TubeArchivist

TubeArchivist is an open-source, self-hosted YouTube archival platform that offers you complete control over your video collection. It downloads videos using yt-dlp, indexes them with Elasticsearch for full-text search, and serves them via a clean web player — ensuring no dependency on YouTube's availability, algorithm, or content moderation decisions. With over 14,000 GitHub stars, it stands as the most widely deployed self-hosted YouTube archiver out there.

Common Use Cases

Researchers and journalists utilise TubeArchivist to preserve video evidence before it gets removed from YouTube, thereby maintaining a searchable archive of primary source material. Educators subscribe to lecture channels and curate offline libraries for students in low-bandwidth environments. Media enthusiasts opt for a self-hosted library of subscribed channels instead of YouTube Premium, enjoying ad-free videos without any tracking. Developers and power users integrate TubeArchivist with their existing Jellyfin or Plex setup using the companion plugin, effectively unifying YouTube content with their broader media library.

Key Features

• Channel subscriptions with scheduled automatic downloads via yt-dlp
• Full-text Elasticsearch search across titles, descriptions, subtitles, and comments
• Built-in web video player with watch history and per-video progress tracking
• SponsorBlock integration to skip sponsors, intros, outros, and self-promotion
• Subtitle download and indexing for keyword search within spoken content
• Optional comment archival, preserving community context with each video
• Playlist management and per-channel download settings
• User role management with support for multiple accounts
• Jellyfin and Plex companion plugins for media server integration
• Browser extension for one-click download queuing from YouTube
• Apprise notification support for new downloads and system events
• Backup and restore functionality for the Elasticsearch index

Why deploy TubeArchivist on Hostinger VPS

Running TubeArchivist on a Hostinger VPS offers you persistent storage and continuous downloading — videos are archived constantly in the background without needing to keep your personal computer running. A VPS provides the dedicated RAM that Elasticsearch requires (minimum 2 GB, ideally 4 GB for larger archives) and the disk space to expand a long-term video library. Since your archive is on a server you control, it remains unaffected by YouTube content removals, regional restrictions, or account bans, and stays accessible to all devices on your network without a subscription.