YouTube Video Downloader & Persistent Media Storage API

This Actor is a professional-grade YouTube video downloader API and managed media pipeline. It allows you to download YouTube videos and audio, extract high-quality streams, and host the resulting files in high-performance cloud storage. Whether you need a 1080p MP4, a high-fidelity FLAC audio track, or a permanent archive, this tool provides a standalone, API-first solution for media processing.

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Why use this YouTube Downloader?

• Prevent Link Expiration: Temporary download links expire quickly. Use our Persistent Storage to keep files accessible for up to a year.
• Automated Media Pipelines: Streamline the conversion of YouTube content into high-quality formats for apps, podcasts, or internal databases.
• High-Speed Delivery: Files are served from optimized cloud infrastructure, ensuring fast download speeds for your end-users.
• Bulk Content Extraction: Provide dozens of URLs at once and let the Actor handle the concurrent processing and storage.
• No Infrastructure Management: Offload heavy video processing and storage maintenance to a reliable, serverless solution.

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🌟 Key Features

This YouTube downloader API acts as a dedicated media pipeline with advanced capabilities:

• 🎬 Multi-Resolution Video: Save videos in 360p, 480p, 720p, 1080p, 1440p, and Full 4K (2160p).
• 🎵 Professional Audio Extraction: Convert content into M4A, WebM, or Opus audio. Legacy audio requests such as MP3, AAC, OGG, Vorbis, WAV, and FLAC are handled as M4A.
• 📚 Playlist & Channel Downloads: Paste playlist URLs, channel URLs, or channel handles such as @TED; the Actor resolves the videos and downloads them one by one.
• ⏳ Managed Persistent Storage: Keep your files accessible long-term. Choose a storage duration (TTL) from 1 day, 1 week, 1 month, up to 5 years.
• 🗣️ Multi-Language Audio Support: Specify a 2-letter language code (e.g., es, fr, en) to download specific audio tracks for videos with multiple languages.
• 📦 "All Formats" Mode (Default): Retrieve every available technical specification and raw stream link for a video in a single request.
• ⚡ Parallel Batch Processing: Built for scale. The Actor processes YouTube URLs in managed parallel batches to ensure 100% stability and resource control, even for large video files.

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🧩 Step‑by‑step: How to download YouTube videos with this Actor

1. Open the Actor on Apify and go to the Input tab.
2. Paste one or more YouTube video / Shorts / Music URLs, playlist URLs, channel URLs, or @handles into the urls field.
3. Select your desired Download Format.
   • Note: "All formats" returns comprehensive metadata. If persistent storage is enabled, a 1080p MP4 copy is also stored.
4. (Optional) Set Persistent Storage duration if you want the file to stay accessible beyond the temporary link window.
5. (Optional) Set an Audio Track Language code for videos with multiple tracks.
6. Click Run and, when finished, download your results from the Dataset tab.

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💰 Pricing & Monetization

This Actor uses pay-per-event pricing.

Charge	Free plan	Bronze-Diamond plans
Actor start	$0.05	$0.05
Result saved to the default dataset	$0.08 per result	$0.02 per result
Persistent cloud storage	$0.0005 per MB per day	$0.0005 per MB per day

The Actor start event is charged according to memory, at one event per GB with at least one event per run. Persistent storage is calculated as file size in MB multiplied by storage duration in days. For example, storing a 100 MB video costs $0.05 per day or $0.35 for seven days. Select no persistent storage when a temporary link is sufficient.

Apify requires a maximum-charge limit of at least $0.10 per run. This limit caps potential spending; it is not a minimum fee. Check the Actor's Pricing tab for the latest rates before processing or storing a large batch.

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📥 Input

Key input fields (see the Input tab for the full schema):

• urls (array, required): One or more YouTube video URLs, Shorts URLs, Music URLs, playlist URLs, channel URLs, or channel handles.
• format (string, required): Target format or resolution (e.g. 1080, m4a, all).
• ttl (string, optional): Storage duration (e.g. none, 1d, 1w, 1m, 1y, 5y). none returns a temporary link.
• languageCode (string, optional): 2-letter language code for specific audio tracks (e.g. en, es).

Input example

{
  "urls": [
    "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z19HM7ANZlo",
    "https://www.youtube.com/@TED"
  ],
  "format": "1080",
  "ttl": "1w",
  "languageCode": "en"
}

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📤 Output

The Actor stores results in a dataset. You can download them as JSON, CSV, HTML, or Excel from the Dataset tab.

What data can this YouTube downloader API return?

Field	Description
jobId	A unique identifier for the specific download task.
videoId	The parsed YouTube Video ID.
title	The full title of the video.
originalUrl	The original YouTube URL provided as input.
storageUrl	A non-expiring link to the file in our managed storage (if enabled).
downloadUrl	A direct download link. Temporary links expire in about 15 minutes when storage is disabled.
fileSizeMB	The exact size of the processed file in Megabytes.
ttl	The storage duration selected (e.g., 1w, 1m).
expiresAt	The timestamp when the file will be removed from storage.
status	Current status of the job (completed, failed).

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💡 Tips & Troubleshooting

• Format Availability: While you can request a specific resolution (like 4K), if that resolution is not available for the specific video, the tool will provide the best available match.
• Playlist and Channel Inputs: Playlist URLs are resolved from their list parameter. Channel inputs can be @handle, youtube.com/@handle, youtube.com/user/name, youtube.com/c/name, or youtube.com/channel/UC... URLs.
• Processing Time: High-quality (4K/1440p) and very long videos take significantly more time to process.
• Success Rate: Extremely long videos (e.g., 2+ hours) or ultra-high-quality files have a higher chance of failure due to the complexity of the extraction process.
• Persistent Storage: If "All formats" is selected with a Storage TTL, the Actor returns metadata and stores a 1080p MP4 copy. For a specific resolution or audio format, select that format directly.
• Relay Configuration: Specific video/audio formats require DOWNLOADER_RELAY_URL and DOWNLOADER_RELAY_SECRET. format: all still requires RAPID_API_KEY.

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🛠 Other YouTube Scraping Tools

If you like this Actor, you might also find these YouTube tools useful:

• 🔍 YouTube Search Scraper: Discover videos, channels, playlists, and Shorts by keyword.
• 📺 YouTube Channel Scraper: Extract videos, Shorts, playlists, livestreams, and posts from channels.
• 💬 YouTube Comments Scraper: Extract comments and replies for audience and sentiment analysis.
• 📝 YouTube Transcript Scraper: Turn video URLs or IDs into structured transcript data.

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❓ FAQ & Support

Is it legal to download YouTube videos?

Our scrapers are ethical and do not extract any private user data. They only extract what the user has chosen to share publicly. We believe that our scrapers, when used for ethical purposes by Apify users, are safe. However, you should be aware that your results could contain personal data protected by GDPR or other regulations. You should not scrape personal data unless you have a legitimate reason. Read more on the legality of web scraping.

Can I choose where my videos are hosted?

No. To ensure maximum speed and stability, all videos are hosted on our optimized, managed cloud infrastructure. This allows us to provide reliable, high-speed links to your applications.

Support

If you encounter issues, have feature requests, or find a bug, please use the Issues tab on the Actor's detail page. We actively monitor feedback to ensure our video pipeline remains the most reliable on the market.