YTMP4 Alternative: YouTube to MP4

What YTMP4 is

"YTMP4" is shorthand for "YouTube to MP4", and it is the name used by a whole family of unrelated websites rather than one product. Search for it and you find ytmp4 on a dozen different domain endings, YT-MP4 with a hyphen, and spellings like ytmp4s. They all do the same thing: you paste a YouTube link, pick a resolution, and receive an MP4 file. Many add an MP3 button next to it.

People use these sites for ordinary reasons. Keeping a lecture or tutorial for a flight. Saving a copy of their own upload after losing the original. Pulling a clip they have permission to reuse in an edit. Watching something later on a phone with patchy signal. The appeal was always the simplicity: no software, no account, one text box. That is also exactly what the tool at the top of this page is.

Why people are looking for a YTMP4 alternative

Because the name is generic, nobody owns it, and the sites that use it change often. A domain that worked last month may now redirect somewhere else, show a parked page, or be blocked by a school, office or ISP filter. When one does load, the download button is usually surrounded by advertising, and on many of these sites the first click opens a new tab instead of starting the download.

There is also a quality problem that is easy to miss until you play the file. YouTube serves HD video and its audio as two separate streams. Merging them takes server time, so some YTMP4 sites give you a silent video at 720p or above, or quietly fall back to a low resolution. Others only offer the one combined 360p file YouTube still serves.

None of this means any particular YTMP4 site is bad. It means you cannot rely on a given address being there tomorrow, or on the HD file having sound. If your bookmark stopped working, the practical fix is a downloader that stays on one address and does the merge for you.

How to download YouTube to MP4 with vidstill

1. Copy the YouTube link. From the address bar in a browser, or Share → Copy link in the YouTube app. Shorts and youtu.be links work.
2. Paste it into the box at the top of this page and press Go. The video card appears with the title, channel and length.
3. Choose a quality. MP4 360p · instant is the single combined file YouTube already serves, so your browser saves it straight from YouTube. 720p, 1080p and best (up to 4K) fetch YouTube's separate video and audio streams, join them into one MP4 without re-encoding, and show a Download button after a few seconds.
4. Save the file. It downloads like any other file: into Downloads on a computer or Android phone, into Files on an iPhone.

There is no account for the first few downloads each day and nothing to install. Prepared HD files stay available for about an hour, then are deleted. If you need to download again later, paste the link again.

Picking the right resolution

• 360p is small and plays everywhere. Use it on mobile data or when you just need the content.
• 720p is the sensible default for a phone or tablet and roughly a third of the size of 1080p.
• 1080p is full HD for a laptop, a TV, or anything you plan to edit.
• Best gives you the highest resolution the uploader provided. A ten-minute 4K video can be a gigabyte, so check the size before you download on a metered connection.

The picker only shows sizes that exist for that video. An old 480p upload will not offer 1080p, and no downloader can invent detail the source does not have.

What you get beyond the MP4

• HD with the audio included. Every quality option comes with sound. You never have to combine a silent video with a separate audio file.
• MP3. If you only want the soundtrack, pick MP3 audio and get a 192 kbps file. There is a dedicated page at /youtube-to-mp3 if that is your main use.
• Transcript and summary. The Transcript tab shows the video's captions with timestamps, or transcribes the audio when there are none, and the Summary tab writes a TL;DR, key points or chapter list from it. Useful for deciding whether an hour-long video is worth saving at all.
• A public page for the video. Each video you run gets its own page with the transcript and summaries, which you can share or, after signing in, make private.
• Other platforms. The same box takes TikTok, Instagram and X links and gives you an MP4 or MP3 of those too.

How vidstill compares with YTMP4 sites

The core job is the same: link in, MP4 out, free for a few downloads a day. The differences are in what the MP4 contains (audio merged at every resolution), the extra tabs (transcript and summary), the absence of pop-ups around the download button, and an address that does not change.

What vidstill does not do: there is no browser extension, so you always paste the link rather than clicking a button under the YouTube player. It does not yet download playlists or batches; one link at a time. Guests get 3 downloads a day, a free account raises that to 10, and Pro removes the cap (see /pricing). It only fetches public videos and will not download private, age-restricted or login-only content, or live streams. If YouTube is rate-limiting requests you may be asked to wait a minute and try again. Some YTMP4 sites offer extra formats such as WebM or 3GP; vidstill sticks to MP4 and MP3.

A note on copyright

vidstill fetches public videos on your behalf and does not host copies of them. Download only what you have the right to keep: your own uploads, Creative Commons work, or content you may watch and want offline for personal use. Do not re-upload or sell other people's videos. Rights holders can use the DMCA page to have a public video page removed.