YouTube Video Downloader — No Platform Costs! No Proxy Costs!

Download videos from YouTube at the quality you choose and save them to Apify's built-in storage with zero setup — or deliver them to your own cloud: AWS S3, Google Cloud, DigitalOcean Spaces, or Azure.

Since YouTube doesn't offer a free, reliable API for downloading videos, this actor handles it for you: give it video URLs or IDs, pick a resolution, and get back a direct link to each downloaded file.

Pay-per-event pricing with no platform or proxy costs — every event has a fixed price, so you know exactly what you'll pay before you start a run.

Features

• Download by video URL or video ID (watch links, youtu.be, Shorts, and embeds supported)
• Choose resolution from 360p up to 4K (2160p)
• Save to Apify's key-value store out of the box (no cloud account needed) — or bring your own AWS S3, Google Cloud, DigitalOcean Spaces, or Azure
• Clean JSON output with a direct download URL and a per-video cost breakdown

Input

Field	Type	Required	Description
startUrls	array	Yes*	YouTube video URLs to download.
videoIds	array	Yes*	YouTube video IDs to download.
quality	string	Yes	Target resolution: 360, 480, 720, 1080, 1440, 2160. Default 720.
storageType	string	Yes	Where to store files: apify, aws, gcp, digitalocean, azure. Default apify.

*Provide at least one of startUrls or videoIds.

Storage options

By default (storageType: "apify"), videos are saved to the run's Apify key-value store and you get a direct download URL in the output — no cloud account, credentials, or extra setup required. This is the simplest way to use the actor.

To deliver files to your own cloud instead, set storageType accordingly and fill in the matching configuration:

• AWS S3: s3AccessKeyId, s3SecretAccessKey, s3Region, s3Bucket, s3Path (optional)
• Google Cloud: googleCloudProjectId, googleCloudServiceKeyJson, googleCloudBucketName, googleCloudPath (optional)
• DigitalOcean Spaces: digitalOceanAccessKeyId, digitalOceanSecretAccessKey, digitalOceanRegion, digitalOceanBucketName, digitalOceanEndpoint (optional), digitalOceanAcl (optional), digitalOceanPath (optional)
• Azure: azureAccountName, azureAccountKey, azureContainerName, azurePath (optional)

Example input

{
  "startUrls": [
    "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BB49x_uMlGA",
    "https://www.youtube.com/shorts/bOUOSn9MULw"
  ],
  "videoIds": ["etEJKUNqKJk"],
  "quality": "1080",
  "storageType": "apify"
}

Pricing

Pricing is pay-per-event, billed per second of video, with no platform or proxy costs on top. Every event has a fixed price, so you can work out the exact cost of a run before you start it. The rate depends on the resolution you pick:

Quality	Price per second
360p	$0.00015
480p	$0.00025
720p	$0.00045
1080p	$0.00075
1440p	$0.001
2160p (4K)	$0.0012

For example, a 10-minute (600s) video at 1080p costs 600 × $0.00075 = $0.45.

Before downloading each video, the actor first looks up its duration and charges upfront for the full length at the selected quality's per-second rate. The exact durationSeconds, unitPricePerSecond, and totalCost are included in the output for every video.

Free plan: users on Apify's Free plan can initiate up to 2 runs per month. Subscribe to a paid plan for unlimited runs.

Output

Each downloaded video is stored as one dataset item:

{
  "inputSource": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BB49x_uMlGA",
  "videoId": "BB49x_uMlGA",
  "quality": "1080",
  "jobId": "a1b2c3d4",
  "status": "succeeded",
  "storageType": "apify",
  "output": {
    "url": "https://api.apify.com/v2/key-value-stores/xxx/records/BB49x_uMlGA.mp4"
  },
  "durationSeconds": 215,
  "unitPricePerSecond": 0.00075,
  "totalCost": 0.16125,
  "error": null
}

You can fetch results in any language (Python, PHP, Node.js) via the Apify API.

Contact

Visit epctex.com to see all our products. For custom integrations or support, reach out through the chat box on epctex.com or email business@epctex.com.