VidBee vs yt-dlp

VidBee is a free, open-source desktop app for downloading videos and making searchable, timestamped transcripts on the user's computer. It runs on macOS, Windows, and Linux without requiring an account. The app supports more than 1,000 sites, including YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, X, Facebook, and Bilibili, with downloads up to 8K. Output options include MP4, MKV, WebM, M4A, MP3, Opus, and SRT. Playlist, subtitle, and batch downloads are supported, and subtitle selection spans more than 50 languages. Whisper transcription supports more than 100 languages, with speaker separation, renaming, and speaker-specific navigation. VidBee says downloads, transcripts, speech, and files stay on the user's device. Users can choose AI providers, add API keys, or use Ollama, LM Studio, and custom endpoints. Cloud AI credit packs are one-time purchases without subscription or automatic renewal: Starter costs $5, paid once, Popular $10, paid once, and Power $15, paid once. New Cloud accounts receive 50K welcome credits that expire after six months.

yt-dlp is a free command-line tool for downloading audio and video from online sources. It supports thousands of sites, including YouTube, Bilibili, Dailymotion, Facebook, Vimeo, TikTok and Twitch. Downloads can include playlists, subtitles or batches, with output options spanning video formats such as AVI, FLV, MKV, MOV, MP4 and WebM, and audio formats such as AAC, AIFF, FLAC, MP3, Ogg, Opus and WAV. It runs on Linux, macOS and Windows. Standalone macOS executables require macOS 10.15 or later, while Windows binaries support Windows 8 or later; Linux binaries cover several system and processor variants. The project is a fork of youtube-dl based on the inactive youtube-dlc, and its public repository is licensed under the Unlicense. It supports CPython 3.10+ and PyPy 3.11+, while full YouTube support requires yt-dlp-ejs. Stable releases generally follow a mostly monthly schedule, and versions more than 90 days old display an update warning. Release checksums have SHA-512 and SHA-256 signature files with a GPG public key.