Fetch

Fetch MCP Server

An MCP server for fetching web content in multiple formats — HTML, JSON, plain text, Markdown, readable article content, and YouTube transcripts.

Tools

All tools accept the following common parameters:

Parameter Type Required Description url string Yes URL to fetch headers object No Custom headers to include in the request max_length number No Maximum characters to return (default: 5000) start_index number No Start from this character index (default: 0) proxy string No Proxy URL (e.g. http://proxy:8080)

fetch_html — Fetch a website and return its raw HTML content.

fetch_markdown — Fetch a website and return its content converted to Markdown.

fetch_txt — Fetch a website and return plain text with HTML tags, scripts, and styles removed.

fetch_json — Fetch a URL and return the JSON response.

fetch_readable — Fetch a website and extract the main article content using Mozilla Readability, returned as Markdown. Strips navigation, ads, and boilerplate. Ideal for articles and blog posts.

fetch_youtube_transcript — Fetch a YouTube video's captions/transcript. Uses yt-dlp if available, otherwise extracts directly from the page. Accepts an additional lang parameter (default: "en") to select the caption language.

Environment Variables

Variable Description DEFAULT_LIMIT Default character limit for responses (default: 5000, set to 0 for no limit) MAX_RESPONSE_BYTES Maximum response body size in bytes (default: 10485760 / 10 MB)

Example with a custom limit:

{
 "mcpServers": {
 "fetch": {
 "command": "npx",
 "args": ["mcp-fetch-server"],
 "env": {
 "DEFAULT_LIMIT": "50000"
 }
 }
 }
}

Features

• Fetch web content as HTML, JSON, plain text, or Markdown

• Extract article content with Mozilla Readability (strips ads, nav, boilerplate)

• Extract YouTube video transcripts (via yt-dlp or direct extraction)

• Proxy support for requests behind firewalls

• Pagination with max_length and start_index

• Custom request headers

• SSRF protection (blocks private/localhost addresses and DNS rebinding)

• Response size limits to prevent memory exhaustion

Development

bun install
bun run dev # start with watch mode
bun test # run tests
bun run build # build for production

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.

Installation

As an MCP server

Add to your MCP client configuration:

{
 "mcpServers": {
 "fetch": {
 "command": "npx",
 "args": ["mcp-fetch-server"]
 }
 }
}

As a CLI

npx mcp-fetch [flags]

Or install globally:

npm install -g mcp-fetch-server
mcp-fetch [flags]

CLI Usage

mcp-fetch [flags]

Commands

Command Description html Fetch a URL and return raw HTML markdown Fetch a URL and return Markdown readable Fetch a URL and return article content as Markdown (via Readability) txt Fetch a URL and return plain text json Fetch a URL and return JSON youtube Fetch a YouTube video transcript

Flags

Flag Description --max-length <N> Maximum characters to return --start-index <N> Start from this character index --proxy <URL> Proxy URL --lang <code> Language code for YouTube transcripts (default: en) --help Show help message --version Show version

Examples

# Fetch a page as markdown
mcp-fetch markdown https://example.com

# Extract article content without boilerplate
mcp-fetch readable https://example.com/blog/post

# Get a YouTube transcript in Spanish
mcp-fetch youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ --lang es

# Fetch with a length limit
mcp-fetch html https://example.com --max-length 10000

# Fetch through a proxy
mcp-fetch json https://api.example.com/data --proxy http://proxy:8080