YouTube Video Downloader — MP4, MP3 & Subtitles [Pay Per Download]

Download YouTube videos and Shorts as MP4 (360p up to 4K) or extract MP3 audio — in bulk, by URL or video ID. Every download comes with full metadata, a shareable file link, and optional VTT subtitles. You are only charged for successful downloads — failures cost nothing.

Built for content teams, archivists, AI/ML pipelines, and anyone who needs YouTube media as actual files instead of links that expire.

Why Use This Downloader?

• Pay per download, never for failures — a video that can't be downloaded is a free error row, not a charge
• Any link format — watch URLs, Shorts, embeds, youtu.be short links, or bare 11-character video IDs
• Quality control — pick 360p, 480p, 720p, 1080p, or best available (up to 4K)
• MP3 audio mode — extract audio only; smaller, faster, ideal for transcription pipelines
• Subtitles included — save captions or auto-generated subtitles as clean VTT files with their own links
• Metadata-only mode — pre-check a list of videos (title, duration, views) for a fraction of a cent each before committing to downloads
• Bulk-ready — hundreds of links per run, duplicates removed automatically, 1–5 parallel downloads
• Age-restricted support — supply your own YouTube cookies to unlock age-restricted or members-only videos
• Smart fallback chain — direct connection → residential proxy → alternate player clients → mobile endpoint, automatically per video

Overview

This actor takes a list of YouTube video URLs or IDs and produces one dataset row per video containing the video's metadata (title, channel, duration, views, upload date), the download details (quality, format, file size), and stable links to the downloaded files stored in the run's key-value store.

It is a downloader, not a search tool — you supply the video links. To discover videos first (by search query, channel, or Shorts feed), pair it with the scrapers listed in Explore More Scrapers; their output plugs directly into this actor's input.

Supported Inputs

Input type	Example
Watch URL	https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNQXAC9IVRw
Shorts URL	https://www.youtube.com/shorts/IbkzTfJCFjk
Short link	https://youtu.be/z9rdrNrkvDY
Embed / live URL	https://www.youtube.com/embed/jNQXAC9IVRw
Bare video ID	jNQXAC9IVRw

Extra URL parameters (?si=, &t=10s, ?feature=share) are handled automatically. Duplicate videos in the list are downloaded only once.

Not supported: playlist URLs, channel URLs, and search-result URLs (feed those to the companion scrapers first and pass the resulting video URLs here). Live streams that are currently airing cannot be downloaded until they finish.

Use Cases

Who	What for
Content & social media teams	Archive campaign videos, repurpose content across platforms
AI / ML engineers	Build audio/video datasets; MP3 mode feeds Whisper-style transcription directly
Journalists & researchers	Preserve evidence and sources before videos disappear
Marketing agencies	Competitor creative analysis, ad-library building
Educators	Offline copies of reference material
Media monitoring	Automated capture of brand mentions in video form

How It Works

1. Paste video links — any mix of watch/Shorts/youtu.be URLs or bare IDs, one per line.
2. Pick quality and format — MP4 at your chosen resolution cap, or MP3 audio-only.
3. The engine downloads each video through a battle-tested fallback chain (direct → residential proxy → alternate player clients → mobile endpoint), merging streams with ffmpeg.
4. Files are stored in the run's key-value store with stable, shareable HTTPS links.
5. One row per video lands in the dataset — metadata, file size, download link, subtitles link — exportable as JSON, CSV, or Excel.

Input Configuration

Field	Type	Default	Description
videoUrls	array	— (required)	YouTube video URLs or bare 11-char video IDs
quality	string	720p	Max resolution: 360p, 480p, 720p, 1080p, best. Ignored for MP3
format	string	mp4	mp4 (video) or mp3 (audio-only extraction)
downloadSubtitles	boolean	false	Also save subtitles/auto-captions as a VTT file
subtitleLanguages	array	["en"]	Preferred subtitle language codes, priority order
metadataOnly	boolean	false	Skip downloads, return only metadata rows
youtubeCookies	string	—	cookies.txt content (Netscape format) for age-restricted videos
proxy	object	none	Proxy configuration — residential recommended, see below
maxConcurrency	integer	2	Parallel downloads (1–5)

Typical download run:

{
    "videoUrls": [
        "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNQXAC9IVRw",
        "https://youtu.be/z9rdrNrkvDY"
    ],
    "quality": "720p",
    "format": "mp4",
    "downloadSubtitles": true,
    "proxy": { "useApifyProxy": true, "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"], "apifyProxyCountry": "US" }
}

Cheap pre-check before a big batch:

{
    "videoUrls": ["jNQXAC9IVRw", "z9rdrNrkvDY", "IbkzTfJCFjk"],
    "metadataOnly": true
}

Audio for a transcription pipeline:

{
    "videoUrls": ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNQXAC9IVRw"],
    "format": "mp3",
    "proxy": { "useApifyProxy": true, "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"] }
}

Pricing — What a Download Really Costs

This actor uses pay-per-event + platform usage pricing. Two components appear on your bill, and we'd rather you understand both up front:

1. Event fees (paid to the developer) — flat per successful download: $0.02–0.05 per video depending on quality, $0.02 per MP3, $0.005 per subtitle file, $0.002 per metadata row. Failed downloads are never charged.
2. Platform usage (paid to Apify at your plan's rates) — compute and, most significantly, proxy bandwidth. YouTube blocks datacenter IPs, so downloads normally flow through residential proxy. As a rule of thumb, a 10-minute 720p video is roughly 45–50 MB; at Apify's standard residential rate (~$8/GB) that's about $0.35–0.40 of usage. Shorts cost a cent or two; a 1-hour 1080p podcast can reach $2–3. MP3 audio is ~10× cheaper than video.

