YouTube Video & Audio Downloader

YouTube Video & Audio Downloader — up to 8K, flat per download

Download any public YouTube video as MP4 — 360p all the way to 4320p (8K) — or extract audio as MP3, with metadata and optional subtitles. No login, no cookies, no API key. You pay $0.05 per successful download, whatever the size, and you are never charged for a download that fails.

Built on yt-dlp and run entirely on Apify's cloud. Point it at a URL, get a file.

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What you get

• Real quality selection, up to 8K — request 360p, 480p, 720p, 1080p, 1440p (2K), 2160p (4K) or 4320p (8K) and receive that quality.
• Audio-only mode — MP3 extraction for podcasts, transcription pipelines and music archives.
• Full metadata — title, channel, duration, view count, upload date, resolution, file size.
• Subtitles and transcripts — including auto-generated captions, converted to .srt.
• Batch input — pass many URLs in a single run.
• A direct download link for every file, plus the file in Apify storage.

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Quality and file size

Measured on a 10-minute 4K-source video, so you can predict run time and set maxMegabytes sensibly:

All figures are measured from real downloads, not estimated. Verified with ffprobe on the delivered files: a 4320p request returns a true 7680x4320 file, 1080p returns 1920x1080.

Sizes vary with the source video's bitrate — a static talking-head clip is far smaller than fast motion at the same resolution.

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Pricing

$0.05 per successful download, with no run-start fee — a flat notice-period price. You are never charged for a download that fails.

One charge, one number. A 30-second Short and a 10-minute 4K file both cost $0.05, on every Apify plan, with no volume tiers. Batch ten URLs into one run and you pay $0.50 — there is no per-run fee on top. Blocked, private and unavailable videos, and anything skipped by maxMegabytes, are not charged at all: they go to the ERRORS record in the key-value store instead of the dataset, and only dataset rows are billed.

Price change on 17 August 2026

From that date the Actor moves to per-megabyte pricing, so short clips get much cheaper and very large files are priced for what they actually cost to deliver:

A $0.0005 run-start fee is added at the same time. Under that model a 2.5 MB Short costs about $0.013 on the Free tier and $0.0022 on Diamond, while a 155 MB 1080p file costs $0.776 on Free and $0.106 on Diamond. Until 17 August 2026 the flat $0.05 per download above is what you are charged.

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How to use

1. Open the Actor and paste one or more YouTube URLs. 2. Choose a quality (or audio for MP3). 3. Click Start. Download links appear in the dataset when the run finishes.

Input

{

  "urls": ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqz-KE-bpKQ"],

  "quality": "1080",

  "audioOnly": false,

  "subtitles": false,

  "subLangs": "en",

  "includeMetadata": true,

  "maxMegabytes": 1000

}

Output

One dataset row per successful download:

{

  "ok": true,

  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqz-KE-bpKQ",

  "title": "Big Buck Bunny 60fps 4K - Official Blender Foundation Short Film",

  "channel": "Blender Foundation",

  "durationSeconds": 635,

  "requestedQuality": "1080",

  "resolution": "3840x2160",

  "format": "mp4",

  "fileSizeBytes": 155340000,

  "billedMegabytes": 156,

  "mediaKey": "aqz-KE-bpKQ.mp4",

  "mediaUrl": "https://api.apify.com/v2/key-value-stores/.../records/aqz-KE-bpKQ.mp4"

}

Failed URLs are written to the ERRORS record in the key-value store, so you can inspect them without being charged. billedMegabytes is the measured delivered size; it is informational under today's flat per-download price and becomes the billed quantity on 17 August 2026.

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Frequently asked questions

Can it really download 8K? Yes. Request 4320p and you get a true 7680x4320 file — verified with ffprobe on the output, not just a label. On the same clip we measured 25 MB at 1080p, 166 MB at 4K and 344 MB at 8K.

Do I need a YouTube account, cookies, or an API key? No. Supply a URL and nothing else.

Am I charged if a download fails? No. Charges apply only to successfully delivered files. Blocked, unavailable and private videos cost you nothing.

How much does a typical download cost? $0.05, whatever it is — a Short, a 10-minute 1080p video or an 8K file all cost the same today. From 17 August 2026 that switches to per-megabyte pricing, which makes short clips considerably cheaper and large 4K/8K files more expensive; see the table above.

Can I download audio only? Yes. Set quality to audio (or audioOnly: true) for an MP3 — roughly 1 MB per minute, so a one-hour podcast is about 60 MB.

Is there a length limit? No fixed duration limit. Use maxMegabytes to cap spend per run; anything above it is skipped without charge.

Can I download several videos at once? Yes — pass an array of URLs in urls.

Does it support subtitles? Yes, including auto-generated captions, saved as .srt alongside the media.

Where do the files go? Each file is stored in the run's key-value store with a direct mediaUrl link, and each dataset row records the size actually billed.

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Limits and honest notes

• Public videos only. Private, members-only, purchase-required and age-restricted videos that

need a signed-in account are not supported.

• 4K and 8K files are large. Raise maxMegabytes (e.g. 5000) to allow them, and expect longer

runs and proportionally higher per-megabyte cost.

• Large downloads take time. Use maxMegabytes to keep runs bounded.
• Respect copyright. Download only content you own or are permitted to use. You are responsible

for how you use the files and for complying with YouTube's Terms of Service.

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Related Actors

• YouTube Channel Scraper — list every video on a channel
• YouTube Comments Scraper — comments with likes and replies
• YouTube Playlist Scraper — all videos in a playlist
• Video & Audio Transcriber — turn downloaded media into text