What “free” actually means here
Most online video downloaders advertise as free, then put 4K behind a paywall, charge for batch downloads, or limit you to two downloads a day unless you sign up. We do not. The free tier covers:
- Every resolution — 144p, 240p, 360p, 480p, 720p, 1080p, 1440p, 4K, 8K (when source has it).
- Every format — MP4 video, m4a / MP3 audio, SRT / VTT / TXT subtitles, WebM where applicable.
- No daily limit — download as many videos as you want.
- No signup — no email, no password, no “just create an account” gate.
- No watermark — the saved file is byte-identical to YouTube’s source. No logo, no overlay, no embedded signature.
- Audio extraction — up to 320 kbps MP3 or original m4a, free.
- Subtitle export — every language YouTube has, free.
- Playlists — up to 25 videos per batch on free, no extra step.
How “free” pays for itself
Servers cost money, so the free tier monetises in two small ways that we keep deliberately mild:
- Display ads on the page. Standard banner ads from a single ad network. No popups, no redirects, no fake download buttons. If a banner is annoying, your ad blocker handles it — we do not gate the download on ad-block detection.
- A short wait gate between downloads. 5 to 15 seconds, randomised, between consecutive downloads. Stops the worst kinds of automation abuse without making manual use feel slow.
That is it. No locked features, no “you need credits to download in 4K” trick, no “sign up to keep using.”
What Plus is for
Plus exists for users who want the wait gate and ads gone, bigger batch caps, and a couple of extras:
- No display ads on the page.
- No wait gate between downloads.
- Time-range clipping (save just the 30 seconds you want).
- Playlist / channel batch up to 200 with 3 parallel workers.
- Silence-removal mode for automated jump cuts.
Plus is $1/month or $9.99/year. It is genuinely optional — everything it adds is a nice-to-have on top of a free tier that already covers the core use cases.
How we keep it free
The pipeline runs in your browser, not on our server. That means we do not pay for bandwidth on every download — the bytes flow directly from YouTube’s CDN to your machine, and the muxing happens on your CPU. Server costs scale with metadata lookups (a few KB per video), not with file size, so a 10 GB 8K download costs us the same in cents as a 50 MB audio extraction.
Combined with low-impact display ads on the page, that covers the operating cost without needing a paywall on the actual downloading.