Is It Legal to Download YouTube Videos? Two Rules

Two different rules answer this question, and they don't always agree. The first is YouTube's Terms of Service, a contract between you and YouTube. The second is copyright law, which belongs to your country and gives different answers in the US, the EU, and the UK.

So nobody can honestly tell you that downloading YouTube videos is legal everywhere, or illegal everywhere. Below we quote each rule and show which downloads are clear under both. This is general information, not legal advice.

Key takeaways

• YouTube's Terms forbid downloading content except "as expressly authorized by the Service" or "with prior written permission from YouTube and, if applicable, the respective rights holders" (YouTube Terms of Service).
• YouTube authorizes two kinds of download: Premium offline copies inside the app, and your own uploads from YouTube Studio.
• Copyright exceptions differ by country. The US relies on fair use, the EU lets member states allow private copies, and the UK private copying exception was quashed in 2015.

What do YouTube's Terms of Service say about downloading?

They forbid it, with two exceptions. The US Terms, effective December 15, 2023, say you are not allowed to "access, reproduce, download, distribute, transmit, broadcast, display, sell, license, alter, modify or otherwise use any part of the Service or any Content except: (a) as expressly authorized by the Service; or (b) with prior written permission from YouTube and, if applicable, the respective rights holders" (YouTube Terms of Service).

Three other lines in the same section matter here:

• What you do get: "You may view or listen to Content for your personal, non-commercial use." Watching is the license, not keeping a copy.
• Copy protection: you may not circumvent features that "prevent or restrict the copying or other use of Content".
• Scripts: you may not "access the Service using any automated means (such as robots, botnets or scrapers)", except for public search engines or with YouTube's prior written permission. A download tool fetches videos with software, not through the player, so this line can apply too.

The version you agreed to depends on where you live. YouTube serves a country version of its Terms, with its own effective date, so check the one your account shows. The quotes above come from the US version.

If a tool stops at YouTube's bot check, see our post on the "Sign in to confirm you're not a bot" error.

What happens if you break YouTube's Terms?

The Terms are a contract, which they call "this Agreement", and the sanction they name for a breach concerns your account: YouTube "reserves the right to suspend or terminate your Google account or your access to all or part of the Service" if you "materially or repeatedly breach this Agreement" (YouTube Terms of Service).

Copyright is a separate question. There the rights holder, not YouTube, can bring an infringement claim against you.

Which downloads does YouTube itself allow?

Two: YouTube Premium offline downloads, and downloads of your own uploads in YouTube Studio. These are download features YouTube offers itself, so they are the plainest case of "expressly authorized by the Service".

YouTube Premium: offline copies inside the app

Premium members can download videos in the mobile app and, on a computer, in Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Opera (YouTube Help). The same page sets the limits:

• "Downloaded videos can be played offline for up to 29 days." After that the device has to reconnect so the app can check the video is still available.
• "In some countries/regions, content can be played for up to 48 hours without an internet connection."
• "You must be signed in to your Premium account to download videos."

YouTube's offline FAQ says the videos "are stored encrypted on the device and can only be watched in the YouTube app" (YouTube Help). Premium is the right answer for a flight. It is not an answer for an edit.

Your own videos in YouTube Studio

In YouTube Studio, open Content, pick a video, and choose Download from its menu. You get "MP4 files of YouTube videos that you've uploaded to YouTube in either 720p or 360p, depending on the video size", and Google Takeout exports all your uploads at once (YouTube Help).

Studio blocks the download if the video was removed, has a copyright or Community Guidelines strike, uses a preapproved audio track, or you've already downloaded it five times in 24 hours. The same page is blunt about everyone else's videos: "You can't download other user's YouTube videos."

For other quality limits, read why YouTube downloads come out at 360p or without sound. For a whole channel of your own videos, see the bulk download guide.

When does copyright let you keep a copy?

When you own the video, when its license allows reuse, when it's in the public domain, or when the owner says yes. Otherwise you need a legal exception, and those differ by country.

• Your own work. You normally hold the copyright in what you made, but not in parts you didn't make, such as licensed music.
• Creative Commons. YouTube lets uploaders mark a video CC BY, which "means other creators can reuse your work subject to the terms of the CC BY license", and you "need to give them credit (attribution)" (YouTube Help). The Creative Commons option in YouTube's search filters finds these videos.
• Public domain. A work is in the public domain "if it is no longer under copyright protection or if it failed to meet the requirements for copyright protection", and such works "may be used freely without the permission of the former copyright owner" (U.S. Copyright Office). That's the US definition, so check the status in your own country too.
• Permission. Ask the creator, in writing. YouTube's license page says "YouTube can't grant you rights to use someone else's content."

