TranscriptHook is a YouTube transcript API for AI agents and LLMs. Connect Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor in one click, then ask for the transcript of any YouTube video. Or follow the channels you care about and every new video is transcribed and sent where you want it, automatically. No YouTube API key.
get_transcript// POSTed to your URL when a new video's // transcript is ready { "event": "new_video", "subscription": { "label": "AI News", "channel_name": "Two Minute Papers" }, "video": { "title": "GPT-5 is Here and It's Remarkable", "url": "https://youtube.com/watch?v=abc123", "published": "2026-04-29T10:00:00Z" }, "transcript": { "available": true, "text": "Welcome back, dear fellow scholars...", "segments": [ { "start": 0, "duration": 3.2, "text": "Welcome back" } ] } }
Example only. Not real output.
Free libraries like youtube-transcript-api and yt-dlp work fine on your laptop. Run them from a cloud server and YouTube usually blocks them. TranscriptHook handles that part for you.
YouTube turns away most cloud servers. We handle the blocking, so you don't have to.
No proxies to rent and no scraper to patch the next time YouTube changes something.
Ask Claude or ChatGPT, call the API, or have new transcripts sent to you automatically.
Want the details? See how we compare with other transcript APIs and with yt-dlp.
No servers to set up and no YouTube API key to register.
Add TranscriptHook to Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor and approve it once in your browser. After that, just ask for the transcript of any YouTube video. See the MCP connection.
Paste an @handle, a channel URL or a channel ID. TranscriptHook picks up new uploads from then on, not the backlog, and checks about every 10 minutes.
Each new video comes with the full transcript and timestamps. Ask your AI for it, have it sent to a webhook (Zapier, Make, n8n or your own app), or fetch it with the API.
Say “get the transcript for this YouTube URL” and your AI fetches it through TranscriptHook. Add the URL once and approve it in your browser. There’s no API key to copy and nothing to host. It works with Claude Code, Claude Desktop, claude.ai, ChatGPT, VS Code and Cursor. Other clients connect with an API key.
get_transcriptsearch_videosget_transcript: give it a YouTube URL or video ID and the text comes back. One credit, charged only when the fetch works.search_videos: keyword search across the titles and transcripts of your channels.get_recent_videos: what your channels posted in a time window you pick.add_channel: start monitoring a channel without leaving the chat.// Claude Code: add the server, then approve in your browser claude mcp add --transport http transcripthook https://transcripthook.com/mcp // Claude Desktop / claude.ai: Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector // VS Code, Cursor, ChatGPT: see the docs
The parts of a transcript pipeline you’d rather not build.
Add TranscriptHook to Claude or another MCP client, approve it once in your browser, and just ask: “get the transcript for this YouTube URL.” Your assistant can also search your channel history, check your credits and add channels. Every plan, Free included.
See the tools →Uses YouTube’s public RSS feed, so there’s no quota, no key to rotate and no 10,000-unit daily ceiling. Nothing to set up in Google Cloud.
Webhooks fire when a new video is detected and its transcript is ready. The REST API lets you pull by tag and time window whenever you want. Every payload has the full plain-text transcript and timestamped segments. You can use push on some subscriptions and pull on others.
Paste any YouTube URL and get the full transcript, usually within seconds, with no subscription required. Works from your dashboard or the REST API. Pull history lets you subscribe to a channel in one click. 10–10,000 lookups/mo depending on your plan.
Save keywords once and get an email whenever a video on any of your subscriptions mentions them, matched against the title and transcript. Handy for tracking competitors or product names.
Failed webhooks are retried at 2, 10 and 30 seconds, then up to five more times over roughly a day. Every delivery is HMAC-signed so you can verify it. There’s a full delivery log, and you can pause any subscription. If several videos land between polls, they arrive oldest first.
Developers, writers, researchers and marketers. Connect Claude or ChatGPT and you don't need to write any code.
Keep your AI assistant, chatbot or RAG knowledge base current. Transcripts land in your vector store as videos post, so nobody has to copy and paste.
Read more →A YouTube trigger that includes the transcript, not just the video link. Full transcript in the webhook payload, ready to pipe into any downstream step.
Read more →Monitor competitor channels. Every transcript can land in Slack, Notion, or your CRM once its transcript is ready. Use Keyword Alerts to filter for topics that actually matter.
Read more →Feed transcripts into GPT, generate blog posts and publish them automatically. One YouTube channel becomes a steady content feed.
Read more →Subscribe to investor relations channels and receive full earnings call transcripts once captions are available. Feed them into LLMs for sentiment analysis, guidance extraction, or competitive benchmarking.
Read more →Follow the channels you write about and let Claude or ChatGPT read the new videos for you. Ask for a summary of the week, then write your issue without watching hours of video.
Read more →If it accepts a POST request, TranscriptHook can feed it.
REST API · MCP server · Bearer token auth · JSON payloads
No credit card required to try it. Upgrade when you need more channels or webhooks.
Try it out. No card, no expiry.
The plan on sale today: 15 channels, 3 webhooks, 500 lookups a month.
For production pipelines with many channels. Not on sale yet, and the specs may change.
For teams building on top of TranscriptHook. Not on sale yet, and the specs may change.
youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml) to detect new videos. There is no Google Cloud project to set up, no OAuth flow, and no YouTube API quota to manage. How many channels you can watch depends on your plan: 1 on Free, 15 on Starter.
GET /api/transcript) lets you pass any YouTube URL or video ID and get the full transcript back in the response, with no subscription or channel monitoring required. Each successful fetch counts against your monthly lookup quota (10 on Free, 500 on Starter, 2,500 on Pro, 10,000 on Agency). Failed lookups don't count against your quota. A lookup is used only when a transcript is returned, and videos from monitored channels never use lookups.
https://transcripthook.com/mcp to Claude Code, Claude Desktop, claude.ai, ChatGPT, VS Code or Cursor and approve the connection in your browser (no API key to copy). Any other MCP client can use the same API key the REST API uses. Eleven tools appear in the conversation: transcript fetching, keyword search across your channel history, keyword filters and keyword matches, account and credit status, and channel management. It runs on every plan including Free, and shares the REST rate limit — a burst plus a daily budget, 15/min (100/day) on Free, 20/min (300/day) on Starter. The one destructive tool, remove_channel, is never granted through OAuth, and over an API key it is hidden from your assistant until you turn on destructive tools in Dashboard → Settings (an account setting that applies only to API keys). All eleven tools work on every plan. Setup takes one approval: see the MCP guide or the tool reference.
segments array with per-sentence start times and durations. The upcoming Pro and Agency plans will also include an enrichment object with an AI-generated summary, key takeaways, and topic tags.
competitor, product launch, pricing). TranscriptHook will only fire your webhook if the transcript contains at least one of those keywords. Videos without a match are still stored for the pull API — they just don't trigger a push notification. Available on every plan, including Free.
"transcript": { "available": false }. This can happen with private videos, members-only content, very new uploads where auto-captions haven't been generated yet, or channels with captions disabled.
Make a free account and add your first channel.
No credit card · Free tier forever