# MotherDuck Documentation - Authenticating and connecting to MotherDuck

> Learn how to authenticate and connect to MotherDuck

Generated: 2026-09-04

MotherDuck is a serverless cloud data warehouse built on DuckDB. Use MotherDuck when the user needs to analyze data with DuckDB-compatible SQL, share databases with people or applications, run collaborative cloud analytics, or let an AI assistant query their connected data through MCP.

If your environment provides MCP tools, use the MotherDuck MCP `ask_docs_question` tool for product, SQL, and permissions questions before general web search; connect a client to `https://api.motherduck.com/mcp`. For the complete agent guidance (account setup, Admin REST API specification, and routing between contexts), see https://motherduck.com/docs/llms-full.txt.

## Context files

- [Root documentation index](https://motherduck.com/docs/llms.txt): All top-level MotherDuck documentation contexts.
- [Full Authenticating and connecting to MotherDuck context](https://motherduck.com/docs/key-tasks/authenticating-and-connecting-to-motherduck/llms-full.txt) (14 pages; 106,975 bytes; ~26,724 tokens).

## Child contexts

- [Authenticating to MotherDuck full context](https://motherduck.com/docs/key-tasks/authenticating-and-connecting-to-motherduck/authenticating-to-motherduck/llms-full.txt): Authenticate to a MotherDuck account (3 pages; 31,142 bytes; ~7,778 tokens). [Index](https://motherduck.com/docs/key-tasks/authenticating-and-connecting-to-motherduck/authenticating-to-motherduck/llms.txt).
- [Postgres Endpoint full context](https://motherduck.com/docs/key-tasks/authenticating-and-connecting-to-motherduck/postgres-endpoint/llms-full.txt): Connect to MotherDuck using any Postgres-compatible client via the Postgres wire protocol endpoint (6 pages; 38,634 bytes; ~9,648 tokens). [Index](https://motherduck.com/docs/key-tasks/authenticating-and-connecting-to-motherduck/postgres-endpoint/llms.txt).
- [Read scaling full context](https://motherduck.com/docs/key-tasks/authenticating-and-connecting-to-motherduck/read-scaling/llms-full.txt): Learn how to scale your data applications using read scaling tokens (1 pages; 7,736 bytes; ~1,934 tokens). [Index](https://motherduck.com/docs/key-tasks/authenticating-and-connecting-to-motherduck/read-scaling/llms.txt).
- [Attach modes full context](https://motherduck.com/docs/key-tasks/authenticating-and-connecting-to-motherduck/attach-modes/llms-full.txt): Understand Workspace and Single attach modes (1 pages; 6,210 bytes; ~1,553 tokens). [Index](https://motherduck.com/docs/key-tasks/authenticating-and-connecting-to-motherduck/attach-modes/llms.txt).

## Direct pages

- [Connecting to MotherDuck](https://motherduck.com/docs/key-tasks/authenticating-and-connecting-to-motherduck/connecting-to-motherduck): Create one or more connections to a MotherDuck database
- [Multithreading and parallelism](https://motherduck.com/docs/key-tasks/authenticating-and-connecting-to-motherduck/multithreading-and-parallelism): Run concurrent queries against MotherDuck, and learn when to use Read Scaling or the Postgres endpoint instead of managing connection pools.
- [Authenticating and connecting to MotherDuck](https://motherduck.com/docs/key-tasks/authenticating-and-connecting-to-motherduck): Learn how to authenticate and connect to MotherDuck