YouTube Video Downloader (yt-dlp)

Download YouTube videos, Shorts, playlists, channels and search results as MP4 (360p up to 4K) or MP3 audio. Built on the battle-tested open-source yt-dlp engine with ffmpeg merging, running on the official Apify Python SDK.

Every downloaded file is stored in the run's key-value store and a direct download link is pushed to the dataset together with the video metadata.

Features

• ✅ Single videos, Shorts, playlists, channels and plain-text search terms
• ✅ Quality selection: 360p → 4K (2160p), or audio-only MP3 (192 kbps)
• ✅ Automatic merging of video + audio streams into a single MP4 (ffmpeg)
• ✅ Proxy support (Apify Proxy or custom proxies) with per-video IP rotation
• ✅ Optional cookies support for age-restricted / members-only videos
• ✅ Direct download links in the dataset — easy to consume via API or integrations
• ✅ File-size guard so runs never blow up on multi-GB videos

Input example

{
    "startUrls": [
        "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ",
        "https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxxxxxx",
        "lofi hip hop"
    ],
    "quality": "720p",
    "maxItems": 10,
    "proxyConfiguration": {
        "useApifyProxy": true,
        "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"]
    }
}

Output example (dataset item)

{
    "videoId": "dQw4w9WgXcQ",
    "title": "Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up",
    "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ",
    "channel": "Rick Astley",
    "durationSeconds": 213,
    "viewCount": 1614038703,
    "uploadDate": "20091025",
    "resolution": "1280x720",
    "ext": "mp4",
    "fileSizeMb": 17.35,
    "downloadUrl": "https://api.apify.com/v2/key-value-stores/<storeId>/records/dQw4w9WgXcQ.mp4",
    "thumbnail": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/dQw4w9WgXcQ/maxresdefault.jpg",
    "billedMinutes": 4,
    "status": "SUCCESS"
}

Pricing

Pay-per-event: billed per minute of video actually delivered (rounded up, 1-minute minimum), based on the resolution actually downloaded — not the resolution requested. Failed downloads are never charged.

Quality	Price
4K (2160p)	$0.058 / min
1440p	$0.048 / min
1080p	$0.024 / min
720p	$0.016 / min
480p	$0.012 / min
360p	$0.007 / min
Audio (MP3)	$0.008 / min

No flat per-run fee, no data-transfer surcharge. Requires a paid Apify plan — Free-plan runs are rejected.

Proxies — read this

YouTube aggressively blocks datacenter IPs with the "Sign in to confirm you're not a bot" challenge. For reliable operation:

1. Use RESIDENTIAL proxies (Apify Proxy RESIDENTIAL group, or a custom provider such as Decodo, IPRoyal, Webshare or Bright Data via custom proxy URLs).
2. Optionally add cookies from a logged-in browser session (Netscape cookies.txt format) — this dramatically reduces bot-detection blocks and unlocks age-restricted content.

Note that the whole media stream is downloaded through the proxy (YouTube binds stream URLs to the requesting IP), so residential bandwidth usage roughly equals the size of the downloaded files. For large volumes, prefer lower resolutions or audio-only.

Memory & limits

Downloaded files are buffered in memory when uploaded to the key-value store. Allocate at least 2× the expected max file size of RAM to the run (e.g. 4096 MB for files up to ~2 GB), or lower maxFileSizeMb.

Maintenance

YouTube changes its internals frequently; yt-dlp ships fixes within days. Rebuild this Actor regularly (Console → Builds → Start build) so the latest yt-dlp release is installed.

Legal notice

Only download content you own, that is in the public domain / Creative Commons, or that you are otherwise authorized to download. Downloading may violate YouTube's Terms of Service. You are solely responsible for how you use this Actor.

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