OmniGet vs you-get
OmniGet is a free, open-source (GPL-3.0) alternative to you-get for Windows, macOS and Linux. Timed on September 27, 2026, the OmniGet 0.10.1 app downloaded 7 of 8 free test items and you-get 0.4.1743 downloaded 3; on Blender's official Bilibili account both took about 20 seconds, but OmniGet saved 1080p and you-get 480p.
Written by Antonio Leandro, who makes OmniGet. you-get is described from its own repository and releases.
Short answer
you-get 0.4.1743 failed on all three YouTube items and got stuck on PeerTube, and it recorded an HLS stream only at playback speed, in the wrong folder. It downloaded the 372 MB direct file about as fast as OmniGet (81.7 s against 79.7 s, inside the spread between rounds) and a Bilibili video in the same 20 seconds, but at 480p where OmniGet got 1080p without logging in. OmniGet's app missed one YouTube item to a 403 that version 0.10.1 misreads as a login problem. you-get stays lighter (38 MB of memory against 93 MB) and keeps a few Chinese sites and terminal tricks OmniGet lacks.
Pros and cons, side by side
Written from our study of each app's repository and releases. Every row names the better app, including when it is not OmniGet.
| What matters | OmniGet | you-get |
|---|---|---|
| Works on YouTube today | All 3 YouTube test items | Fails on every YouTube item in 0.4.1743; no release since January 2025 |
| Free test items downloaded | 7 of 8 | 3 of 8 |
| Speed on a large direct file | 79.7 s for 372 MB (77.4 to 82.0 s) | 81.7 s (80.6 to 97.1 s); the ranges overlap |
| Bilibili, logged out | 1080p in 20.0 s | 480p in 20.3 s |
| Streams and odd pages | HLS at line speed; PeerTube in 24 s | HLS only with -m, recorded at playback speed into the current folder; PeerTube stuck for 20 minutes |
| Scripts and footprint | Desktop app, 37-119 MB; MCP server for agents | 0.19 MB package; print URLs, play in mpv or VLC, headless, FreeBSD |
OmniGet wins 4, you-get wins 1, 1 tied
Download speed
What each app can do
| OmniGet | you-get | |
|---|---|---|
| Playlists and channels | Yes | Partly |
| Subtitles | Yes | Partly |
| Audio only | Yes | Partly |
| Choose quality and format | Yes | Partly |
| Private and members-only videos (your login) | Yes | Partly |
| Browser extension | Yes | No |
| Torrents and magnet links | Yes | No |
| Direct file links | Yes | Yes |
| Queue and parallel downloads | Yes | Partly |
| Watch channels for new videos | Yes | No |
| SponsorBlock, chapters, metadata | Yes | No |
| AI agents and MCP | Yes | No |
Where you-get still fits
you-get is a 0.19 MB package with a few tricks OmniGet lacks: -u prints the real media URLs without downloading, -p plays a video in mpv or VLC, and it can scrape the images of any page. Its site list includes Chinese services that yt-dlp does not cover, such as Kuaishou, Kugou and MissEvan; this test did not check whether they still work.
Who wins what
-
Free test items downloaded correctly (8 in one pass)
OmniGet
OmniGet 88 % · you-get 38 %
-
Direct file from download.blender.org (372 MB)
OmniGet
OmniGet 79.7 s · you-get 81.7 s
-
WING IT! on Blender's official Bilibili account, logged out
OmniGet
OmniGet 20 s · you-get 20.3 s
you-get is a small Python command-line tool that scrapes video, audio and images from web pages, with a long list of Chinese sites. OmniGet is a desktop app that downloads through yt-dlp and its own extractors for sites such as Bilibili and Douyin.
you-get 0.4.1743 (January 2025, the latest on PyPI and Homebrew) was tested as installed with pip, against the published OmniGet 0.10.1 app and its command line, on the same Mac, network and day. The free corpus has eight items, including a Blender open movie on Blender's official Bilibili account, downloaded logged out by every tool. The direct file and the Bilibili video were timed in five rounds in alternating order after a warm-up round.
Download size and packages
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The apps in this benchmark
What failed, and how
All three YouTube items (a 1080p video, an audio track and a subtitled film) failed within about two seconds with a crash that asks for a bug report. The HLS stream works only with -m, which hands it to ffmpeg in real time: 10 minutes 47 seconds for a stream of about 10 and a half minutes, saved as m3u8file.mp4 in the current folder instead of the one given with -o. On Blender's PeerTube server it found a file it could not name, downloaded it at about 5 kB/s and was stopped after 20 minutes. On the Internet Archive it saved one 1 MB file of a four-track album. OmniGet's app handled all of these and missed only the 1080p YouTube video, to a 403 that version 0.10.1 reports as "requires login" and does not retry; the main branch reports it as a temporary refusal and retries.
Bilibili without logging in
Both tools downloaded WING IT! from Blender's official account without a login in every round: OmniGet in 20.0 seconds (median) and you-get in 20.3. The difference is the file. Bilibili gives a logged-out visitor up to 1080p through the API yt-dlp uses, and OmniGet saved a 1080p file of 19.2 MB; you-get saved 480p (13.3 MB). you-get also wrote the danmaku comments to an XML file next to the video; OmniGet can save them as XML, ASS or JSON, off by default.
