Connecting Claude to your bank account with Era

Ask Claude about your money and get answers from your real balances and transactions, not from a statement you pasted in. Era Context, Era's connector for Claude, links Claude to your bank accounts, credit cards, and investments in about five minutes. On Era's free plan, Claude reads your balances and transactions. On a paid plan, it can also recategorize transactions, add tags, and set up rules for you. No CSV exports. No copy-pasting statements.

This guide covers the quickest route, adding Era Context from Claude's connector directory, and the custom-connector route as a backup. Developers using Claude Code will find their setup near the end. By the end, you'll have Claude pulling live balances, analyzing spending patterns, and answering questions about your finances in plain language.

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What you need before you start

• A Claude account on any plan, including Free
• A bank account, credit card, or investment account at an institution Era supports. Era connects accounts across the US, the UK, Canada, France, Germany, Spain, and 40+ countries in all.
• About five minutes

That's it.

Step 1: Create your Era account

Go to era.app and sign up. The Basic tier is free and includes two connected accounts with read-only MCP access — enough to follow this entire guide.

You'll verify your email and land in Era Context. This is where you manage your bank connections and control which assistants can reach them.

Step 2: Connect your bank

From Era Context, start the connect flow to link a bank account. Era reaches your institution through regulated aggregators: you sign in to your bank in a connection flow run by one of them, and Era never has your bank login.

Select your bank, sign in with your online banking credentials, and complete any multi-factor authentication your bank requires.

Once connected, you'll see your accounts and recent transactions appear in Era Context. If you have a chequing and savings account at the same bank, both will show up automatically.

Step 3: Add Era Context to Claude

The quickest route is the Add to Claude button at the top of this page. It opens Era Context's listing in Claude's connector directory, where it's marked Anthropic verified. Choose Add to Claude on the listing, then sign in to Era when Claude sends you there.

Add Era Context as a custom connector instead

If you'd rather add Era Context by hand, use Claude's custom connectors:

1. In Claude, open Customize, then Connectors.
2. Select +, then Add custom connector.
3. Paste Era Context's address, https://context.era.app/mcp, and add the connector.

Custom connectors work on every Claude plan. Claude's Free plan allows one custom connector, so Era Context can be the one you add.

Step 4: Approve Claude's access

When Claude connects to Era Context for the first time, Era shows its OAuth approval screen, the standard sign-in step apps use to ask for access. This is where you explicitly grant Claude permission to access your financial data through Era.

Review the permissions, confirm, and you're connected. Every MCP client needs this approval before it can connect. Nothing connects silently.

Step 5: Try your first query

Open a new conversation in Claude and try something like:

"What's my chequing account balance?"

Claude will pull your live balance from Era Context and respond with the current number. Nothing else to set up, no APIs to learn. Claude now has real financial context.

Here are more things to try:

• "How much did I spend on dining out this month?"
• "Show me my recurring charges"
• "Compare my spending this month to last month"
• "What's my cash flow look like?"
• "List all my transactions from Amazon this year"
• "Which of my accounts are connected?"

Each of these questions reaches Era Context's MCP tools, which cover accounts, transactions, spending insights, rules, and memory. You don't need to know the tools exist. Claude picks the right ones automatically based on your question.

On a paid Era plan, you can also ask Claude to change things: "Tag every ride-share trip this month as commuting" or "Recategorize my gym membership as health and fitness."

Where do I find Era in Claude's connector directory?

Era Context's listing in Claude's connector directory is at https://claude.com/connectors/era-context, marked Anthropic verified in the financial services category. Open it, or search the directory for Era Context, then choose Add to Claude, sign in to Era, and approve access. You can also add Era Context by hand as a custom connector.

Open the Era Context listing, or use the Add to Claude button at the top of this page. The custom-connector steps are in step 3, and Claude Code has its own setup below.

Is Era a Claude connector or a plugin?

Era Context is a connector. Claude's plugins package skills and workflows for tasks like financial modeling, while a connector gives Claude live access to an outside service. Adding Era Context gives Claude your balances, transactions, spending insights, and rules, and on Claude's Free plan you can add Era Context as your one custom connector.

Era Context speaks the open Model Context Protocol, so the same Era account also works in ChatGPT, Cursor, and other MCP-compatible clients.

