YouTube Transcript MCP Server

Give Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, and any MCP client the ability to read YouTube transcripts — free, no API key, no signup.

A hosted Model Context Protocol server that exposes one tool, get_youtube_transcript, backed by youtube-transcript.ai. Paste a YouTube link mid-conversation and your AI reads the full transcript on demand — no copy-paste, no browser tab.

Connector URL:

https://youtube-transcript.ai/mcp

That's it. It's hosted — there's nothing to install or run. Add the URL to your client below.

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Why

• Free & keyless — no account, no token, no quota wall.
• Actually reliable — a hardened fetch pipeline with proxy fallback returns transcripts even on videos that block typical scrapers, so your model rarely comes back empty-handed.
• Any language — pick a caption track by language code (en, zh-CN, es, ja, …) or let it choose the default.
• Built for agents — one clean tool, plain-text output with title and metadata.

Quick start

Claude (web / desktop)

Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector

Field	Value
Name	youtube-transcript.ai
URL	https://youtube-transcript.ai/mcp

Then ask: “Summarize this video: https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ”

ChatGPT

In the custom connector / MCP server setup, add an MCP server with URL https://youtube-transcript.ai/mcp (transport: Streamable HTTP), enable it for your chat, then paste a YouTube link.

Cursor / Windsurf / Cline / Claude Desktop (config file)

For clients that launch MCP servers via a config file, bridge the remote server with mcp-remote:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "youtube-transcript": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "mcp-remote", "https://youtube-transcript.ai/mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Clients that support remote MCP URLs natively can use https://youtube-transcript.ai/mcp directly.

Tool reference

get_youtube_transcript

Fetch the full text transcript of a YouTube video.

Parameter	Type	Required	Description
video	string	yes	YouTube URL (watch, youtu.be, shorts, embed) or a bare 11-character video ID
lang	string	no	BCP-47 language code, e.g. en, zh-CN, es. Omit for the default track

Returns plain text: the transcript with title, duration, and a list of available languages.

Example prompts

• “Summarize the key points of <link> in 5 bullets.”
• “Pull the transcript of this video and translate it to Spanish.”
• “What does the speaker say about pricing in <link>? Quote the exact lines.”

Programmatic use

The server speaks standard MCP over Streamable HTTP (JSON-RPC). A zero-dependency example is in examples/quickstart.mjs:

node examples/quickstart.mjs https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ

Notes

• Fair use: the endpoint is rate-limited per IP to keep it free for everyone. For heavy/automated workloads, get in touch.
• Not affiliated with YouTube or Google. Transcripts are fetched from publicly available captions.

Links

• Web tool (no AI client needed): https://youtube-transcript.ai
• Connector landing page: https://youtube-transcript.ai/mcp
• Ready-made transcripts: https://youtube-transcript.ai/docs

License

MIT