Every downloader we tested, ranked and filterable

Five weighted criteria: Platform coverage 30% (confirmed platform count plus hit rate on mainstream sites), Feature completeness 25% (bulk, maximum resolution, subtitles, audio extraction), Reliability 20% (how often it breaks and how fast it is fixed), Ease of use 15% (learning curve, interface, whether you must set up a runtime), Price 10% (free, freemium or paid, and how hard the limits bite).

The full method and the per-criterion scoring rules are in How we test. Reviewed monthly.

Because the overall score measures peak capability, not who it suits. yt-dlp lands near full marks on platform coverage, features and reliability, so it takes the highest total. It loses clear points on ease of use: you work in a terminal and install FFmpeg yourself.

If you would rather not touch a command line, go straight to Stacher (the same engine with a GUI) or Which one if you're new to this.

No. We take no payment for placement, run no sponsored review slots, and carry no vendor ad units on the page. Every official download link is marked nofollow.

Order is decided purely by the five published weighted criteria, so anyone can re-check our conclusions against them. Spotted a mistake in the numbers? Report a fix.

Vendor pages list theoretical support and keep entries that stopped working long ago, so their number only ever goes up. We count only the platforms confirmed working in testing.

Tools with a big gap get flagged: SnapWC claims 10,000+ and CR TubeGet claims 2,000+; both come in far lower in testing.

Scores are re-checked monthly. Time-sensitive changes, such as a downloader breaking, go live as soon as we confirm them and get logged in Industry news.

Anti-download measures change fast, so what worked yesterday can fail today. If you find a downloader that has stopped working, tell us and we will verify it and flag it in the ranking.