youtube-mcp-server

Provides a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that lets an MCP host query YouTube for video search, video details, thumbnails, transcripts, and various channel/playlist metadata (including comments/activities limited to public data).

Evaluated Apr 04, 2026 (16d ago)

Repo ↗ Ai Ml mcp youtube api search transcripts spring-boot java stdio sse

⚙ Agent Friendliness

/ 100

Can an agent use this?

🔒 Security

/ 100

Is it safe for agents?

⚡ Reliability

/ 100

Does it work consistently?

Score Breakdown

⚙ Agent Friendliness

MCP Quality

Documentation

Error Messages

Auth Simplicity

Rate Limits

🔒 Security

TLS Enforcement

Auth Strength

Scope Granularity

Dep. Hygiene

Secret Handling

Uses an API key via environment variable (better than hardcoding), but there is no description of TLS requirements for the host connection beyond typical HTTP usage, no OAuth/scoped authorization, and no documented guidance for protecting the key in logs or handling errors safely. Dependency/version hygiene and any CVE posture are not provided.

⚡ Reliability

Uptime/SLA

Version Stability

Breaking Changes

Error Recovery

Best When

You want an MCP-compatible tool surface over common YouTube read-only queries (search, metadata, public transcripts/comments), and you can supply a YouTube API key.

Avoid When

You require fine-grained OAuth scopes, strict privacy controls, or an official hosted SaaS with published SLAs (this appears to be a self-hosted server).

Use Cases

• Search YouTube videos by query from an MCP client
• Fetch transcript text for a YouTube video by video ID
• Retrieve structured metadata (title, channel, etc.) and thumbnail URLs by video ID
• Browse channel information, shelves/sections, playlists, and playlist items
• List public comments or public channel activities for a given channel/video/category

Not For

• Need for non-public YouTube data (private videos, private channels, or authenticated-only content beyond public availability)
• Use as a generic YouTube web scraper without MCP host integration
• Production use without validating YouTube API compliance, quotas, and data handling requirements

Interface

REST API

GraphQL

gRPC

MCP Server

Yes ↗

SDK

Webhooks

Authentication

Methods: API key via YOUTUBE_API_KEY environment variable

OAuth: No Scopes: No

Authentication is not described as OAuth; it uses a YouTube API key provided as an environment variable.

Pricing

Free tier: No

Requires CC: No

No hosting/service pricing is described; this is self-hosted.

Agent Metadata

Pagination

none

Idempotent

False

Retry Guidance

Not documented

Known Gotchas

⚠ Transcript extraction may fail for videos without available transcripts or due to YouTube/API limitations (not documented).
⚠ Rate limits/quotas are not described in README; agents may need to handle 429/quota errors based on MCP/underlying YouTube API behavior (not documented).
⚠ Some endpoints are explicitly limited to 'Public' comments/activities; requesting non-public data may result in empty results or errors (not detailed).

Alternatives

Use the official YouTube Data API directly from your application Use a dedicated MCP server/framework that wraps YouTube APIs with your preferred auth/rate-limit handling For transcripts only: use a transcript extraction library directly (where permitted) rather than an MCP server

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Scores are editorial opinions as of 2026-04-04.