No YouTube API key needed  ·  Free to start

YouTube transcript API for your AI

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.

No credit card required Free tier forever Works on any video with captions
// 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.

It works where free tools get blocked

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.

No blocked requests

YouTube turns away most cloud servers. We handle the blocking, so you don't have to.

Nothing to maintain

No proxies to rent and no scraper to patch the next time YouTube changes something.

Straight into your AI

Ask Claude or ChatGPT, call the API, or have new transcripts sent to you automatically.

Three steps

No servers to set up and no YouTube API key to register.

1

Connect your AI

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.

2

Add the channels you follow

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.

3

Get transcripts automatically

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.

Connect your AI in one click. Then just ask.

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.

A few of the eleven tools

  • get_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.

See all eleven tools →

// 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

What you get

The parts of a transcript pipeline you’d rather not build.

Connect your AI in one click

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 →

No YouTube API key

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.

Push + Pull delivery

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.

Quick Pull

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.

Keyword Alerts

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.

Reliable delivery

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.

Built for anyone who works with YouTube

Developers, writers, researchers and marketers. Connect Claude or ChatGPT and you don't need to write any code.

AI & RAG Pipelines

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 →

n8n / Make / Zapier

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 →

Competitor Intelligence

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 →

Content Pipelines

Feed transcripts into GPT, generate blog posts and publish them automatically. One YouTube channel becomes a steady content feed.

Read more →

Earnings Calls & Research

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 →

Newsletter Research

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 →

Works with your stack

If it accepts a POST request, TranscriptHook can feed it.

n8n
Make
Zapier
OpenAI
Claude
Cursor
VS Code
Pinecone
Supabase
LangChain
Slack
Notion
Airtable
Any webhook endpoint

REST API · MCP server · Bearer token auth · JSON payloads

Simple pricing. Free to start.

No credit card required to try it. Upgrade when you need more channels or webhooks.

Free
$0/mo

Try it out. No card, no expiry.

  • 1 channel
  • 1 webhook
  • Stored video history
  • Pull API (15/min, 100/day)
  • 10 transcript lookups/mo
  • AI Enrichment
  • Keyword filters & alerts
Get started free
Starter
$9/mo

The plan on sale today: 15 channels, 3 webhooks, 500 lookups a month.

  • 15 channels
  • 3 webhooks
  • Stored video history
  • Pull API (20/min, 300/day)
  • 500 transcript lookups/mo
  • AI Enrichment
  • Keyword filters & alerts
Start with Starter
Coming soon
Pro
Coming soon

For production pipelines with many channels. Not on sale yet, and the specs may change.

  • 100 channels
  • Unlimited webhooks
  • Stored video history
  • Pull API (60/min, 3,000/day)
  • 2,500 transcript lookups/mo
  • AI Enrichment
  • Keyword filters & alerts
Join the waitlist
Coming soon
Agency
Coming soon

For teams building on top of TranscriptHook. Not on sale yet, and the specs may change.

  • 1,000 channels
  • Unlimited webhooks
  • Stored video history
  • Pull API (100/min, 8,000/day)
  • 10,000 transcript lookups/mo
  • AI Enrichment
  • Keyword filters & alerts
Join the waitlist

Common questions

Does TranscriptHook require a YouTube API key?
No. TranscriptHook uses YouTube's public RSS feed (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.
How quickly does TranscriptHook detect new videos?
TranscriptHook checks channels about every 10 minutes (Free accounts can take up to about 20). After that, the wait is usually YouTube's caption generation, which varies. A video without captions is held and retried for up to 24 hours, then delivered with available: false. Every plan can pull a specific video on demand through the API; the monthly lookup quota is what rises with the plan. A channel watched by several subscribers is fetched once per cycle, not once per subscriber.
Can I fetch a transcript for any video without subscribing to a channel?
Yes. The on-demand transcript endpoint (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.
Can I connect my AI assistant to TranscriptHook?
Yes, in one click. Connect once, then ask your AI something like “get the transcript for this YouTube URL” and it fetches it through TranscriptHook. Add 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.
What's included in the transcript payload?
Every webhook and pull API response includes the full plain-text transcript plus a 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.
What are Keyword Alerts?
Keyword Alerts let you specify a comma-separated list of keywords per subscription (e.g. 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.
What is AI Enrichment?
AI Enrichment runs every incoming transcript through Claude (Anthropic) to extract a concise summary, a list of key takeaways, and topic tags. The results are appended to the webhook payload and stored alongside the transcript in the pull API. It is planned for Pro and Agency, which are not on sale yet. It is not included on Free or Starter, and its pricing is not set.
What happens if a video doesn't have a transcript?
The video is still stored and (if you have a webhook set) the payload is still delivered — "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.
How is TranscriptHook different from YouTube's built-in notifications?
YouTube notifications tell you a video exists. TranscriptHook gives your app the full text of that video as structured data once the transcript is available, with no manual steps in between. It's the difference between a browser push notification and a programmable webhook carrying a searchable, embeddable, summarizable transcript.
What's the RSS window — can I miss videos?
YouTube's RSS feed returns the 15 most recent videos for any channel. TranscriptHook checks every new video since the last poll, so you'd only miss content if a channel published more than 15 videos between two checks about 10 minutes apart. In practice this is very unlikely.

Start monitoring YouTube in minutes

Make a free account and add your first channel.

No credit card · Free tier forever