The best free YouTube converters are the websites that make it easy to download (or change) videos from the world's most popular hosting website on the planet.
As well as storing content offline, some of the best free YouTube converters in 2025 can expand the types of devices that you'll be able to watch the media on. That's because there are currently eight supported file formats available on Google's video hosting platform, including popular types such as WMV, MOV, AVI, MP4, MPEG, and Webm, among others. Not every device will be able to read and play every format, however, making converting the best solution.
There are also some important things to consider when downloading and then converting a YouTube video. For example, resolutions are supported from a paltry 144p up to 8K, with 1080p, 1440p, and 4K being among the most popular resolutions for content playback. As YouTube is (primarily) fuelled by user-created content instead of big corporations, there are many differences including the aspect ratio (such as 16:19, 4:3, and 21:9) as well as the bitrate and the framerate; some videos perform best at 60fps, however, some content is available in 120fps as well, which can be better for gaming content. When converting a YouTube video, you may be able to change these to better suit the device you'll be watching the video on, though you'll also want to make sure that by changing the resolution or aspect ratio you're not impacting the overall quality too much.
It's important to familarize yourself with YouTube's terms of service before considering using one of the best YouTube converters, as some content may be subject to copyright and, therefore, may be prevented from being converted by some of these third-party tools. It also applies to the best free YouTube to MP3 converters for audio (such as hit songs), which can be legally dubious without the right permissions as well.
It's a similar story for the best YouTube downloaders, which may not always have built-in conversion tools. Whether you're intending to be transformative by using the best video editing software or just want some YouTube content available on as many devices as possible, our top picks further down the page have everything you're looking for.
Best free YouTube converters in 2025
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Best overall
When you need a free YouTube converter, 4K Video Downloader should be your first port of call. It's able to convert videos with subtitles and annotations, and – as the software's name suggests – can handle resolutions up to 4K where available. Those are features you'd normally only find in premium software, but here they're completely free.
4K Video Downloader can also convert videos from many sites besides YouTube, including Vimeo and DailyMotion. You can even download and convert entire playlists up to 24 videos long (a premium subscription will unlock the ability to convert more).
The downside of 4K Video Downloader is its relatively small selection of conversion formats compared to some other YouTube converters; you can save video as MP4, MKV and 3GP, and audio as MP3, M4A and OGG. These will be enough for most purposes, and you get a wide choice of quality options (the exact number will depend on the quality of the source video) but it's a shame WMV and AVI aren't available.
If the choice of file types available covers your requirements, then you won't find a better YouTube converter.
Read our full 4K Video Downloader review.
Best for simplicity
Free YouTube to MP3 Converter (from the superb DVDVideoSoft) is a wonderfully simple YouTube converter for ripping the audio from videos and saving it to your PC in a format of your choice.
The program lets you queue up multiple files for conversion and features a clean interface that clearly displays what files are waiting to be converted. There's even the option to download an entire channel, though this can be time-consuming so you might prefer to be selective.
If you do decide to go on a downloading spree, look in the options menu for the setting that shuts your PC down automatically once it's finished.
This is a particularly useful YouTube converter for musicians who may want to download guitar backing tracks to jam along to, or similarly you could grab a karaoke backing track to burn to a CD ready for that weekend party – provided you have the copyright holder's permission, of course.
Read our full Free YouTube to MP3 Converter review.
Best for multiple sources
Any Video Converter Free can download and convert files from almost any source – CDs, locally stored files, or video sharing sites including YouTube, Facebook, Vimeo and LiveLeak.
This free YouTube converter is packed with options, but still accessible. The interface is well designed, with tooltips to explain each function. You can paste in URLs from your clipboard, as with most free YouTube converters, or drag videos directly from Chrome or Firefox.
While installing Any Video Converter Free, you’ll be prompted to install ByteFence (an anti-malware tool) and a Yahoo browser extension. It’s not immediately obvious, but you can opt out of these using the small text links labelled ‘Click here to customize the installation’ and unchecking the boxes that appear. Or you might choose to leave them selected to support the developers.
Read our full Any Video Converter Free review.
Best for conversion
Another great tool from DVDVideoSoft, Free YouTube Download comes with a massive 25 video conversion options that can convert your files automatically once they've downloaded for viewing on different devices.
Its interface is almost identical to Free YouTube to MP3 converter – a clean, self-explanatory affair with more advanced settings tucked away in an Options menu. There, you can choose to shut down your PC once the download is finished, download via a proxy, and paste URLs from the clipboard automatically.
Clicking the file format details beside each thumbnail gives you a great choice of export options. Once you've made your selection, click the 'Download' button and your video will begin processing. You can only download and convert one video at a time without upgrading to the premium version of this YouTube converter, but there's little else to complain about.
Read our full Free YouTube Download review.
Best for reliability
YTD Video Downloader can download and convert videos from some of the most popular video hosting sites, including Facebook, DailyMotion and College Humor and, of course, YouTube. It features the ability to convert videos into most popular video formats – from MP3 and MP4 to WNV, FLV, MOV, 3GP and AVI.
This YouTube converter's makers claim that the latest version is faster and more stable than previous releases. It also has the handy feature of resuming downloads automatically if your internet connection goes down temporarily.
The thing keeping YTD from a higher place in our roundup is the WebDiscover browser that comes bundled with the software, and is difficult to avoid if you don't want its search bar welded to your desktop.
Read our full YTD Video Downloader review
Read on how to download YouTube videos.
FAQs
Is it legal to downloaded YouTube videos?
Before you use a free YouTube downloader, bear in mind that using third-party apps to download videos is against YouTube's terms of service, which say you can only stream videos directly from its servers. Since YouTube is owned by Google, this could potentially lead to your linked Google account being suspended - you've been warned.
Downloading videos is also potentially a copyright infringement unless you own the video yourself, have permission from the copyright holder, or it's in the public domain.
How we test
We test the best free YouTube downloader apps by see how reliable the service is, both in terms of availability, download quality, and also ease of use. We also look to see if there are any other useful options and tools to make the download and any conversion of the files more accessible.
Read more on how we test, rate, and review products on TechRadar.
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