ytdl-org/youtube-dl

Command-line program to download videos from YouTube.com and other video sites

141.3k stars · 10.7k forks · Python

At risk

At risk: one person wrote most commits, and no one has committed by hand in 90 days.

Why

One person wrote 100% of human commits in the last year, and no human has committed in the last 90 days. (source 1, source 2)
The latest version of PyPI package youtube_dl has 1 high-severity security advisory (GHSA-22fp-mf44-f2mq). (source 1, source 2, source 3)
The PyPI package youtube_dl has had no release since December 2021, while the repository has 30 human commits in the last year. (source 1, source 2, source 3)

What would change this

A human commit in the last 90 days, or a second person taking a large share of commits.
The latest version is patched or the advisory is withdrawn.
A new package release is published.

Maintenance

Complete

Slowing

Human commits, 30 days: 0
Human commits, 90 days: 0
Human commits, 365 days: 30
Bot share of commits, 365 days: 0%
Last commit: Nov 26, 2025 (10 months ago)
Last human commit: Nov 26, 2025 (10 months ago)
Authors, 90 days: 0
Last release: Dec 16, 2021 (4 years ago)
Median PR merge time: 3 days

Responsiveness: of 6 recent issues, 100% got a maintainer reply. Median first response: 28 hours.

Sources: Commits, Releases, Merged pull requests, Issues

People

Complete

Owner: Organization
Commits sampled: 30 since Oct 14, 2025
Authors for half of commits: 1
Authors for 80% of commits: 1
Contributors: 384

Top committers

dirkf: 100% of commits

Sources: Commits, Contributors

Stars

Complete

Mostly organic, confidence high

Bars show stars gained each week. Orange bars overlap a burst.

