We built the tool we kept wishing existed.

The problem with every other option

YouTube has no built-in way to download a clip. The Clip feature lets you share a short segment inside YouTube, but you cannot save it to a file. You cannot take it off the platform. That is not a clip, that is a bookmark.

Other online tools exist, but almost all of them do one of three things: add a watermark to your video, require you to upload the entire source file (which means your internet connection has to handle the whole video twice), or cap you at 60 seconds and then ask for a subscription. Several of the most popular ones have been shut down by legal action in the past two years.

yt-dlp is excellent. If you are comfortable with a terminal, it is the best free tool available. But most people are not. Installing Python, running pip, figuring out the right flags for time-based cuts, understanding why your download failed because of a bot detection update last Tuesday. That is a lot to ask from someone who just wants a 90-second gaming highlight.

We wanted a tool that handled all of that complexity in the background and gave users a clean interface: paste a URL, set your in and out points, download the file. No account required. No watermark. No upload step.

What YTCut actually does

You paste a YouTube URL. You set a start time and an end time. YTCut fetches the video on our servers, cuts it to your exact timestamps using ffmpeg, and sends you the file. Your internet connection only has to handle the final clip, not the full source video.

The cutting is millisecond accurate. This is not something most tools can claim. A lot of online cutters round to the nearest second, or they use a keyframe-based seek that can overshoot by several seconds if there is no keyframe exactly at your chosen point. YTCut uses a two-stage seek: a fast seek to near your target, then a precise slow seek for the final frames. The output lands within a few milliseconds of what you asked for.

You can download in six formats: MP4, WebM, MKV, MP3, WAV, and M4A. The video formats all use H.264 at CRF 21, which gives you good quality at a reasonable file size. The audio formats are extracted from the video stream without re-encoding when possible, so quality is preserved.

How it works under the hood (the short version)

Getting a YouTube video on the server side is not as simple as following one URL. YouTube changes its delivery infrastructure frequently, and bot detection has gotten significantly stricter. YTCut uses a nine-strategy fallback chain to maximize reliability:

• TV client (Cobalt-style, usually the cleanest stream)
• iOS client
• Android client
• Web Embedded player
• WARP proxied request (routes through Cloudflare's WARP network to get a different IP footprint)
• Authenticated requests using browser cookies
• PO Token authentication
• Additional fallback client variants

If one strategy fails, the next one tries automatically. Most users never see a failure because the chain catches the problem before it reaches them. When YouTube pushes an update that breaks one approach, the others keep working while we patch it.

Processed clips are stored in a 7-day LRU cache. If you cut the same clip twice, the second download is instant. After 7 days, the file is deleted from our servers.

Who uses YTCut

The short answer is: anyone who needs a specific part of a YouTube video as a file.

Content creators use it to clip highlights from longer videos, repurpose content for TikTok and Instagram Reels, and grab reference clips. A 3-hour gaming stream becomes a 40-second highlight in under two minutes.

Podcasters use it to grab the audio from YouTube interviews and panels. Instead of re-recording or asking for the raw file, they pull the clip directly and clean it up in their editor.

Gamers clip their best moments from recorded gameplay or from streams they are watching. The millisecond accuracy matters here. A kill that happens in a 200ms window needs to be in the clip, not cut off.

Language learners use it to save short clips for study. A specific dialogue from a TV episode, a pronunciation example, a scene from a movie. Being able to loop a 10-second clip offline is more useful than scrubbing a 45-minute video repeatedly.

Researchers and students save lecture clips, documentary segments, and presentation examples. Rather than bookmarking a timestamp and hoping the video stays up, they have an offline copy of the exact section they need.

What we will never do

We do not add watermarks. A watermark on a clip that you downloaded is a billboard for us, paid for by you. We find that arrangement uncomfortable.

We do not require a credit card for basic use. The free tier gives you one download per day. That is a real limit, not a trick to get your billing information on file.

We do not sell user data. We collect server logs (IP address, timestamp, URL requested) for rate limiting and error diagnosis. Logs are deleted after 14 days. There is no behavioral tracking, no advertising profile, no analytics platform watching what you do on the site.

We do not show interstitial ads, auto-playing video ads, or pop-ups asking you to disable your ad blocker. The site has static ads in defined locations. If you block them, the tool still works.

Premium plan

The free tier allows one download per day. For $2.99 per month, the Premium plan removes that limit entirely. There are no other differences. Premium users do not get a faster server, hidden features, or higher quality. The limit is the only thing that changes.

We charge for Premium because servers cost money. yt-dlp, ffmpeg, bandwidth, and storage are not free. The free tier is funded by ad revenue. Premium users fund themselves. That is the model.

The values behind the tool

Fast, honest, no nonsense, actually works. That is the entire design philosophy.

Fast means the tool starts processing the moment you submit, the UI tells you what is happening, and the download starts as soon as it is ready.

Honest means we tell you when something fails and why. We do not show a spinner forever. We do not pretend the error did not happen.

No nonsense means no dark patterns, no countdown timers designed to make you feel urgent, no fake "Pro" features that are just the standard feature behind a paywall.

Actually works means we invest time in keeping the strategy chain up to date. When YouTube changes something, we fix it. The tool's only job is to cut YouTube videos reliably. We take that seriously.