which surface do I choose?

Your job	Surface	Why
Explore, ask questions, prototype, agent/chat	MCP	interactive, normalized, self-documenting
Work with trend & research reports	MCP	the only programmatic surface for Research
Work with messaging & promotions data	MCP	the only programmatic surface for Promotions
Reproduce an exact EDITED Market stat or chart	Query API	mirrors the app's aggregations
Pull individual option-level records in your code	Query API	synchronous REST, full option detail
Bulk or historical over-time extraction	Jobs API	async NDJSON, optimized for the job

The difference you'll feel most is normalized vs raw:

• MCP gives you normalized, comparable data — a clean vocabulary shared across retailers, so you can discover and compare fast.
• The API gives you the raw, complete record — the full option-level detail, including the messy richness a normalized vocabulary can't hold (brand-named fibers, free-text descriptions, per-panel composition). More to work with, but you handle the parsing.

Same data at different resolutions, for different jobs — neither is "better."

What makes MCP feel different

Beyond the protocol, MCP changes the experience of working with the data in one way worth calling out: it documents itself at the point of use. You — or your agent — can ask the tools what a field means, how it's derived, and where its edges are, mid-task, without leaving for a separate reference.

That's a different feel from reading reference docs, but it isn't that MCP is documented and the API isn't. Both surfaces are fully documented: the API's reference lives here on the portal, MCP's lives inline in the tools. Same knowledge, delivered where each surface's users are working.

Where to go next

If you want to…	Read
Make your first MCP call	Quickstart
Understand what data is available	The data
Search, filter, and pick the right tool	How to query
Understand MCP as a protocol	Concepts → What is MCP?
Browse every MCP tool and its schema	Reference
Get access and authenticate	Operations → Authentication

The REST API quickstart and reference are being brought onto the portal — in progress.