Bursts

Jun 25, 2013 to Jun 26, 2013: about 35 more stars than usual, peak 29 in one day, a spike that tapers off. Outside explanation: a jump in issues and pull requests.
Sep 5, 2013 to Sep 8, 2013: about 103 more stars than usual, peak 48 in one day, a spike that tapers off. No outside explanation found, so this burst is unexplained.
Jul 3, 2014 to Jul 4, 2014: about 60 more stars than usual, peak 48 in one day, a spike that tapers off. Outside explanation: a jump in issues and pull requests.
Nov 23, 2014 to Dec 4, 2014: about 1.2k more stars than usual, peak 468 in one day, a spike that tapers off. No outside explanation found, so this burst is unexplained.
Apr 8, 2016 to Apr 15, 2016: about 1.3k more stars than usual, peak 735 in one day, a spike that tapers off. No outside explanation found, so this burst is unexplained.
Jul 4, 2018 to Jul 11, 2018: about 1k more stars than usual, peak 472 in one day, a spike that tapers off. No outside explanation found, so this burst is unexplained.
Apr 24, 2019 to Apr 25, 2019: about 82 more stars than usual, peak 78 in one day, a spike that tapers off. Outside explanation: a jump in issues and pull requests.
Jul 15, 2019 to Jul 16, 2019: about 110 more stars than usual, peak 100 in one day, a spike that tapers off. Outside explanation: a jump in issues and pull requests.
Jul 29, 2019 to Jul 30, 2019: about 134 more stars than usual, peak 111 in one day, a spike that tapers off. Outside explanation: a jump in issues and pull requests.
Aug 12, 2019 to Aug 13, 2019: about 155 more stars than usual, peak 143 in one day, a spike that tapers off. Outside explanation: a jump in issues and pull requests.
Sep 11, 2019 to Sep 13, 2019: about 203 more stars than usual, peak 151 in one day, a shape we can't classify. Outside explanation: a jump in issues and pull requests.
Dec 9, 2019 to Dec 9, 2019: about 103 more stars than usual, peak 134 in one day, a spike that tapers off. Outside explanation: a jump in issues and pull requests.
Dec 23, 2019 to Dec 23, 2019: about 80 more stars than usual, peak 115 in one day, a spike that tapers off. Outside explanation: a jump in issues and pull requests.
Feb 24, 2020 to Feb 24, 2020: about 70 more stars than usual, peak 108 in one day, a spike that tapers off. Outside explanation: a jump in issues and pull requests.
Apr 19, 2020 to Apr 20, 2020: about 156 more stars than usual, peak 149 in one day, a spike that tapers off. Outside explanation: a jump in issues and pull requests.
Jun 21, 2020 to Jun 22, 2020: about 150 more stars than usual, peak 119 in one day, a spike that tapers off. Outside explanation: a jump in issues and pull requests.
Sep 28, 2020 to Sep 29, 2020: about 133 more stars than usual, peak 119 in one day, a spike that tapers off. Outside explanation: a jump in issues and pull requests.
Nov 16, 2020 to Dec 20, 2020: about 12.3k more stars than usual, peak 2.9k in one day, a spike that tapers off. Outside explanation: a jump in forks.
Jan 3, 2021 to Jan 4, 2021: about 279 more stars than usual, peak 314 in one day, a spike that tapers off. Outside explanation: a jump in forks, a jump in issues and pull requests.
Jan 17, 2021 to Jan 19, 2021: about 367 more stars than usual, peak 262 in one day, a spike that tapers off. Outside explanation: a jump in forks, a jump in issues and pull requests.
Apr 3, 2021 to Apr 4, 2021: about 173 more stars than usual, peak 195 in one day, a spike that tapers off. Outside explanation: a jump in forks, a jump in issues and pull requests.
Apr 18, 2021 to Apr 20, 2021: about 413 more stars than usual, peak 238 in one day, a spike that tapers off. Outside explanation: a jump in forks, a jump in issues and pull requests.
May 31, 2021 to Jun 2, 2021: about 376 more stars than usual, peak 225 in one day, a spike that tapers off. Outside explanation: a jump in forks, a jump in issues and pull requests.
Jun 13, 2021 to Jun 14, 2021: about 129 more stars than usual, peak 142 in one day, a spike that tapers off. Outside explanation: a jump in issues and pull requests.
Jul 12, 2021 to Jul 13, 2021: about 165 more stars than usual, peak 157 in one day, a spike that tapers off. Outside explanation: a jump in issues and pull requests.
Aug 15, 2021 to Aug 16, 2021: about 155 more stars than usual, peak 156 in one day, a spike that tapers off. Outside explanation: a jump in issues and pull requests.
Dec 17, 2021 to Dec 20, 2021: about 391 more stars than usual, peak 188 in one day, a spike that tapers off. Outside explanation: a jump in issues and pull requests, a new release.
Jan 15, 2022 to Jan 19, 2022: about 380 more stars than usual, peak 194 in one day, a shape we can't classify. Outside explanation: a jump in issues and pull requests.
Feb 27, 2022 to Feb 28, 2022: about 201 more stars than usual, peak 158 in one day, a spike that tapers off. Outside explanation: a jump in issues and pull requests.
Mar 8, 2022 to Mar 8, 2022: about 52 more stars than usual, peak 88 in one day, a spike that tapers off. Outside explanation: a jump in issues and pull requests.
Apr 17, 2022 to Apr 18, 2022: about 188 more stars than usual, peak 137 in one day, a spike that tapers off. Outside explanation: a jump in issues and pull requests.
Jul 17, 2022 to Jul 18, 2022: about 85 more stars than usual, peak 93 in one day, a spike that tapers off. Outside explanation: a jump in issues and pull requests.
Aug 22, 2022 to Aug 23, 2022: about 107 more stars than usual, peak 109 in one day, a spike that tapers off. Outside explanation: a jump in issues and pull requests.
Sep 10, 2022 to Sep 12, 2022: about 200 more stars than usual, peak 108 in one day, a spike that tapers off. Outside explanation: a jump in issues and pull requests.
Dec 5, 2022 to Dec 5, 2022: about 70 more stars than usual, peak 98 in one day, a spike that tapers off. Outside explanation: a jump in issues and pull requests.
Jan 1, 2023 to Jan 2, 2023: about 110 more stars than usual, peak 113 in one day, a spike that tapers off. Outside explanation: a jump in issues and pull requests.
Feb 18, 2023 to Feb 22, 2023: about 392 more stars than usual, peak 145 in one day, a shape we can't classify. Outside explanation: a jump in issues and pull requests.
Aug 10, 2023 to Aug 17, 2023: about 413 more stars than usual, peak 131 in one day, a shape we can't classify. No outside explanation found, so this burst is unexplained.
Dec 10, 2023 to Dec 12, 2023: about 330 more stars than usual, peak 190 in one day, a spike that tapers off. No outside explanation found, so this burst is unexplained.
Jan 28, 2024 to Feb 1, 2024: about 279 more stars than usual, peak 146 in one day, a shape we can't classify. Outside explanation: a jump in issues and pull requests.
Feb 20, 2024 to Feb 21, 2024: about 58 more stars than usual, peak 67 in one day, a spike that tapers off. Outside explanation: a jump in issues and pull requests.
Aug 25, 2025 to Aug 26, 2025: about 68 more stars than usual, peak 51 in one day, a spike that tapers off. Outside explanation: a jump in issues and pull requests.
Sep 21, 2025 to Sep 28, 2025: about 743 more stars than usual, peak 246 in one day, a spike that tapers off. Outside explanation: a jump in issues and pull requests.

584 stars on a repo created before February 2013 have no date, so they aren't in the chart.
6 stars GitHub has since removed (tracked since Oct 13, 2026).

Anyone can buy stars for any repo; bursts alone don't prove the owner did.

Some star bursts have no matching forks, issues, releases, or launch coverage.
Anyone can buy stars for any repo, so this describes the star history only.
584 stars on the creation day are undated (before 2013-02-10) and are not counted.

Sources: How star history is analyzed

Risk

Complete

Flags

High: OSV, via deps.dev, lists GHSA-22fp-mf44-f2mq at HIGH severity on the latest version of youtube_dl. Details
Warning: The latest release of the PyPI package youtube_dl was published more than 24 months ago, while the repository has had 30 human commits in the last year (deps.dev). Details

License

Now: Unlicense (OSI-approved)
A year ago: Unlicense (OSI-approved)

Packages

youtube_dl (PYPI): latest 2021.12.17, published Dec 16, 2021
Advisories for the latest version: GHSA-22fp-mf44-f2mq (high)

Package and advisory data: deps.dev and OSV.

Sources: GitHub: ytdl-org/youtube-dl, deps.dev: PyPI youtube_dl, OSV: GHSA-22fp-mf44-f2mq

Badge

Add this to a README to show the current verdict:

[![RepoRadar](https://reporadar.ai/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/badge.svg)](https://reporadar.ai/ytdl-org/youtube-dl)

Earlier verdicts

Oct 14, 2026: At risk
Oct 13, 2026: At risk
Oct 13, 2026: At risk

Computed 20 hours ago · method 2026.10.2