Using UnifAPI with Claude via MCP

Connect UnifAPI’s public-data catalog — Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, Reddit, Google SERP, scrape, news — to Claude (Claude Code, Claude Desktop, or any MCP-compatible client) in under a minute.

Prerequisites

  • A UnifAPI API key — sign up for free
  • Claude Code, Claude Desktop, or another MCP client

1. Add the MCP server

Claude Code (~/.claude/mcp.json) 

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "unifapi": {
      "url": "https://mcp.unifapi.com",
      "headers": { "Authorization": "Bearer ${UNIFAPI_KEY}" }
    }
  }
}

Or use the CLI:

claude mcp add unifapi --transport sse \
  --url https://mcp.unifapi.com \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer $UNIFAPI_KEY"

Claude Desktop

Settings → Developer → MCP Servers → Add — paste the JSON block above.

2. Restart the client

Claude reloads tools on startup. After restart, every UnifAPI endpoint appears as a tool — twitter.search, youtube.videos.transcript, google_serp.search, scrape.markdown, and so on.

3. Use it

Just ask:

“Search Google for claude opus agent benchmarks, fetch the top 3 results as markdown, and summarize each.”

Claude will:

  1. Call google_serp.search
  2. Call scrape.markdown three times
  3. Synthesize

No glue code in your prompt, no tool definitions to write.

What tools are exposed?

Every endpoint in the UnifAPI catalog, grouped by platform:

  • twitter.*, youtube.*, tiktok.*, instagram.*, reddit.*, threads.*
  • google_serp.*, bing_serp.*, google_trends.*
  • scrape.markdown, scrape.structured
  • news.search, news.sources.*

See docs/mcp.md for the full list.

Troubleshooting

  • Tools don’t appear — confirm the server is loaded (/mcp in Claude Code; Settings → MCP in Claude Desktop). Most issues are a missing Authorization header.
  • 401 errors — check UNIFAPI_KEY is exported and starts with sk_live_ or sk_test_.
  • Rate-limit errors — see docs/authentication.md for limits.

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