Facebook Video Downloader - Reels and Videos, MP4 or MP3

Download Facebook videos and reels as MP4 files, or just their sound as MP3: paste the link of a video, watch page or reel and get the file itself, saved in the run, with a dataset row carrying a direct download link.

The one thing that catches people out: a video that plays in your browser can still fail here, because Facebook won't hand some videos to a visitor who isn't signed in. The reason lands in ERRORS and costs nothing. Public videos need no account, and your own cookies open the ones only your account can see.

Input	Facebook video, watch, reel, fb.watch and facebook.com/share/ links
Output	One MP4 or MP3 per link in the run's storage, plus a row with its download link, size, length, resolution and codec
Ceiling	500 MB per video by default, up to 4,000, and about 716 MB of files per run at the default memory
Speed	Roughly 6 to 8 seconds per short video on measured runs, plus the run's start
Account needed	None for public videos. Your own cookies for ones only your account can see
Price	$0.50 per 1,000 MB delivered ($0.0005 per MB), flat on every plan, plus $0.03 per started minute converted to H.264 if you ask for it. The free plan's $5 a month covers about 10,000 MB

🔍 What Facebook Video Downloader does

Facebook sends the picture and the sound as separate pieces, merged back into one MP4 before you get it. The size is checked first, so a video over your maxMegabytes is refused rather than fetched and thrown away. fb.watch and facebook.com/share/ links are followed to the video for you, and fb.com is the same site under a shorter name.

Facebook offers each reel in one video codec only. Plenty of them are VP9 or AV1, which a browser plays fine but QuickTime and older iPhones may refuse. There is no H.264 copy of those to ask for, so convertToH264 re-encodes the file:

What it touches	Only files that are not already H.264. H.264 videos and MP3s are left alone.
What it costs in time	Every frame is encoded again. A 27-second 1080p reel took 82 to 106 seconds at the default 1024 MB, and about 3 minutes of 1080p is the most one link can convert at that memory.
What it costs in size	The H.264 copy runs about 2 to 2.6 times the original, and you pay per megabyte of what you receive.
When it does not happen	If the conversion fails, runs out of time, or would go over your size limit or your run's maximum charge, you get the original file and the row's note says why. Nothing is charged for the attempt.

A video too long to convert in the time the run has is refused up front, with a message naming the memory setting to use.

📋 What data you get from each Facebook download

What you get	Field
The file, as a link and as a key in the run's store	mediaUrl, mediaKey
What the file is	format, resolution, durationSeconds
Its size, and what it was billed as	fileSizeBytes, billedMegabytes
The codec, and whether it was converted	videoCodec, convertedToH264, note
The caption and who posted it	title, author
The link you gave	url, host

▶️ How to download Facebook videos

1. Open Facebook Video Downloader and click Try for free.
2. Paste links into Facebook video links, one per line.
3. Pick a Max quality, or turn on Audio only (MP3). Turn on Convert VP9 and AV1 videos to H.264 if the files are going into QuickTime or an older iPhone. For a friends-only or private-group video, open Videos only your account can see and paste your cookies.
4. Click Start.
5. Open the dataset and follow mediaUrl, or take the files from the run's key-value store.

💰 How much does it cost to download Facebook videos?

$0.0005 per megabyte of file delivered, which is $0.50 per 1,000 MB, flat on every Apify plan. The size counted is the file you receive, rounded up to whole megabytes, so the 669 KB reel below counts as one. On the free plan, the $5 Apify gives you each month covers about 10,000 MB of files.

Converting to H.264 adds $0.03 for each started minute of video converted, on top of the megabytes of the converted file. A 27-second reel counts as one minute, a 61-second video as two.

A link that fails, a video over your maxMegabytes, one too big for the run, and a conversion that was refused or did not work all cost nothing. Adding your cookies doesn't change the price. If you set a maximum charge for the run, each video is checked against it before the download starts, so the run skips what it cannot pay for instead of going over.

📥 What you give it

{
  "urls": ["https://www.facebook.com/reel/1195289147628387"],
  "quality": "1080",
  "maxMegabytes": 500
}

Field	Default	What it is
urls	none, required	One link per line: a Facebook video, watch or reel link, on facebook.com or fb.com, any subdomain, or an fb.watch or facebook.com/share/ short link. Duplicates are skipped.
quality	1080	best, 1080, 720, 480 or 360, measured on the short side of the picture, so 1080 means 1920x1080 landscape or 1080x1920 vertical. A video that does not come in that size gives you the closest it has.
audioOnly	false	Save the sound only, as a 128 kbit/s MP3.
convertToH264	false	Re-encode VP9 and AV1 videos to H.264. See above.
maxMegabytes	500	Your limit per video, 1 to 4,000. Anything bigger is skipped before it is downloaded and costs you nothing.
cookies	none	Optional. Your own Facebook cookies, for videos a logged-out visitor can't open.

