YouTube MCP Server

A hosted Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that gives Claude, Cursor, Windsurf and any other MCP client four read-only YouTube tools. Search YouTube, read video and channel data, and pull transcripts, with no Google Cloud project and no YouTube Data API key.

https://mcp.hasdata.com/api/mcp?apis=youtube

Contents

• What you need
• Quick start
• Example prompts
• Tools
• Errors and failure paths
• Pricing, free tier and limits
• Tool selection
• How it compares
• FAQ
• HasData links
• Development
• Contributing
• License

What you need

An MCP client that speaks streamable HTTP with custom headers. A HasData API key from the dashboard, free to create. Nothing else. This is a remote server, so the simplest path is a URL and a header, with no container to run and no Google account anywhere in the flow. A stdio-only client can use the @hasdata/youtube-mcp (npm) or hasdata-youtube-mcp (PyPI) launcher instead.

Quick start

The server URL is the same for every client. We run it hands-on in Claude Code and Claude Desktop. The other blocks follow each client's own documented format for a remote server.

Clients with OAuth support can add the same URL as a connector and sign in without putting a key in a config file.

claude mcp add --transport http youtube "https://mcp.hasdata.com/api/mcp?apis=youtube" \
  --header "x-api-key: HASDATA_API_KEY"

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "youtube": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@hasdata/youtube-mcp"],
      "env": { "HASDATA_API_KEY": "YOUR_KEY" }
    }
  }
}

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "youtube": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["hasdata-youtube-mcp"],
      "env": { "HASDATA_API_KEY": "YOUR_KEY" }
    }
  }
}

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "youtube": {
      "url": "https://mcp.hasdata.com/api/mcp?apis=youtube",
      "headers": { "x-api-key": "HASDATA_API_KEY" }
    }
  }
}

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "youtube": {
      "serverUrl": "https://mcp.hasdata.com/api/mcp?apis=youtube",
      "headers": { "x-api-key": "HASDATA_API_KEY" }
    }
  }
}

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "youtube": {
      "url": "https://mcp.hasdata.com/api/mcp?apis=youtube",
      "type": "streamableHttp",
      "headers": { "x-api-key": "HASDATA_API_KEY" },
      "disabled": false
    }
  }
}

{
  "servers": {
    "youtube": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://mcp.hasdata.com/api/mcp?apis=youtube",
      "headers": { "x-api-key": "HASDATA_API_KEY" }
    }
  }
}

[mcp_servers.youtube]
url = "https://mcp.hasdata.com/api/mcp?apis=youtube"

[mcp_servers.youtube.headers]
"x-api-key" = "HASDATA_API_KEY"

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "youtube": {
      "httpUrl": "https://mcp.hasdata.com/api/mcp?apis=youtube",
      "headers": { "x-api-key": "HASDATA_API_KEY" }
    }
  }
}

Example prompts

Prompts, not code. Paste one in and the agent picks the tool itself. Each is annotated with the calls it takes, because in MCP the model decides how many calls to make and every successful call costs 10 credits.

Find the ten most viewed videos about the Model Context Protocol from the last month, then pull the transcript of the top one and give me the three claims it makes about tool calling.

Two calls, 20 credits.

Take the channel @GoogleDevelopers. List the tabs it publishes, then summarize the last five uploads and tell me which topics repeat.

Two calls, 20 credits. Reading a tab you have not seen takes a second call, because the tab list arrives inside the first response.

Take this video id, dQw4w9WgXcQ. Get its stats, then check which of its related videos come from the same channel.

One call, 10 credits. Related videos ride along in the same response.

Search YouTube for "web scraping tutorial", sorted by upload date, videos under four minutes only, and give me the chapter titles of each result that has them.

One call, 10 credits.

Pull the German transcript of this video if one exists, and tell me which languages it is available in.

One call, 10 credits.

Search takes YouTube's own filter tokens, and an agent narrows by duration, upload date and content type without post-processing. Transcripts arrive with the list of available language tracks, which lets the agent pick one without guessing.

Paging costs a call each time. A research prompt that searches, pages twice, then pulls three transcripts is six calls and 60 credits. The trial goes further on narrow questions than on open-ended crawls.

Tools

Four tools, all read-only. Samples below are trimmed from real calls, and the numbers in them move as YouTube updates. Read them as shapes. Each tool name links to its endpoint reference, which carries the full field list.

The samples are the payload, not the whole response. A tools/call result carries one text block, and that text is itself JSON holding url, status, text and json, with the scraped data under json. From a raw JSON-RPC response the path is result.content[0].text, parsed, then .json. A chat client unwraps that for you and code talking to the endpoint directly does not.

Get YouTube search results

hasdata_youtube_search_getYoutubeSearchResults

Searches YouTube and returns the whole results page, split by result type.

A results page is split across videoResults, shortsResults, inlineShortsResults, playlistResults, channelResults and shelves, with paid placements in adsResults and sponsoredResults. Which blocks appear depends on the query, and a block with nothing to report is absent, not empty. Test for the key before iterating. searchInformation carries the total and pagination.nextPageToken is what you feed back as paginationToken. Ads never mix into the organic arrays, though there are two of them to skip.

Read the full README on GitHub →