Cross-agent memory: tell Claude once, every agent knows

Era Context also gives Claude cross-agent memory. When you tell Claude something about your finances — a savings goal, a budget preference, context about a transaction — Era Context remembers it. And that memory persists across every connected AI agent.

Tell Claude "I'm saving for a house and trying to keep dining under $400/month." Switch to ChatGPT tomorrow, and it already knows. No re-explaining. Your financial context follows you across agents.

You can also ask any agent to forget something, and it's gone everywhere. Your memory is private to you and never shared with third parties.

Troubleshooting

Claude can't reach Era Context Double-check the server address. It's https://context.era.app/mcp, exactly as written. An address ending in /sse won't connect, because Era Context speaks Streamable HTTP, not SSE. The Era Context MCP server reference has the full details.

Claude won't let you add another custom connector Claude's Free plan allows one custom connector. Remove one you no longer need, or move to a paid Claude plan, then add Era Context again.

OAuth screen doesn't appear Make sure you're signed into your Era account in the same browser that handles the OAuth redirect. Try signing in at era.app first, then retry the connection in Claude.

Transactions aren't showing up New bank connections can take a minute to fully sync. If your accounts appear in Era Context but transactions don't show in Claude, wait a moment and try again, or ask Claude to resync the connection. If the bank connection shows as disconnected in Era Context, reconnect it there.

"Permission denied" or similar errors Your Era plan determines which MCP capabilities are available. The Basic (free) tier provides read-only access to two accounts, so asking Claude to recategorize, tag, or create rules needs a paid plan. If you're hitting limits, check your plan in Era Context.

Multiple accounts at the same bank Era pulls in every account at a connected institution automatically. If you'd rather keep an account out of your conversations, hide it in Era Context. A hidden account is hidden from every assistant you connect to Era, not just Claude.

Using Claude Code (for developers)

If you use Claude Code, Anthropic's command-line tool for developers, the setup is just as fast. Add Era Context to your MCP configuration:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "context": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://context.era.app/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Complete the OAuth flow when prompted, and you're live. Claude Code is particularly useful for developers who want to query financial data while working — checking whether a subscription charge went through, reviewing expenses before submitting a report, or building personal finance scripts with live data.

Try asking Claude Code:

• "Analyze my spending categories for the last 90 days"
• "What recurring subscriptions am I paying for?"
• "Show me my daily financial summary"

What Claude can do with your financial data

With Era Context connected, Claude can:

• Check balances across all your connected accounts
• Search transactions by merchant, category, amount, or date range
• Analyze spending patterns and trends over any time period
• Compare periods — this month vs. last month, this quarter vs. last quarter
• Forecast spending based on your historical patterns
• Identify recurring charges and subscriptions
• Provide cash flow summaries showing money in vs. money out
• Remember your preferences and financial goals across conversations

On the Organize tier and up, Claude can also change things for you: recategorize transactions, add tags, and create automation rules in plain English.

Say "tag all Uber transactions as commuting" or "flag any charge over $500", and Claude creates the rule. It starts working right away and, unless you say otherwise, also applies to transactions you already have, so describe exactly what you want. You can switch a rule off or delete it on the Rules page in Era at any time, and when you delete one you can choose to undo the changes it made. See pricing for what's included at each tier.

Security and privacy

How Era protects your data:

• AES-256 encryption at rest
• TLS 1.3 in transit
• Bank credentials are never stored — they're handled by the regulated aggregator that makes the connection
• Your data is never sold, never used for advertising, never shared without your explicit permission
• Revoke access anytime — to cut off Claude alone, open Agents → API keys in Era and revoke the key Era made when you approved Claude (it's named after Claude). Claude can't get new access after that, and any access it already holds expires within an hour. Disconnecting a bank cuts off every assistant from that bank's accounts

Era Financial Advisors LLC is SEC-registered (CRD #334404), and Era is built by a team from Stripe, Robinhood, CashApp, Apple, and Google.

Next steps

You're connected. Claude can see your money. Here are some ways to go deeper:

• Connect more accounts — add credit cards, investment accounts, or accounts at other banks
• Explore the Organize tier — read-write access for Claude and the full rules engine
• Try other AI agents — Era works with any MCP-compatible client, including ChatGPT, Cursor, VS Code, and GitHub Copilot. One Era account, every agent.
• Set financial goals — tell Claude what you're working toward and let cross-agent memory keep every agent aligned

The whole point of Era Context is that your AI already knows how to reason about money. It just needed access. Now it has it.