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

Related MCP server: YouTube MCP Server

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. There is no package to install, no container to run and no Google account anywhere in the flow.

Quick start

The server URL is the same for every client. Tested against the configs below with Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf and Cline.

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: your_key_here"

Settings, then Connectors, then Add custom connector, then paste https://mcp.hasdata.com/api/mcp?apis=youtube and sign in.

For the config-file route, add this to claude_desktop_config.json:

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

~/.cursor/mcp.json for every project, or .cursor/mcp.json for one:

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

~/.codeium/windsurf/mcp_config.json. Windsurf calls the field serverUrl, not url:

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

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

.vscode/mcp.json in the workspace:

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

~/.codex/config.toml:

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

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

~/.gemini/settings.json:

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

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.

{
  "positionOnPage": 1,
  "videoId": "GuTcle5edjk",
  "title": "you need to learn MCP RIGHT NOW!! (Model Context Protocol)",
  "viewsOriginal": "1.6M views",
  "views": 1653824,
  "length": "38:40",
  "publishedDate": "11 months ago",
  "extensions": ["4K"],
  "chapters": [
    { "title": "Intro", "time": "0:00" },
    { "title": "Problem: LLMs Suck at Accessing Code", "time": "0:40" }
  ],
  "channel": { "name": "NetworkChuck", "verified": true }
}

Two things there earn a mention. views is a parsed integer next to the 1.6M views display string and needs no suffix parser. And chapters come back inside search results, not only on the video itself, though only some videos carry them.

The search endpoint reference lists every sp and filters__ token the endpoint accepts.

Get YouTube video data

hasdata_youtube_video_getYoutubeVideo

One video by id.

Returns title, thumbnail, channel, publishedDate, lengthSeconds, category, isFamilySafe and isUnlisted, plus the relatedVideos, endScreenVideos, keywords, captions, music and socialLinks arrays. description is an object holding the full text in content and a links array where every link and hashtag carries startIndex, length, text and url. The text field holds the link as the author wrote it and url holds YouTube's redirect wrapper, which matters if you are pulling sponsor or affiliate destinations out of descriptions.

Read the parsed field by name per tool before you copy the sample below. Search and channel results put the parsed number in views and the display string in viewsOriginal. This response inverts it, keeping the string in views and the number in extractedViews, and the same inversion applies to likes and subscribers. Get it wrong and item.views > 100000 compares a string here without ever throwing.

{
  "title": "Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up (Official Video) (4K Remaster)",
  "views": "1,806,075,152 views",
  "extractedViews": 1806075152,
  "likes": "19M",
  "extractedLikes": 19344370,
  "publishedDate": "Oct 24, 2009",
  "lengthSeconds": 214,
  "category": "Music",
  "channel": { "name": "Rick Astley", "subscribers": "4.53M subscribers", "extractedSubscribers": 4530000 }
}

Get YouTube channel data

hasdata_youtube_channel_getYoutubeChannel

A channel by id or handle, one tab at a time.

Returns channelInfo, featuredVideo and sections on the default tab. Other tabs return their own shape. channelInfo carries the handle, avatar, banner, description, channel keywords and the channel's rssUrl, enough to keep watching a channel without polling it.

The availableTabs array in the sample below holds display labels, and they are not the values tab accepts. Home, Live, Courses and Search map to no parameter value at all, and the rest need lowercasing. An agent that reads the list and walks each entry fails on the first one.

{
  "channelInfo": {
    "channelId": "UC_x5XG1OV2P6uZZ5FSM9Ttw",
    "name": "Google for Developers",
    "handle": "@GoogleDevelopers",
    "rssUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UC_x5XG1OV2P6uZZ5FSM9Ttw",
    "isFamilySafe": true,
    "availableTabs": ["Home", "Videos", "Shorts", "Live", "Courses", "Playlists", "Posts", "Search"]
  }
}

Get YouTube video transcript

hasdata_youtube_transcript_getYoutubeTranscript

The timed transcript of a video.

Check selected in the response before you trust the language. Asking for a languageCode the video does not carry neither fails nor returns empty, it quietly falls back to the default track. Every entry in the list carries languageName and languageCode, and one language can appear twice, once human-authored and once with type set to asr.

{
  "transcript": [
    { "startMs": 320, "endMs": 18800, "snippet": "[Music]", "startTimeText": "0:00" },
    { "startMs": 18800, "endMs": 21800, "snippet": "We're no strangers to", "startTimeText": "0:18" }
  ],
  "availableTranscripts": [
    { "languageName": "English", "languageCode": "en" },
    { "languageName": "English", "languageCode": "en", "type": "asr", "selected": true },
    { "languageName": "German (Germany)", "languageCode": "de-DE" },
    { "languageName": "Japanese", "languageCode": "ja" }
  ]
}

Errors and failure paths

Your client almost never sees an HTTP error code from a tool call. The MCP layer answers 200 and puts the failure inside the result, with isError set to true and the reason as text. The agent reads a message where you might expect a status line.

A wrong key surfaces as tool output, not as a failed connection. tools/list accepts any non-empty key and returns all four tools, so the client completes its handshake and shows green. The first tool call then comes back with isError: true and the text HasData API error: 401 Unauthorized. Watch for that string, because nothing earlier in the flow reports the problem.

A missing key is the one real HTTP error. Authorization runs before any tool, and the connection itself fails with 401. CORS headers are present, and a browser client reads the status and not an opaque network failure.