These cases settle copyright. They don't change YouTube's Terms about how you get the file. A CC license is permission from the rights holder, not from YouTube, so the cleanest route is a file or a download link straight from the creator.

Is downloading YouTube videos illegal in the US?

US law has no single yes-or-no rule for it. In its FAQ on file sharing, the Copyright Office states the default: "Uploading or downloading works protected by copyright without the authority of the copyright owner is an infringement" (U.S. Copyright Office). The main defense is fair use.

Fair use is in 17 U.S.C. § 107. It covers purposes "such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching", scholarship, and research. The statute lists four factors that courts must consider:

1. "the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes"
2. "the nature of the copyrighted work"
3. "the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole"
4. "the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work"

No clip length is safe by default. The Copyright Office says "Courts evaluate fair use claims on a case-by-case basis" and there is "no formula" for a predetermined amount of a work you can use (U.S. Copyright Office Fair Use Index).

Personal copies are a fair use question too. In Sony v. Universal (1984), the Supreme Court agreed with the trial court's conclusion that "home time-shifting is fair use", meaning taping free broadcast TV to watch later (Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, 464 U.S. 417). The case asked whether Sony was liable for selling VCRs, and it says nothing about streaming. And the Copyright Act's backup-copy rule, section 117, "extends only to computer programs and not to other types of works" (U.S. Copyright Office).

A separate rule covers copy protection. Under 17 U.S.C. § 1201, "No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title." The section says it doesn't affect fair use as a defense to infringement, but circumvention is its own violation. Leave encrypted and paid content alone.

Is private copying allowed in the EU?

It can be, depending on the member state. Article 5(2)(b) of Directive 2001/29/EC lets member states allow "reproductions on any medium made by a natural person for private use and for ends that are neither directly nor indirectly commercial, on condition that the rightholders receive fair compensation" (EUR-Lex).

The Article opens with "Member States may provide", so the exception is optional, and each country that adopts it writes its own version and its own fair compensation scheme. In the Netherlands that is a levy on "manufacturers and importers of media", the system at issue in the case below.

The source matters. In ACI Adam (C-435/12, 10 April 2014), the Court of Justice ruled that EU law precludes national legislation "which does not distinguish the situation in which the source from which a reproduction for private use is made is lawful from that in which that source is unlawful" (EUR-Lex). Allowing copies from unlawful sources, the Court said, "would encourage the circulation of counterfeited or pirated works."

The judgment does not mention YouTube. Whether a copy of a YouTube video counts as a copy from a lawful source is for national law and courts. A film re-uploaded by someone with no rights to it looks like the clearest unlawful source.

The UK private copying exception was quashed in 2015

The UK had a private copying exception, section 28B of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, for less than a year. It took effect on 1 October 2014. On 17 July 2015, in R (BASCA) v Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, Mr Justice Green ruled: "The net effect is that I quash the Regulations in their entirety" (National Archives, [2015] EWHC 2041 (Admin)).

He ruled that "the quashing has prospective effect" and declined to rule on whether the Regulations were void from the start. His earlier judgment, of 19 June 2015, found the Regulations unlawful "because of a defect in the process by which evidence was collected and evaluated during the consultation process."

The Intellectual Property Office's current guidance on copyright exceptions has no section on personal copying (GOV.UK, last updated 4 January 2021). It keeps time-shifting, where a recording of a broadcast "can be made in domestic premises for private and domestic use". It does not say that covers on-demand video.

Your situation, side by side

Only two situations are covered by YouTube's own tools: your own uploads and Premium offline viewing. In the table, "Restricted" means the general rule: no download except as the Service authorizes or with prior written permission.

The Terms allow the embed route: "You may also show YouTube videos through the embeddable YouTube player." Our guide to trimming YouTube videos compares Clips links, the Studio editor, and a clip download.

How Vidtrimmer handles this

Our Terms draw the same line. You may use the service only to download content you have the right to download: your own videos, content with a license that allows downloads, and content where the owner gave you permission. You are responsible for how you use the files, and we can suspend accounts that use the service to infringe copyright.

A license settles copyright, but it doesn't change YouTube's Terms. So for your own uploads at up to 720p, the Studio download is the cleanest route under both rules. Our service is not one of YouTube's own download features, so the Terms question above still applies to it. For archiving your own published videos in volume, there's our Business API. For one section of a video you have rights to, the clip downloader cuts only that part.