YouTube Transcript AI

Give Claude & ChatGPT YouTube transcripts

Connect this MCP server once, then just ask your AI to read, summarize, translate or quote any YouTube video. It fetches the full transcript on demand — no copy-paste, no browser tab.

https://youtube-transcript.ai/mcp?key=YOUR_KEY

Replace YOUR_KEY with your free API key. Create one here: sign in with Google, 10 requests a day free.

Using Claude Code, Cursor or Codex? Copy the setup instructions and paste them into your agent. It can add the server to its own configuration.

Or view the instructions as plain text.

Free to start

A free API key covers 10 transcripts a day, on the same engine that powers youtube-transcript.ai. Need more? Pro is 1,000 a day for $120 a year.

Actually reliable

A hardened fetch pipeline with proxy fallback gets transcripts even on videos that block typical scrapers, so your AI rarely comes back empty-handed.

Any language

Pick any available caption track by language code — English, 中文, Español, 日本語 and more — or let it choose the default.

Built for agents

One clean tool, plain-text output with title and metadata. Drop a link mid-conversation and your model just reads it. Multi-hour videos come back in parts, so nothing gets cut off.

See it in action

Paste a YouTube link and ask a question — Claude calls get_youtube_transcript, reads the full transcript, and answers from it.

Get your API key

The server needs a key to fetch transcripts. Create a free key (Google sign-in, about a minute) and put it in the connector URL below in place of YOUR_KEY. Already connected without a key? Remove the connector and add it again with the new URL.

Set it up in Claude

1. Open Settings → Connectors and click Add custom connector.
2. Set Name to youtube-transcript.ai and the URL to https://youtube-transcript.ai/mcp?key=YOUR_KEY, then save.
3. Start a chat and say, e.g. “Summarize this video: <YouTube link>”. Claude calls the get_youtube_transcript tool automatically.

Set it up in ChatGPT

1. In a Developer/Custom connector setup, choose Add MCP server.
2. Set Name to youtube-transcript.ai and the server URL to https://youtube-transcript.ai/mcp?key=YOUR_KEY (transport: Streamable HTTP).
3. Enable it for your chat, then paste a YouTube link and ask for a summary or transcript.

Set it up in Claude Code

Run this once in a terminal. --scope user makes the server available in every project.

claude mcp add --transport http --scope user youtube-transcript \
  https://youtube-transcript.ai/mcp \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_KEY"

Set it up in Cursor

Add the server to ~/.cursor/mcp.json, or to .cursor/mcp.json inside one project.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "youtube-transcript": {
      "url": "https://youtube-transcript.ai/mcp",
      "headers": { "Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_KEY" }
    }
  }
}

Set it up in Codex

Add the server to ~/.codex/config.toml.

[mcp_servers.youtube-transcript]
url = "https://youtube-transcript.ai/mcp"
http_headers = { "Authorization" = "Bearer YOUR_KEY" }

Any other MCP client

Give it https://youtube-transcript.ai/mcp?key=YOUR_KEY as a remote Streamable HTTP server. The key can go in the URL, as here, or in an Authorization: Bearer header.

Try these prompts

“Summarize the key points of https://youtu.be/… 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.”

Writing your own script?

The same key works over plain HTTPS from Python, JavaScript, n8n or Make. See the YouTube Transcript API.

Prefer a web tool?

No AI client needed — paste any link into the free web extractor.