El AllTube Download GitHub repo has been archived since April 22, 2023, and the last stable release (3.1.1) shipped 42 days before that. If you're reading this in 2026, you're looking at a project that hasn't received a code update in three years.
You can still find install guides for AllTube, on Synology NAS blogs, on big-host marketing pages, on listicles that haven't been pruned in a while. None of them tell you the repo is read-only. So if you searched for "AllTube" expecting a current tool, this post does two things: gives you the honest review (it's short, because the answer is short), and then walks through what I'd deploy on a VPS today for the same job: MeTube, Pinchflat, and TubeArchivist.
TL;DR
- AllTube Download was archived by its author on April 22, 2023. Last stable release: 3.1.1 (March 11, 2023). Don't deploy it.
- MeTube is the closest active replacement, a web UI for yt-dlp, last release April 2026, runs in Docker.
- Pinchflat is built for channel subscriptions (a personal YouTube DVR).
- TubeArchivist is for full archiving with library, search, and Jellyfin integration.
Disclaimer: Everything discussed here is for educational and testing purposes only. Nothing in this post recommends misuse of a platform's terms of service or any country's copyright law. Use the tools on content you have the right to download.
AllTube Is Archived: The Short Review
There's a final pre-release tag called 3.2.0-alpha that landed the same day the project was archived; its one change of note was swapping the youtube-dl backend for yt-dlp. That alpha has had zero updates since.
A few weeks earlier, a GitHub Issue on the AllTube repo was opened with the title "End of support." It's the community marker that this was deliberate. Not a hiatus, not a vacation. A wind-down.
When AllTube worked, it was a nice thing. A clean PHP web UI for youtube-dl with no database, a small footprint, and support for hundreds of sites that youtube-dl could reach. You pasted a URL, picked a format, got a file. That's it. The whole tool was about 800 KB of PHP doing one job well.
What killed it isn't really AllTube's fault. youtube-dl itself slowed dramatically (the fork, yt-dlp, is the project that actually kept up). YouTube's format machinery has kept changing: itag restrictions, the rolling cipher updates, signature deciphers that need patching every few months. A wrapper around a stale backend can't keep up with that on its own. With no maintainer activity for three years, AllTube can't either.
You'll find users in a YunoHost forum thread on AllTube's status reporting broken downloads and wrong-resolution files. That's the practical signal. AllTube isn't reliably maintained, and the underlying dependency stopped moving long before the repo did.
Bill's call: AllTube was a good tool. It is not a current option. If you want a browser-based UI for yt-dlp in 2026, install MeTube. Move on.
What to Install Instead: The Self-Hosted yt-dlp Stack in 2026
These three tools sit at three different points on the same spectrum: one-off downloads on the casual end, channel subscriptions in the middle, full archival library on the heavy end. They're not really competitors with each other. They're answers to different questions.
The category has consolidated around yt-dlp as the backend. The differentiation now is the front end and the use case. MeTube is the closest one-to-one swap if you came here looking for "AllTube but maintained." Pinchflat is for the "I want a personal feed of five YouTubers" workflow. TubeArchivist is for the "I want a self-hosted YouTube with a real library" workflow.
MeTube: The Closest AllTube Replacement
MeTube's nightly Docker image auto-pulls the latest yt-dlp on every build. That single design choice is the structural reason MeTube doesn't quietly rot the way AllTube did. When YouTube changes a format or a cipher, yt-dlp gets patched within hours, and your MeTube instance picks it up the next time the container rebuilds. You don't do anything. No "fix" issues to subscribe to, no late-night PHP patching.
El MeTube GitHub repo sits at 13.5k stars, AGPL-3.0, with the latest release dated April 28, 2026. Deployment is the standard Docker / docker-compose flow; there's a one-page README and most people are up in five minutes. The feature set covers what AllTube did and more:
- Video and audio downloads
- Captions and thumbnails
- Playlist support
- Channel subscriptions
- Format and quality presets
- SponsorBlock integration
The UI is a single-page paste-and-go.
When MeTube is the right pick: a personal paste-and-download workflow, occasional small batches, a 1-2 GB RAM VPS. If your use case is "I want to grab this video, sometimes a playlist, occasionally something audio-only," this is the tool. It's the AllTube replacement this post is written for.
When MeTube is not the pick: heavy systematic archiving from many channels (use TubeArchivist) or a fire-and-forget "watch this YouTuber's new uploads forever" subscription model (Pinchflat is purpose-built for that). MeTube can subscribe to channels, but its UX is built around the one-shot download. If you want a YouTube DVR, get the YouTube DVR.
Pinchflat: For Channel Subscriptions
If your problem is "I want to keep up with five YouTubers without opening YouTube," Pinchflat is the tool for that specific job. You add a channel or a playlist, set a cadence, and it pulls new uploads on a schedule, organized by source. Think of it less as a downloader and more as a personal RSS-for-YouTube that produces video files instead of a feed.
