Facebook Video & Reels Downloader

Give it Facebook video or Reel URLs, get back the MP4 plus the metadata around it. Share links, /reel/ links, /watch/ links and page video URLs all work, and a share link is resolved to its real reel URL before anything else happens. No login, no cookies for public content, no browser.

Why Use This Scraper?

• Share links are resolved, not rejected. facebook.com/share/r/XXXX/ is what people actually copy off the app, and it is not the canonical URL. This resolves it — measured on a live run, share/r/CYg8uitszPX6gRoK/ came back as facebook.com/reel/8422069481202628.
• Metadata without the download. Set metadataOnly and you get owner, title, quality and thumbnail without paying for bandwidth you do not want.
• Highest available quality is detected, not assumed — the run reports what it found (1936p on the test clip) rather than silently handing you SD.
• The run says what happened. Every run ends with a summary naming requested, succeeded, failed and the exact failedInputs, so a partial batch is visible instead of something you discover by counting rows.
• Cookies only when Facebook demands them. Public videos need none. facebookCookies exists for the content that does, rather than being required up front.
• A size ceiling before any bytes move. maxFileSizeMb defaults to 100. An unexpectedly long video is skipped rather than silently eating the run's budget.
• One video, one charge. Paste the same video as a reel link and a share link and you are billed once, not twice — de-duplication happens on the resolved video id, not on the text you typed. The duplicate row carries duplicateOf so you can still see which of your inputs it came from.

Overview

One row per input URL. Give it fifty links and you get fifty rows, each carrying inputUrl so a batch stays attributable to what you submitted.

Supported Inputs

Input	Example
Share link	/share/r/, /share/v/, /share/p/ and the bare /share/<token>/
Reel link	https://www.facebook.com/reel/8422069481202628
Watch link	/watch/?v=, /watch/?video_id=, video.php?id=
Page video	/<page>/videos/<id>/ and /<page>/reels/videos/<id>/
Short domains	fb.watch/<token>, fb.com/..., fb.me/...
Any subdomain	m., web., touch., business., mbasic., locale hosts like en-gb.
Post permalinks	story.php, permalink.php, /<page>/posts/<id> and group posts
Wrapped links	l.php?u=... and flx/warn?u=... are unwrapped automatically

Tracking noise (?mibextid=, ?rdid=, ?fs=, ?locale=) is stripped, duplicate slashes are collapsed, and pfbid ids are accepted alongside numeric ones.

Use Cases

• Content archiving — keep permanent MP4 copies of Reels before they are edited or deleted.
• Creative research — pull a competitor's Reels and study hooks, pacing and captions offline.
• Ad and campaign records — retain what a brand actually published, with owner and title attached.
• Feeding transcription or vision models — hand the MP4 straight to a downstream pipeline.

How It Works

Each URL is normalised first, so a share link becomes its canonical reel or video URL. The video's metadata is read, the best available rendition is picked, and unless metadataOnly is set the file is fetched and stored. Downloads run in parallel up to maxConcurrency, and a URL that fails is named in the run summary rather than dropped silently.

Pure HTTP with built-in proxies. No browser and no Facebook account for public content.

Input Configuration

Field	Type	Default	Notes
videoUrls	array	required	Facebook video or Reel URLs. Share, reel, watch and page-video forms all accepted.
metadataOnly	boolean	false	Skip the download and return metadata only.
maxFileSizeMb	integer	100	Skip any video larger than this, checked before a byte moves. Stops one long video consuming a whole run's budget.
facebookCookies	string	optional	Leave empty for public videos and Reels — everything above works without it. Netscape-format cookies only unlock content Facebook refuses to serve logged out.
maxConcurrency	integer	3	Parallel downloads.
proxy	object	—	Proxy configuration.

Example input

{
  "videoUrls": [
    "https://www.facebook.com/share/r/CYg8uitszPX6gRoK/",
    "https://www.facebook.com/reel/8422069481202628"
  ],
  "metadataOnly": false,
  "maxFileSizeMb": 100,
  "maxConcurrency": 3
}

Output Overview

One flat row per URL, 12 fields. In metadataOnly mode downloadUrl and fileSizeBytes are null by design, since nothing was fetched.

