The YouTube download API that actually works.
Send a YouTube URL, get a direct download from our CDN.
Paste a link. See it work.
Paste a YouTube link, pick a format, and hit download.
$ yt-dlp "https://youtube.com/watch?v=..."
[youtube] Extracting URL...
[youtube] Downloading webpage
[youtube] Downloading player API JSON
ERROR: [youtube] Sign in to confirm
you're not a bot. Use --cookies-from-
browser or --cookies for the auth...POST /api/v2/download
{ "url": "https://youtu.be/...", "format": "1080" }
// then poll the job...
{
"status": "COMPLETED",
"title": "...",
"fileSize": 32240544,
"downloadUrl": "https://cdn..."
}Sound familiar?
You’ve tried the RapidAPI listings. Oxylabs. A dozen other services. They all break the same way — and your customers notice first.
$ cat youtube-downloads.postmortem
Jan RapidAPI provider #1 — great demo, dead in 3 weeks
Feb provider #2 — 429s all week, support went silent
Mar provider #3 — "Video unavailable" on half the catalog
Apr DIY: Oxylabs + yt-dlp — cookies rotted in prod within days
May customer email: "downloads are broken AGAIN??"I didn’t want to build this. I hit the same wall — tried every provider on RapidAPI, Oxylabs, and dozens of other services, and watched them all fail on my own customers. The reliability out there was so poor I had to take matters into my own hands and build something that’s actually reliable. For real.
— Prav, founder
Downloads that just work
Staying ahead of YouTube’s bot detection is the hard part — and it’s exactly what we’ve built. Every request goes through, with zero work on your end.
We handle bot detection
Every request clears YouTube’s bot checks behind the scenes — so you never see a “confirm you’re not a bot” 403.
Gets what others can’t
Videos that fail in yt-dlp and other tools still come through here. If one path is blocked, we find another — automatically.
Zero maintenance
No cookies to export, no proxies to rent, no engine to update. We keep it working as YouTube changes.
Self-healing
Transient hiccups are retried automatically behind the scenes, before they ever reach your application.
Trusted by 20+ SaaS companies
Teams stopped fighting YouTube
“We tried every YouTube tool on Apify, RapidAPI, and a dozen other platforms — none of them worked reliably. This is the first one we could actually trust in production, so we stopped fighting downloads and got back to building our own product.”
— Engineering lead, video-AI startup
“Before this we rolled our own pipeline on Oxylabs and other proxy services — expensive, and still not reliable. We switched and never looked back. The reliability was fantastic for the price.”
— Founder, media automation tool
“Our users love that YouTube import is back and just works. Turning it back on gave our own conversion a real lift — and we haven’t had to touch it since.”
— CTO, AI content platform
Quotes are paraphrased and anonymized at our customers’ request — we work with a small number of teams and keep their names private.
Built for scale
Everything you need to ship downloads in production
All formats
1080p, 720p, 480p, 360p, 240p, 144p video and MP3 audio — every format you need.
Direct CDN links
Finished files are served straight from our CDN. Fast, direct URLs — no redirects, no hassle.
Instant metadata
Get the video title and duration the moment you submit, before the download even finishes.
Multi-language audio
Pick a specific audio track for dubbed videos, with sensible fallback when it isn’t available.
Trim & clip
Pass a start and end time to download just the segment you need instead of the whole video.
Scales with you
A simple REST API and async job queue that grows from your first request to high-volume production traffic.
Integrate in minutes
Submit, poll, download. A plain REST API — no SDK required.
Submit URL
POST a YouTube URL. Get back the video title, duration, and a job ID instantly.
Check status
Poll the job endpoint. When it’s done, you get a direct download URL.
Download
Stream or save directly from our CDN. That’s it.
Your App
POST /api/v2/download
Poll Status
GET /api/v2/download/{jobId}
Download
Direct CDN Link
curl -X POST https://dalvo.io/api/v2/download \
-H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"url":"https://youtu.be/...","format":"1080"}'
# → { "jobId": "...", "title": "...",
# "duration": 213, "status": "IN_QUEUE" }curl https://dalvo.io/api/v2/download/JOB_ID \
-H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"
# → { "status": "COMPLETED",
# "downloadUrl": "https://proxy.dalvo.io/...",
# "fileSize": 32240544 }Simple Pricing
No hidden fees. Scale as you grow.
Lite
For small projects & indie devs
($0.13 per download)
- Up to 150 downloads / month
- Formats: MP4 (1080p–144p), MP3
- Max file size 1 GB
- No credit rollovers
Pro
Best value for production
($0.10 per download)
- Up to 2,000 downloads / month
- Formats: MP4 (1080p–144p), MP3
- Max file size 2 GB
- No credit rollovers
Enterprise
Volume rates & custom limits
($0.08 per download or lower)
- Custom downloads / month
- Custom formats
- Custom max file size
- 2-month credit rollovers
Questions? Email us at [email protected]
Just exploring? Start free — no credit card required
Stop fighting YouTube’s bot detection
Send a URL, get your file. We keep it working — you don’t have to.
No cookies. No proxies. No maintenance.
Start free — no credit cardFree to start • No credit card required
Frequently asked questions
Everything you need to know before you ship.
How is this different from yt-dlp or Apify actors?
yt-dlp and most Apify actors break the moment YouTube tightens its bot detection — then you’re exporting cookies, rotating proxies, and patching extractors. We own that problem end to end. You send a URL and get a working download; we keep it working as YouTube changes.
Do I need to manage cookies, proxies, or YouTube accounts?
No — ever. There is nothing to configure on your side. Add your API key and start downloading.
What happens when a video genuinely can’t be downloaded?
Some videos can’t be fetched by anyone — age-restricted, members-only, private, geo-blocked, or DRM-protected. When that happens you get a clear, machine-readable error code (such as AGE_RESTRICTED, MEMBERS_ONLY, GEO_RESTRICTED, PRIVATE_VIDEO, DRM_PROTECTED, or VIDEO_UNAVAILABLE) instead of a silent failure, so you always know exactly what happened.
Which formats and qualities are supported?
MP4 video from 1080p down to 144p, plus MP3 audio. You can trim to a start/end time and pick a specific audio language for dubbed videos.
How does pricing work?
Credits. Downloads cost 10 credits per GB delivered; metadata lookups are cheap, and polling for job status is always free. Plans start at $20/mo (Lite — ~150 downloads); the Pro plan includes 20,000 credits a month — around 2,000 downloads. See Pricing for details.
Do you offer higher-volume or custom plans?
Yes. If you need more than the Pro plan’s volume, we build custom plans sized to your demand. Just get in touch and we’ll set you up.
Is there a free way to try it?
Yes — create an API key and start downloading for free, no credit card required.
Is this legal?
You are responsible for ensuring you have the right to download any content you access. We do not allow or support downloading copyrighted material.
yt-dlp guides & tutorials
Fixing an error or learning yt-dlp? Start here.
How to use yt-dlp
The practical guide — install, download, formats, and audio.
Fix yt-dlp 403 Forbidden
Why it happens and every fix that works.
Fix “confirm you’re not a bot”
Clear YouTube’s bot check in yt-dlp.
Best yt-dlp alternatives
youtube-dl, pytube, cobalt, and APIs compared.
Is yt-dlp safe?
Malware myths, safe sources, and privacy.
yt-dlp commands cheat sheet
The commands you’ll actually use.