Videos only your account can see, such as friends-only posts or a private group you are in, need your own cookies in cookies. In Chrome, open facebook.com signed in, press F12, then Application > Cookies > https://www.facebook.com, and paste c_user=…; xs=…. A JSON or cookies.txt export works too. They are only tried on links that fail without them.

📤 What you get back

A real row from a real run, with the title and the download link cut short:

{
  "url": "https://www.facebook.com/reel/1195289147628387",
  "host": "facebook",
  "title": "9.8K views · 343 reactions | When your trying to help your partner out with an arrest and #FAAFO games begin. ... | Beast Camp Training",
  "author": "Beast Camp Training",
  "durationSeconds": 9.57,
  "resolution": "480x848",
  "format": "mp4",
  "fileSizeBytes": 669110,
  "billedMegabytes": 1,
  "videoCodec": "vp9",
  "convertedToH264": false,
  "note": null,
  "mediaKey": "facebook-1195289147628387.mp4",
  "mediaUrl": "https://api.apify.com/v2/key-value-stores/Uxnhw3yrzblEEyAPL/records/facebook-1195289147628387.mp4?signature=..."
}

Field	How to read it
mediaUrl, mediaKey	A direct link to the file, and its key in the run's store if you would rather fetch it through the API.
resolution, durationSeconds, format	Read off the file you actually received, not copied from the page.
fileSizeBytes, billedMegabytes	The real size, and that size rounded up to whole megabytes.
videoCodec, convertedToH264	The codec of the file you got, and whether it was re-encoded for you.
note	Empty on a normal row. When you asked for H.264 and did not get it, this says why.
title, author	Facebook's own caption and the poster. On a reel the title has the view and reaction counts in front of the caption, the way Facebook shows it.

🧾 Reading the output

Three places to look, and only the first one costs anything.

Where	What is in it	Billed
The dataset	One row per delivered file, with mediaUrl on it	yes, per megabyte
The key-value store	The MP4s and MP3s themselves, under the key in mediaKey	no
The ERRORS record	Every link that did not work, each with a plain reason. These never reach the dataset	no

If no link could be downloaded, the run ends as Failed, so a schedule or an integration notices instead of quietly finding an empty dataset. How long the store is kept depends on your Apify plan, so download what you want to keep.

💡 What people use it for

• Keeping a copy of a Page's own reels for an archive, or for re-cutting into other edits.
• Pulling the audio off a talk or interview video and running it through a transcriber.
• Feeding ad creative into a review pipeline that needs the actual file, not a link.
• Grabbing a handful of links from a scraper run and turning them into files in one go.

From a video to its words, in three steps:

1. Run this with audioOnly on.
2. Copy the mediaUrl of each MP3.
3. Paste them into Video & Audio Transcriber as mediaUrls for the text, the timestamps and an SRT file.

🚧 What it does not do

• Anything your account can't see. With your cookies it reaches what you can open, and no more.
• Every fb.watch link. Now and then one still stops at a login page. Paste the facebook.com address it opens in your browser instead.
• Live videos while they are live.
• Posts with no video in them, such as photo posts.
• Whole Pages or playlists. One link, one file.
• Other sites. Facebook links only. The siblings below cover TikTok, X and YouTube, but not Instagram or Vimeo.
• Other output formats. The conversion only produces H.264 MP4 at the video's own picture size.
• A guarantee on every public link. Facebook sometimes won't hand over a video that worked a minute earlier, and the reason then says to try again later.

🧭 Which downloader do you need?

If you want	Use
A Facebook video or reel as a file	This one
The same for a TikTok link	TikTok Video Downloader
The same for an X link	X Video Downloader
The same for a YouTube link	YouTube Downloader Pro
A Page's reels as data, with the links and counts	Facebook Reels Scraper
The words spoken in a video, as text	Video & Audio Transcriber

❓ Questions people ask

Do I need an account, cookies or an API key?

Not for public videos. Cookies are optional, for videos only your account can see.

Is it safe to paste my cookies?

Apify stores the field encrypted, and the values never reach the log or the dataset. They are still a live login: anyone holding them can act as you, and Facebook may sign the session out or restrict the account for automated use.

Can I send lots of links in one run?

Yes. They go one after another, a few seconds for a short video, so give a long list a generous run timeout.

Why did my file come out as VP9?

Because that is the only codec Facebook has for that reel. Turn on convertToH264 if your player needs it.

How big a video can one run take?

About 70% of the run's memory, so 716 MB at the default 1024 MB. For more, raise the memory in the run options; the message names the setting.

Can I call it from code or connect it to an AI assistant?

Yes. The API tab has ready-made code for Python, JavaScript and the command line. For Claude, ChatGPT or another MCP client, connect https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,dami_studio/facebook-video-downloader. Either way the run happens on your Apify account at the same price.

Can I download any Facebook video I like?

The videos belong to whoever posted them. Download what you own or have permission to use, and stay inside Facebook's terms. Apify's write-up on the legality of web scraping covers the wider question, and we are not lawyers.

🆘 If something breaks

Open the Issues tab on the actor page. Include the link you used and the run ID, and the ERRORS record plus the log is usually enough for us to see what happened.