So a typical 10-minute 720p download costs about $0.03 in event fees + ~$0.37 in your platform usage. If you have unused monthly platform credits, downloads consume those first — for many plans that makes moderate volumes effectively event-fee-only. You can also cap any run with Apify's maximum-charge limit.

Output Overview

Each video produces exactly one dataset row: identity (videoId, url), metadata (title, channel, channelUrl, durationSec, uploadDate, viewCount), download details (quality, format, fileSizeBytes), and file links (downloadUrl, subtitlesUrl, subtitlesLanguage). Failed videos produce the same row shape with an error field and null file links — and no charge.

Files themselves live in the run's key-value store; the downloadUrl is a direct HTTPS link you can open, share, or feed to another system.

Output Samples

Successful 720p download with subtitles (from a real run):

{
    "videoId": "jNQXAC9IVRw",
    "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNQXAC9IVRw",
    "title": "Me at the zoo",
    "channel": "jawed",
    "channelUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4QobU6STFB0P71PMvOGN5A",
    "durationSec": 19,
    "uploadDate": "2005-04-24",
    "viewCount": 399449655,
    "quality": "720p",
    "format": "mp4",
    "fileSizeBytes": 533916,
    "downloadUrl": "https://api.apify.com/v2/key-value-stores/…/records/video-jNQXAC9IVRw-1784027309504.mp4",
    "subtitlesUrl": "https://api.apify.com/v2/key-value-stores/…/records/subtitles-jNQXAC9IVRw-1784027309504.vtt",
    "subtitlesLanguage": "en"
}

Metadata-only row (metadataOnly: true — no file, $0.002):

{
    "videoId": "jNQXAC9IVRw",
    "title": "Me at the zoo",
    "channel": "jawed",
    "durationSec": 19,
    "viewCount": 399449655,
    "uploadDate": "2005-04-24",
    "downloadUrl": null
}

Key Output Fields

Group	Fields
Identity	videoId, url
Video metadata	title, channel, channelUrl, durationSec, uploadDate, viewCount
Download details	quality, format, fileSizeBytes
File links	downloadUrl, subtitlesUrl, subtitlesLanguage
Diagnostics	error (only present when a download failed — the row is not charged)

FAQ

Which URLs work? Individual video links only — watch, Shorts, embed, youtu.be, or bare IDs. Playlists and channels are not expanded; use the companion channel/search scrapers to get video URLs first.

Why is residential proxy recommended? YouTube blocks requests from datacenter IP ranges. The actor tries a direct connection first, but on the Apify platform that usually fails and it falls back to your configured proxy. Without a residential proxy configured, most downloads will fail (and cost you nothing, but also get you nothing).

How long do the file links live? Files sit in the run's key-value store and follow your account's storage retention (default 7+ days depending on plan). Download or transfer files you want to keep long-term.

Can it download age-restricted or members-only videos? Supply youtubeCookies (exported from a logged-in browser session in Netscape format) and the actor passes them to the download engine. Members-only content requires a membership on the supplying account.

What about currently-live streams? Not supported while live. Once the stream ends and becomes a regular video, it downloads normally.

Does it charge for failed videos? No. Failures produce an error row and zero event charges. Proxy bandwidth already consumed by a failed attempt does appear as platform usage, but it's typically negligible because failures happen early.

Is 4K supported? Yes — set quality to best. Note that 4K files are large (often 500 MB+), which matters for proxy usage costs.

Support

• For issues or feature requests, please use the Issues section of this actor.
• If you need customization or have questions, feel free to contact the author:
  • Author's website: https://muhamed-didovic.github.io/
  • Email: muhamed.didovic@gmail.com

Additional Services

Need something tailored? Custom output formats, delivery to your S3/GCS bucket, scheduled bulk archiving, integration with your transcription pipeline, or a private variant of this actor — all possible. Get in touch via the contacts above.

Explore More Scrapers

Pair this downloader with the rest of the YouTube toolkit — their output feeds straight into videoUrls:

• YouTube Search & Video Metrics Scraper — find videos by search query, get analytics-ready rows
• YouTube Shorts Scraper — pull Shorts feeds by channel
• YouTube Comments Scraper — comments with replies for any video
• YouTube Channel Videos Details Scraper — full channel video inventories
• Video Transcripts MCP Server — plain-text transcripts for AI agents
• YouTube Transcript Scraper with Whisper AI Fallback — SRT/VTT/JSON transcripts with translation

⚠️ Disclaimer

This actor is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by YouTube or Google LLC. "YouTube" and related trademarks are the property of Google LLC and are used here solely to describe the tool's function.

The actor processes only publicly accessible content. You are responsible for how you use the downloaded material: respect YouTube's Terms of Service, copyright law, and the content creators' rights in your jurisdiction. Downloading copyrighted content for redistribution without permission is illegal in most countries. Use of this tool for personal archiving, research, and other fair-use purposes is the intended scope. Comply with applicable data-protection regulations (GDPR, CCPA) where relevant.

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