The direct file
On the 372 MB file both ran close to the line speed: OmniGet 79.7 seconds and you-get 81.7 (median of five rounds), with you-get's slowest round at 97.1 s. The ranges overlap, so it is a tie. you-get uses one connection and less of the machine: 38 MB of memory and 12% of a core, against 93 MB and 43% for the OmniGet app.
Which one should you pick?
- Choose OmniGet if you download from YouTube, PeerTube or HLS streams, want audio-only or a chosen quality, a queue with retries, torrents, a browser extension or an MCP server, without a terminal.
- Choose you-get if you need one of the Chinese sites only it supports, want to print media URLs or play a video in mpv from the terminal, or need a tiny tool for a script or a FreeBSD server.
Other you-get alternatives
Free, open-source apps that do some of what you-get does.
- Open-source yt-dlp GUIs compared Every desktop app we track, ordered by GitHub stars, with its license, latest release and who it suits.
- OmniGet vs ezytdl Electron front end for yt-dlp with advanced options. Compared with OmniGet
- OmniGet vs Media Downloader Qt/C++ front end for several download engines, including yt-dlp, gallery-dl and aria2c. Compared with OmniGet
- OmniGet vs SCrawler Windows app that saves media from social sites and user profiles. Compared with OmniGet
- OmniGet vs Videomass Cross-platform FFmpeg front end for batch conversion with presets; it removed its yt-dlp downloader in version 6.1.12. Compared with OmniGet
- OmniGet vs Vividl Windows front end for yt-dlp built with WPF. Compared with OmniGet
- OmniGet vs Hindsight Agent memory system by Vectorize: retain, recall and reflect over a memory bank, as a server with Postgres or embedded in Python. Compared with OmniGet
- OmniGet vs aria2 Command-line download utility for HTTP, FTP, BitTorrent and Metalink, with many connections per file. Compared with OmniGet
- OmniGet vs youtube-dl The original command-line video downloader that yt-dlp was forked from. Compared with OmniGet
- OmniGet vs yt-dlp The command-line audio and video downloader that OmniGet runs on. Compared with OmniGet
- OmniGet vs Open Video Downloader Cross-platform yt-dlp front end built with Tauri and Vue, with a very small installer. Compared with OmniGet
- OmniGet vs Parabolic yt-dlp front end with a native interface: WinUI on Windows and GNOME on Linux, published on Flathub. Compared with OmniGet
- OmniGet vs VidBee Electron app built on yt-dlp that also makes local transcripts, AI summaries and RSS subscriptions. Compared with OmniGet
- OmniGet vs ytDownloader Electron yt-dlp app with a clip trimmer and a video compressor, on many app stores. Compared with OmniGet
- yt-dlp on GitHub The command-line audio and video downloader that OmniGet runs on.
- lux on GitHub Command-line video downloader and Go library with its own extractors.
- youtube-dl on GitHub The original command-line video downloader that yt-dlp was forked from.
Where OmniGet still loses
We publish this on purpose. It is the list we work from to make OmniGet better.
- Sites: you-get lists Chinese sites that yt-dlp has no extractor for, such as Kuaishou, Kugou, Lizhi, MissEvan, Douban, PPTV and ifeng. Whether each still works is not verified here; OmniGet covers Bilibili and Douyin with its own code and the rest through yt-dlp.
- Footprint: you-get is a 0.19 MB Python package that runs headless, on FreeBSD and in scripts; OmniGet is a 37 to 119 MB desktop app.
- Memory: 93 MB and 43% of a core at the peak on the large file, against 38 MB and 12% for you-get.
- Quick tools: you-get prints the media URLs without downloading (-u) and plays a video straight in mpv or VLC (-p). OmniGet has neither.
Trying OmniGet costs nothing
Both save to normal folders. OmniGet needs no Python and no ffmpeg install, so you can keep you-get for the sites only it knows and use OmniGet for the rest.
Method
Run it yourself
YOUGET=<you-get 0.4.1743> node scripts/bench/speed.mjs --slug omniget-vs-you-get --tools omniget-app,omniget-cli,you-get --items direct-large,bilibili --rounds 5 --warmup 1 --startup Data licensed CC BY 4.0: reuse it freely with a link to this page.
Sources
Questions
Is you-get still maintained?
Its last release, 0.4.1743, is from January 4, 2025, and the last merged commit from April 2025. Pull requests keep arriving but are not merged, and the YouTube support is broken in that release.
Why is you-get not working on YouTube?
YouTube changed its player after the last release. In this test you-get 0.4.1743 failed on all three YouTube items within about two seconds and asked for the error to be reported.
Can you-get download from Bilibili?
Yes, for public videos. In this test, logged out, it downloaded Blender's WING IT! at 480p in about 20 seconds; OmniGet downloaded the same video at 1080p in about the same time. With your login cookies (-c), you-get can ask for higher qualities.
What is the difference between you-get and yt-dlp?
Both are Python command-line tools. yt-dlp has more sites, parallel fragments, audio extraction, format selection everywhere and frequent releases; you-get is smaller and covers a few Chinese sites that yt-dlp does not. OmniGet runs yt-dlp; see OmniGet vs yt-dlp.
What is a good you-get alternative?
For the terminal, yt-dlp. For a window on Windows, macOS or Linux, OmniGet is free and open source, with its own Bilibili and Douyin support. youtube-dl is compared on its own page.
Other benchmarks
Try OmniGet 1.0.0
Free and open source, for Windows, macOS and Linux.
Download