About Ransack
Ransack is a hosted MCP server for AI agents that combines web search, page fetching, discovery, shopping, transcripts and cited research. It returns source-linked results and citation checks through one endpoint.
Key features
- 01Search across multiple engines
- 02Fetch web pages
- 03Discover domain assets
- 04Find prices and availability
- 05Retrieve YouTube transcripts
- 06Create cited research reports
Use cases
- 01Research a topic across search engines
- 02Fetch pages and check cited claims
- 03Find product prices and availability
- 04Retrieve a YouTube video transcript
MCP support
Ransack exposes search, fetching, discovery, shopping, transcript and research tools through a hosted MCP endpoint. Clients connect over streamable HTTP using a Bearer API key.
Configuration
Remote servers need no local install. Pick your client, then copy the config or install in one click.
https://ransack.tools/mcpclaude mcp add --transport http ransack https://ransack.tools/mcp{"mcpServers":{"ransack":{"type":"http","url":"https://ransack.tools/mcp"}}}Open in Cursor{"servers":{"ransack":{"type":"http","url":"https://ransack.tools/mcp"}}}Open in VS Code{"mcpServers":{"ransack":{"type":"http","url":"https://ransack.tools/mcp"}}}{"mcpServers":{"ransack":{"serverUrl":"https://ransack.tools/mcp"}}}Run commands in a terminal; paste JSON into the client’s MCP config and restart. Servers that need sign-in will prompt on first connect.
Tools
Details
From the project READMERansack - Web Search & Fetch MCP Server for AI Agents
Ransack is an MCP server that gives AI agents live web search and page fetch through one endpoint and one API key. Twelve search engines behind a single MCP connection: search, fetch, discover, hosts, shop, verify, plus YouTube. No credits to manage, no per-engine billing: $15/month flat, 500 calls/day, failed fetches cost nothing, and every fetch returns a pass/fail receipt so silent failures cannot burn you.
This is a hosted service. This repository contains connection configuration, documentation, and logo; the server source is not public. Connect to:
https://ransack.tools/mcp
- Homepage: ransack.tools
- Free trial key: ransack.tools/trial
Connect
Get an API key from ransack.tools/trial, then add the server to your client.
Claude Desktop
{"mcpServers":{"ransack":{"type":"streamable-http","url":"https://ransack.tools/mcp","headers":{"Authorization":"Bearer <API_KEY>"}}}}
Cursor
{"mcpServers":{"ransack":{"url":"https://ransack.tools/mcp","headers":{"Authorization":"Bearer <API_KEY>"}}}}
Pi / Cline / 5ire
{"mcpServers":{"ransack":{"type":"http","url":"https://ransack.tools/mcp","headers":{"Authorization":"Bearer <API_KEY>"}}}}
Transport is streamable-http; authentication is a Bearer API key.
Tools
| Tool | What it does |
|---|---|
ransack | The main tool. Modes: search, fetch, discover, hosts, shop, verify, research. Markdown / JSON / hybrid output. |
youtube | Fetch a YouTube transcript from a video URL. |
execute_research | Multi-step pipeline (discover, fetch, extract, synthesize) into a cited report with per-claim citation verdicts. |
get_report | Retrieve a persisted report by report_id. |
search_memory | Semantic recall over previously fetched page chunks. |
tasks_get | Poll an asynchronous research task. |
ransack
One tool, many modes: search, fetch, discover, hosts, shop, verify, research.
search is metasearch across engines; fetch is the primary answer path; hosts enumerates a domain's assets from certificate transparency, DNS, sitemaps, web archives, crawl indexes, JS routes and scan records; shop returns price and
availability; verify checks a claim against its cited sources. freshness bypasses the result cache; it does not date-filter, so results are not filtered by date.
youtube
Fetch a YouTube transcript from a video URL.
execute_research
Multi-step pipeline (discover, fetch, extract, synthesize) into a cited report. Returns a task handle by default; poll tasks_get for the report_id and its per-claim citation verdicts.
get_report
Retrieve a persisted report by report_id.
search_memory
Semantic recall over previously fetched page chunks.
tasks_get
Poll an asynchronous research task.
What you actually get back
- Engine-tagged results. Every search result names the engine that found it, so you can tell Google from an independent index.
- Coverage status, not silence. On
hosts, every discovery engine reportsok,empty,timeoutorskipped. Found-nothing is never indistinguishable from tried-and-failed. - Labelled walls.
[bot wall: <vendor>]and[dead page: HTTP 404]come back as labels. Pages the server cannot read are reported, not guessed. - Per-claim citation verdicts. Research reports carry a verdict per claim, checked against the sources actually retrieved.
- No query rewrites. Ever. The caller owns site selection. Ransack never appends operators to your query or silently changes what you asked for.
- One key, six tools. Search, fetch, discovery, shopping, transcripts and cited research behind a single endpoint.
Honest limitations
- Paywalled and login-walled pages (e.g. some news, GitHub
/commitsviews) can't always be read. - Retailers that hard-block scraping (Amazon, Walmart) may return nothing rather than guessed data.
- TikTok is searchable, and the result snippet already carries the caption. The reader tier returns the caption, creator handle, post date and engagement counts, but the video, the comments and the spoken transcript do not come back, and the browser tier can return only TikTok's "Page not available" stub.
searchfast-lane results are partial by design;fetchis the primary answer path.- Labelling is not guaranteed: a wall sometimes comes back as thin page content instead.
Pricing
- Trial: free for 14 days, 50 calls/day, no card (ransack.tools/trial).
- Paid: $15/month flat, 500 calls/day, 120 requests/min.
License
This repository is documentation and configuration only. The service at ransack.tools is proprietary.
Comments
New to MCP?
From what the protocol is to installing your first server, these answers cover most first questions.
An open protocol that defines how AI applications connect to external tools and data in a uniform way. Clients talk to the model; MCP servers provide tools, resources and prompt templates. They exchange standard messages, so one server can be reused by many clients.