El Pinchflat GitHub repo is actively maintained, around 4.9k stars, AGPL-3.0, written in Elixir. The most recent tagged release at the time of writing is v2025.9.26 (September 26, 2025), with commits continuing past that, which makes it very current. It has a smaller community than MeTube's, but it's alive and shipping.
When Pinchflat is the right pick: you've effectively replaced your YouTube subscriptions box with a self-hosted feed and you want each new upload pulled automatically. You like setting things up once and forgetting about them.
When Pinchflat is not the pick: one-off downloads (MeTube is faster for that) and full library management with rich metadata, search, and a Plex/Jellyfin frontend (TubeArchivist is built for that). Pinchflat's job is the pull, not the library.
TubeArchivist: For Serious Archiving
TubeArchivist is the only one of the three that goes beyond "download files" into "manage a library." It indexes everything you pull:
- Metadatos
- Thumbnails
- Channel pages
- Búsqueda
- Watch progress
It's designed to sit next to a media server. The Jellyfin integration is the headline use case. You end up with something that looks like a self-hosted YouTube with your own content rather than a folder of mp4s with cryptic filenames.
El TubeArchivist GitHub repo is active, around 7.9k stars, GPL-3.0, written in Python, with the most recent release v0.5.10 dated March 28, 2026. The README documents the Docker Compose stack and the Jellyfin pairing.
This is also the reason TubeArchivist is the heaviest of the three. The library and search functionality is backed by Elasticsearch, which means the RAM floor sits noticeably higher than MeTube or Pinchflat. Plan for 4 GB minimum, more if you're indexing tens of thousands of videos.
When TubeArchivist is the right pick: you want a real self-hosted YouTube replacement with a library, search, channel pages, and a Jellyfin-ready output. You don't mind running an Elasticsearch container. The pairing with a self-hosted Jellyfin server is where this tool earns its keep.
When TubeArchivist is not the pick: a light download workflow (overkill, you'll be running Elasticsearch to grab three videos a week) or a tiny VPS (it won't fit comfortably).
Tabla comparativa rápida
A side-by-side of all four, with AllTube included for context, not because anyone should deploy it.
| Herramienta | Primary use case | Backend | Active maintenance | Licencia | Ideal para |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AllTube Download | Browser UI for one-off downloads | youtube-dl (3.2.0-alpha: yt-dlp) | Archived April 2023 | GPL-3.0 | Nobody, in 2026 |
| MeTube | Paste-and-download in a browser | yt-dlp | Active (last release April 2026) | AGPL-3.0 | A direct AllTube replacement |
| Pinchflat | Subscribe to channels and playlists, auto-download | yt-dlp | Active (last release September 2025) | AGPL-3.0 | Personal YouTube DVR workflows |
| TubeArchivist | Full archive with library and metadata | yt-dlp | Active (last release March 2026) | GPL-3.0 | Serious archiving paired with Jellyfin |
Running Any of These on a VPS
MeTube runs cleanly on 1 GB of RAM. Pinchflat is similarly light. TubeArchivist wants four, and most of that goes to Elasticsearch. Those are the numbers worth planning around.
For MeTube or Pinchflat: 1-2 GB RAM, 2 vCPU, 20-60 GB storage is a comfortable starting point for casual personal use. The spikes come from FFmpeg merging when YouTube only serves separate audio and video streams. It's bursty, not sustained, so a small instance handles it fine. TubeArchivist needs 4 GB RAM minimum (Elasticsearch is the load-bearing dependency), and you want at least 60 GB of disk to start, more if you're archiving channels.
Pro tip: Storage is the number to plan for, not CPU. Casual MeTube use barely moves the disk. TubeArchivist plus a few subscribed channels will eat hundreds of gigabytes over a year. Pick a plan you can grow into, or pick a host that lets you resize without rebuilding.
Bandwidth is what bites you on archiving workflows, not compute. If you're seriously pulling channels with Pinchflat or TubeArchivist, 1 TB of monthly egress is a comfortable floor for personal use. Heavier archiving wants more.
A practical note on exposure: keep these instances private. A public yt-dlp UI on the open internet attracts abuse quickly: bots, scraping, and the kind of attention that gets your VPS IP flagged. Bind to localhost behind Tailscale, put it behind a reverse proxy with auth, or tunnel through a VPN. Don't expose the web UI to the world and hope for the best.
If you want to pair this with a media server (the TubeArchivist + Jellyfin stack is the obvious one), running both on the same VPS works well at small scale. We've covered the Jellyfin side of that stack in detail. See our Jellyfin vs. Plex guide for the media-server piece. The full stack (Jellyfin as the front, TubeArchivist as the archive, a VPS as the host) is one of the cleanest self-hosted media setups you can build in 2026.
If you don't have a host picked out yet, our planes Linux VPS cover that bracket. There's an hourly-billed option if you just want to test, monthly billing once you commit, and a money-back guarantee if you change your mind in the first two weeks. Pick a plan with room to grow for the archive case; the smallest tier is fine for MeTube on its own.
