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:

Code

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.

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:

config.json

{
  "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:

bash

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.

License

MIT

YouTube Transcript AI README