Free video downloader

What free covers

Paste a video address, press Analyze, choose a row, press Download file. That is the whole product, and it costs nothing. You are not asked to register, you are not asked for an email address, and there is no application to put on your computer or your phone.

Nothing is added to the file on the way through. The video you receive is the encoding the source published, with no watermark, no intro clip, and no rename. There is also no count limit: download one video or forty in an afternoon, one after another, with no waiting period between them.

• No account and no email address at any point.
• No software to install. The work happens on our servers and the finished file transfers to your device.
• No watermark or branding added by us.
• Three downloads a day, with the count shown on the page.

Where the wall is

The free tier has one limit, and it is file size. A single file above the free ceiling is a Pro download. Everything below it is free.

You learn which side of the line a file falls on before anything transfers. Analyze lists every available encoding with its size in megabytes, and if the row you select is over the ceiling the page says so at that point. A download does not begin, run for two minutes, and then stop with an upgrade prompt.

Staying inside the ceiling on purpose

The size shown on each row is the whole lever. A long video at the top resolution is a large file; the same video one resolution down is a fraction of it, and on a phone screen the difference in picture is hard to see.

Read the list before you pick. When the largest row is over the ceiling, work down the list until you reach a row that fits, and decide whether that version does the job you have in mind.

• Watching on a phone or a tablet: take a 720p row. It fits under the ceiling far more often than the top row and looks the same at that screen size.
• Keeping a copy for reference rather than for viewing on a television: take the smallest row that stays readable.
• Wanting the words rather than the picture, as with an interview, a lecture, or a song: take the audio-only row when the source publishes one. Audio files are a small share of the size of the video.
• Archiving or re-editing later: this is where the top row earns its size, and where the ceiling is the real constraint rather than an inconvenience.

Advertising on the free tier

Advertising is what pays for free downloads. Ads appear on the page while you use it. They do not sit between you and the download button, and they are not counted down before Analyze runs.

Pro removes advertising from every page and raises the file size ceiling. Those are the two things a subscription changes. The download itself behaves identically either way.

When paying is the honest answer

For most people the free tier is the whole story, because ordinary clips sit well under the ceiling. Paying is worth considering when the files you want are structurally large rather than occasionally large.

That covers long recordings, full-length talks and matches, and any workflow where you need the top resolution because the video is going into an edit or onto a large screen. If you have hit the ceiling once on an unusual file, staying on free and taking a lower row is the sensible move.

Limits that come from the source

Some videos are out of reach on any tier, and a subscription does not change that. A video behind a sign-in form, a subscription, or a purchase is not served publicly, so there is nothing to read. A video that has been deleted is gone from the host.

An empty result from Analyze in those cases is the correct answer, not a restriction of the free tier.

Related pages

• Start with the main downloader
• Download in the browser with nothing installed
• Turn a link you were sent into a file
• Take the highest resolution on offer
• What Vidzilla stores about a download