YouTube MCP Server

YouTube

Access YouTube data across three scopes: public video discovery, authenticated channel management, and creator analytics. OAuth scopes youtube.readonly and yt-analytics.readonly control access.

Entity Hierarchy

• Channels — creator accounts with branding, subscriber counts, and upload history. Identified by channel_id, handle (@name), or legacy username.
• Videos — individual uploads with titles, descriptions, statistics (views, likes, comments), and content details (duration, definition, captions).
• Playlists — ordered video collections owned by a channel.
• Comments — threaded discussions on videos. Top-level comment threads contain reply chains.
• Transcripts — auto-generated or manual subtitles extracted without browser automation.

Tool Categories

Public discovery (no channel ownership needed):

• Search videos across all of YouTube by keyword, with filters for duration, captions, event type, and region
• Get video info, comments, transcripts, and playlist contents by ID
• Look up any channel by ID, handle, or username
• List a channel's videos, playlists, and search within a channel
• Browse trending videos by region and category

Authenticated channel (your own channel):

• Get your channel info and metrics
• List your uploaded videos with optional search

Analytics (your own channel, requires yt-analytics.readonly):

• Per-video performance breakdown (views, watch time, engagement over time)
• Equivalent timeframe comparison (compare a video's first N days against others)
• Content category analysis (which topics drive the most engagement)

Workflows

Content research: Search YouTube for a topic → get video info on top results → fetch transcripts for content analysis → check comments for audience sentiment.

Competitor analysis: Resolve a competitor's channel handle → get channel info for subscriber/view counts → list their videos sorted by date → get video info on their top performers for engagement metrics.

Creator dashboard: Get your channel info for overview metrics → list your videos → get performance analysis on specific videos → run equivalent timeframe comparison to find which videos over/underperformed at the same point in their lifecycle.

Playlist audit: List a channel's playlists → list videos in each playlist → get video info for each to find unlisted, private, or underperforming entries.

Gotchas

• Channel resolution: Many tools accept channel_id, handle, or username. Use resolve-channel first when you have a URL or @handle to get the canonical channel_id. Handles start with @, usernames do not.
• Your channel vs any channel: "get-my-channel-info" and "list-my-videos" operate on the authenticated user's channel. "get-channel-info" and "list-channel-videos" work on any public channel by ID.
• Search scope: "search-youtube-videos" searches all of YouTube. "search-youtube-channel-videos" searches within a single channel. Use the channel-scoped version when you already know the creator.
• Transcript availability: Not all videos have transcripts. Auto-generated captions may contain errors. The transcript tool uses youtube-transcript-api and does not require browser automation.
• Analytics rate limits: YouTube API has a daily quota (10,000 units). Analytics queries cost more units than data queries. The provider is rate-limited to 100 calls/minute.
• Trending videos: Results vary by region code (e.g., US, GB, JP). Category IDs are numeric and YouTube-specific (10=Music, 20=Gaming, etc.).
• Pagination: Video and playlist listing endpoints support pagination via page tokens. Pass the nextPageToken from previous responses.