YouTube Transcript AI MCP ServerVerifiedFeatured

What is YouTube Transcript AI

A hosted MCP server that gives Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor and any MCP client the ability to read YouTube transcripts — free, no API key, no signup, no quota wall.

It exposes one tool, get_youtube_transcript, backed by youtube-transcript.ai. Paste a YouTube link mid-conversation and your model reads the full transcript on demand — no copy-paste, no browser tab.

Connector URL

https://youtube-transcript.ai/mcp

It is hosted, so there is nothing to install or run. Add the URL to your client and you are done.

Why

• Free and 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.

Tool

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

Quick start

Claude (web / desktop) — Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector, URL https://youtube-transcript.ai/mcp

ChatGPT — add an MCP server with that URL, transport Streamable HTTP

Cursor / Windsurf / Cline — bridge the remote server with mcp-remote:

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

Links

• Website: youtube-transcript.ai
• Source and docs: github.com/zxl777/youtube-transcript-mcp
• Also listed in the official MCP registry as ai.youtube-transcript/youtube-transcript