An argument that breaks a tool's schema is rejected before it becomes a scrape. The server answers with isError: true and the text MCP error -32602: Input validation error, naming the offending field. Nothing is fetched and nothing is charged. The message names the field but not the accepted values, so the parameter tables above are the reference.

A call that succeeds and finds nothing is the case that trips people up. It arrives as an ordinary result with requestMetadata.status set to ok and the data key simply missing. Nothing in the body says the result was empty. Test for the field you need, not for an error.

An identifier the platform rejects returns 400 with requestMetadata.status set to error. A channel handle that does not exist is the usual way to see this.

Results that carry data also carry a requestMetadata.id worth quoting in support.

Pricing, free tier and limits

Every YouTube tool costs 10 credits per successful call. Response size does not change the price. A full page of search results costs the same as a page with one video.

The free trial is 1,000 credits over 30 days with no card, which is 100 YouTube calls. After that an active account keeps getting 100 credits topped up each day whenever its balance drops below 100, so a low-volume agent runs on the free tier indefinitely.

Paid plans start at $49 a month for 200,000 credits, which is 20,000 calls. The unit price falls with volume, from $2.45 per 1,000 calls on the entry plan to $0.99 on Business, $0.83 on Growth and $0.75 on the largest high-volume plans.

Your plan also sets concurrency. The free trial allows 1 request at a time, Startup 15, Business 30, Growth 50, and the high-volume plans run from 200 to 1,500. Handle the overflow case defensively in anything unattended, because an agent that fans out will reach the ceiling before you do.

A request that comes back non-200 is not billed. A successful call that finds nothing is still a call.

Tool selection

The apis query parameter decides which tools your agent sees. Fewer tools means less context spent on tool definitions, and fewer chances for the model to reach for the wrong one.

?apis=youtube                    the four tools in this repo
?apis=youtube,google_serp        add Google search
?apis=youtube,tiktok,instagram   a social research bundle

The parameter takes provider names like youtube and individual API names like google_maps_search. Misspelled names are ignored. If every name is wrong the request fails with 400, and the body lists both what it did not recognise and every valid value. Drop the parameter and the same endpoint exposes all 57 HasData tools.

How it compares

Against the official YouTube Data API v3:

The last two rows matter. If the daily quota covers your volume and you own the channel you are querying, the official API is the cheaper answer and you should take it.

Most other YouTube MCP servers do transcripts only. This one also searches, reads videos with their engagement numbers, and walks channel tabs, so an agent runs a whole research pass without a second server.

What this server does not do. No comments, no channel management, no uploads, no analytics, no private data. It reads what a signed-out visitor can see.

FAQ

Is there an official YouTube MCP server?

Google does not publish one. YouTube has no first-party MCP server. Every option is built by somebody else, either around the YouTube Data API v3 or around the public pages. This one is maintained by HasData and reads public pages, which is why it needs no Google credentials.

What is a YouTube MCP server?

A server that exposes YouTube data as tools an AI client can call. The client sends a tool call over the Model Context Protocol, the server fetches the data and returns structured JSON, and the model works with the result and never sees a page of HTML. This one exposes four tools and runs remotely. The client connects to a URL and starts no local process.

Do I need a YouTube API key or a Google Cloud project?

No. The only credential is your HasData key. There is no Google Cloud project to create, no quota form to fill in and no OAuth consent screen, because the tools read public YouTube pages and not the YouTube Data API.

Do I need to host or run anything?

No. This is a remote MCP server on streamable HTTP. Nothing to install, no container to keep warm, no process to restart.

Is the data live or cached?

Live. Each call fetches the page at request time and carries its own requestMetadata.id. Two identical calls are two separate fetches and not a replay of a stored copy. Counters like views and likes track the page, so they move as the page moves.

What happens when YouTube changes its layout?

Nothing on your side. We track the changes and keep the response schema stable, so field names and types stay put. A field with no value is absent from the item, not present and null. Read optional fields with a default.

Can I use this together with other HasData APIs?

Yes. The apis parameter takes a list, and ?apis=youtube,google_serp gives your agent the four YouTube tools plus Google search. Drop the parameter and you get everything.

Can I get a transcript for any video?

Only where the video has one, and availableTranscripts tells you what exists before you ask.

Can I sign in with OAuth instead of pasting a key?

Yes, in clients that support it. Claude Desktop and Cursor can add the endpoint as a connector and sign in. Unattended agents and scripts use the x-api-key header.

Compliance and personal data

HasData accesses publicly available data only. A platform's terms may restrict automated access, and you are responsible for your own compliance. Where the data you collect includes personal information, make sure you have a lawful basis for it under GDPR, CCPA or the equivalent rules in your jurisdiction.

HasData links

Development

This repository is configuration and documentation for a remote server. There is no build step and nothing to containerize.

The tests in test/ assert the tool contract, the part that can break without a commit here. They check that ?apis=youtube returns exactly four tools, that every tool still declares its required parameter, that no name changed, and that the key in use is actually accepted. That last check calls a tool for real and costs 10 credits, which is the price of a canary that can fail for the right reason.

# macOS and Linux
HASDATA_API_KEY=your_key_here npm test

# Windows PowerShell
$env:HASDATA_API_KEY="your_key_here"; npm test

The same suite runs in CI on every push and once a week on a schedule, because the upstream tool list can change without anyone touching this repository. A failure means the tool list moved, the key stopped working, or the endpoint was unreachable, and the assertion message says which.

Contributing

Corrections to the tool tables and the response samples are the most useful contribution, because those are the parts that drift. Include the call you made and the response you got. Pull requests from forks run the suite without a key, and the live checks skip instead of going red.

License

MIT. See LICENSE.