Output Sample

A real row from a live run, in metadataOnly mode:

{
  "videoId": "8422069481202628",
  "inputUrl": "https://www.facebook.com/share/r/CYg8uitszPX6gRoK/",
  "resolvedUrl": "https://www.facebook.com/reel/8422069481202628",
  "title": "THE PAUSECAST PODCAST 🇮🇳",
  "ownerName": "THE PAUSECAST PODCAST 🇮🇳",
  "durationSec": null,
  "publishedAt": null,
  "viewCount": null,
  "quality": "1936p",
  "fileSizeBytes": null,
  "downloadUrl": null,
  "thumbnailUrl": "https://scontent.fdub1-4.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t51.71878-15/…"
}

Key Output Fields

Field	Notes
videoId	Facebook's own numeric id.
inputUrl / resolvedUrl	What you submitted, and what it actually pointed at. A share link differs from both.
title / ownerName	Video title and the account that posted it.
quality	The rendition selected, e.g. 1936p.
downloadUrl / fileSizeBytes	The stored MP4 and its size. null in metadataOnly mode.
thumbnailUrl	Cover image.
durationSec / publishedAt / viewCount	Populated where Facebook exposes them; null rather than a guessed value when it does not.

FAQ

Do I need to log in? No. Every example in this README was run with no cookies and no account. facebookCookies is optional and exists only for private, followers-only or group videos that Facebook will not serve to a logged-out request. Leave it empty and nothing is sent.

Does it handle the share links I copy from the app? Yes, and that is the point — facebook.com/share/r/... is resolved to the canonical reel URL before the video is read.

Can I get the data without downloading the file? Yes. metadataOnly: true returns owner, title, quality and thumbnail and skips the bandwidth.

Why are some fields null? Facebook does not expose duration, publish date or view count on every video. They are left null rather than filled with a guess.

What happens if one URL in my batch fails? The run continues and finishes, and the summary names the failed inputs explicitly.

I pasted the same video twice in different formats — am I charged twice? No. A reel link and the share link that points at it resolve to the same video id, and billing is keyed on that id. The second one returns the same data with a duplicateOf field naming the input it matched.

Does it accept the link my phone gives me? Yes. fb.watch/..., m.facebook.com/..., share links and links carrying ?mibextid= tracking all normalise to the canonical video before anything is fetched.

Does it find Reels for me? No. This takes URLs you already have. To discover a page's Reels first, pair it with a Reels scraper and feed the URLs in.

Support

Open an issue on the Actor's Issues tab. Bug reports with a run id get looked at first.

Additional Services

Need a custom scraper, a scheduled feed, or this data delivered somewhere specific? Get in touch through the Apify Store profile.

Explore More Scrapers

• Instagram Video Downloader — Reels and carousels, permanently re-hosted
• YouTube Video Downloader — the same job on YouTube
• Facebook Marketplace Scraper — listings with photos, location and vehicle data
• Facebook Comments Scraper — comment threads on any public post

🤖 For AI Agents & LLM Apps

Purpose: Turn Facebook video and Reel URLs into MP4 files plus structured metadata. Handles share links by resolving them to canonical URLs first.

Minimal tested input:

{ "videoUrls": ["https://www.facebook.com/share/r/CYg8uitszPX6gRoK/"], "metadataOnly": true }

Output: array of flat objects, one per input URL. Fields: videoId, inputUrl, resolvedUrl, title, ownerName, durationSec, publishedAt, viewCount, quality, fileSizeBytes, downloadUrl, thumbnailUrl.

Agent-relevant behaviour: maxFileSizeMb (default 100) rejects oversized videos before download, so a skipped row is a size decision rather than a failure. Join results back on inputUrl, not resolvedUrl, since a share link resolves to something different. metadataOnly: true is the cheap path when you only need the data. Null duration, publish date and view count mean Facebook did not expose them, not that the run failed. The run summary reports requested / succeeded / failed / failedInputs.

Billing: per delivered row. A run that returns nothing charges for nothing.

⚠️ Disclaimer

This Actor reads publicly available Facebook content. You are responsible for using the output lawfully, including under copyright, the GDPR, the CCPA and Facebook's terms where they apply to you. Downloaded video remains the property of its creator — this is a tool for accessing content you already have the right to use, not a licence to redistribute it. Nothing here is legal advice.

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