Send a YouTube URL, get a real 320 kbps MP3 from our CDN. We handle bot detection and conversion — no ffmpeg, no yt-dlp to maintain.
Paste a YouTube link, pick a format, and hit download.
Real 320 kbps MP3, encoded server-side
Bot detection cleared for you — no 403s
A direct CDN link back — zero maintenance
curl -X POST https://vidkraken.com/api/v2/download \
-H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"url":"https://youtu.be/...","format":"audio-mp3"}'
# → poll GET /api/v2/download/{jobId}, or pass "webhookUrl" to be called back
# { "status": "COMPLETED", "actualFormat": "audio-mp3",
# "fileSize": 8412160, "downloadUrl": "https://proxy.vidkraken.com/..." }Prefer the command line? Here's how to do it with yt-dlp — and why teams move off it for production.
Set format on the request. Every completed job reports actualFormat, so you always know what you got.
format | You get | Bitrate | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
audio-mp3 | A real MP3, every time | 320 kbps CBR, source sample rate kept | Players, editors and anything that expects .mp3 |
audio-aac | YouTube's AAC stream in an M4A file | ~128 kbps, not re-encoded | Broad device support, pipelines tuned on AAC |
audio | YouTube's best stream as served, M4A (AAC) or WebM (Opus) | ~130–160 kbps, not re-encoded | Transcription and ML: highest fidelity, smallest files, fastest |
1080, 720, 480, 360 | MP4 video with audio | Up to 1080p | When you need the picture too |
Add startTime and endTime (seconds) to any format to get only a section. Full details are in the API docs.
POST the video URL to /api/v2/download with format 'audio-mp3'. Vid Kraken downloads the audio, encodes it to MP3 at 320 kbps and returns a direct download link on its CDN once the job completes. Poll the job or pass a webhookUrl to be notified. No ffmpeg or yt-dlp on your side.
Always 320 kbps constant bitrate, the highest the MP3 format defines, encoded with LAME's best-quality settings. The source's sample rate and channels are kept as they are, so 48 kHz stays 48 kHz and a mono source stays mono. YouTube's own audio streams are about 130 to 160 kbps, so if you don't need MP3 specifically, format 'audio' gives you the original stream with no re-encoding.
Three: 'audio' is YouTube's best original stream, usually M4A (AAC) or WebM (Opus), with no re-encoding. 'audio-aac' prefers YouTube's AAC stream in an M4A file, the most widely compatible codec. 'audio-mp3' is always a real MP3 at 320 kbps. Every completed job reports actualFormat, so you can see exactly what was delivered.
Yes. The same endpoint delivers MP4 at 1080p, 720p, 480p or 360p. If a video isn't offered in the quality you asked for, the job reports the quality it delivered in actualFormat.
Yes. Pass startTime and endTime in seconds and you get only that section, in any audio or video format. You're billed for the trimmed file, not the whole video.
You pay for bandwidth only, at the delivered file's size with a 20 MB minimum per download. A 320 kbps MP3 is about 2.4 MB per minute, so most songs bill at the 20 MB minimum and an hour-long podcast is about 144 MB. The Starter plan is $99 a month for 400 GB, which covers about 20,000 songs. Failed downloads are never charged.
No. Extraction and MP3 encoding happen on our servers, so you don't install or maintain ffmpeg, yt-dlp, proxies or cookies.
Clearing YouTube's bot checks is the job Vid Kraken does for you, across multiple download routes. Over the last 30 days it completed 99.993% of more than 2.5 million downloads, and the live numbers are on vidkraken.com/reliability. When a video genuinely can't be downloaded, such as a private or region-locked one, you get a machine-readable error code instead of a vague failure.
Send a URL, get an MP3. No ffmpeg, no bot blocks, no maintenance.
Start free — no credit card