4K Video Downloader 4.33.5 / Plus 26.2.1

It handles single clips, whole playlists and entire channels in resolutions up to 8K, and writes them out as MP4, MKV or MP3.

The free Starter tier never expires but caps how many items you can download per day.

Copy a video link, paste it into the app, pick a quality, and the file lands in your Downloads folder a minute later.

That has been the entire pitch since 2013, and it still works better than most of the newer tools built to replace it.

Version 26.2.1 arrived on 17 July 2026, and it is a different product from the one most people remember.

What It Actually Does

You paste a URL. The app fetches the video stream and the audio stream separately, pulls subtitles if you asked for them, and muxes everything into one file.

Output is MP4 or MKV. MKV is the better choice for long or high-bitrate videos because it carries multiple audio tracks and soft subtitles without re-encoding, though fewer players open it by default.

Audio can be extracted on its own as MP3, M4A or OGG, which is the quickest route from a lecture, podcast or DJ set to something your phone plays offline.

Resolutions run from 360p to 8K where the source has it. Subtitles come out as SRT in over 50 languages, and you can grab them for a whole playlist rather than one video at a time.

Supported sites include YouTube, Vimeo, TikTok, Facebook, SoundCloud, Twitch, Bilibili, Dailymotion and Tumblr. Playlists, channels and YouTube search results all download in a single action.

There is a built-in browser as well, so you can sign in to a site inside the app and reach content that needs an account.

Windows 10 Users, Read This First

The vendor's compatibility box for 26.2.1 lists Windows 11 and newer. That is a change from earlier releases and it is not advertised anywhere obvious.

If you are on Windows 10, the documented path is the classic 4.33.5 branch further down this page rather than the current build.

The Free Tier, and Exactly Where It Stops

The Starter tier is free permanently. No trial clock, no card, no nag screen after 30 days.

It downloads at full quality including 4K, and it does not watermark anything. What it limits is volume: there is a daily cap on how many items you can queue, and the vendor does not publish the number anywhere in its documentation.

Locked behind a licence: private and login-protected downloads, bulk subtitle extraction, the AI audio tools that strip vocals or background noise, and automatic channel subscriptions.

Licences at the time of writing are Lite at 15 dollars a year, Personal at 25 dollars once, and Pro at 45 dollars once with a commercial-use permit. A 7-day trial unlocks everything, so you can find out whether the cap actually affects you before spending anything.

That is an ordinary freemium split rather than a bait and switch. If you save a handful of videos a month you will never reach the ceiling.

Installer or Portable

Both builds are on the vendor's download table and both are the same application.

The 64-bit installer is 205.7 MB and registers itself with Windows normally. The portable ZIP is 227.4 MB, runs from a USB stick or a folder, and leaves no installed entry behind.

The portable build is not feature-limited. Pick it if you are working on a machine you do not administer, or if you would rather not add another entry to Programs and Features.

The Classic 4.33.5 Branch

Before the "Plus" rename, the app was simply 4K Video Downloader. That version is frozen at 4.33.5, released 16 January 2025, and the vendor still hosts it: 91.8 MB for the installer, 110.5 MB portable.

It is genuinely useful as a fallback, and it is what the Windows 10 note above points at. It has a different, more generous free allowance than the current Starter tier, which is why some long-time users never moved.

The catch is that it gets no further updates. Streaming sites change how they serve video every few months, and a frozen link extractor slowly stops resolving URLs. Expect it to degrade rather than break cleanly.

Same product on other platforms: 4K Video Downloader for Mac with separate Apple Silicon and Intel builds, and 4K Video Downloader for Android as a direct APK.

Playing What You Downloaded

MP4 opens in the built-in Windows player without help. MKV usually does not, and that is the single most common complaint from people who took the app's own advice and chose MKV.

Three fixes, in order of how much you want to install.

• MPC-BE or MPC-HC - light, fast, play MKV out of the box.
• PotPlayer - heavier interface, very deep format and filter support.
• K-Lite Codec Pack - fixes playback everywhere at once rather than in one player.

If a downloaded file has the right video but silent or broken audio, the codec rather than the container is usually at fault, and the VP9 versus H.264 explainer covers why YouTube hands out the streams it does.

To fix or retime the SRT files this app produces, Subtitle Edit is the tool. Mp3tag cleans up the metadata on extracted audio so your library does not fill with "Unknown Artist".

Free Alternatives Worth Knowing

None of these is a drop-in replacement, but each covers part of the job without a licence.

Free Download Manager is fully free, open-source and handles video from many of the same sites alongside ordinary file downloads. AB Download Manager is the newer open-source option and splits transfers across connections for speed.

Ant Download Manager integrates with the browser and catches media links as you browse, which suits people who download opportunistically rather than in batches.

Two of our own browser tools cover the quick cases with nothing installed. The Stream Extractor pulls a direct media URL out of a streaming page, and the YouTube Playlist to M3U tool turns a playlist into a file your player opens directly.

For audio-only conversions there is the Online Audio Converter, and the Playlist Builder assembles what you have already downloaded into something playable.

Who Should Look Elsewhere

The tell is what happens to the file after it lands.

If you are downloading in order to edit, caption or re-encode, you will end up transcoding twice and losing quality both times. FFmpeg does the whole job in one pass once you learn the syntax, and it is free.

If you want a library rather than a folder, a downloader is only half the workflow. MediaMonkey organises and tags large collections properly, and Kodi turns them into something with artwork and a remote control.

And if you download dozens of videos a week, the free tier will annoy you within days. Either budget the 25 dollars for a lifetime Personal licence, or use one of the fully free managers above and accept a rougher interface.

Quick questions

Download 4K Video Downloader Plus 26.2.1 and see how far the free tier gets you, or tell us how you got on if you have used it before.