Pulltube: what you're actually paying for, and the free equivalent
Pulltube's headline feature is trimming before you download. The free command does the same job and skips the part where you wait for the whole file — here is the honest trade.
Pulltube sells one idea better than its competitors do: you pick a start and an end, and you get just that piece. Everything else it does — 1,000+ sites, 4K, subtitles, a converter — the other paid apps also do.
So this comparison is mostly about that one feature, whether the free equivalent is as good, and where it is genuinely better.
Usual disclosure: I build a free downloader. It handles YouTube only, so for most of Pulltube’s audience it is not a replacement at all. That is the first thing worth knowing, not the last.
What Pulltube is, checked 2026-07-31
| Version | 1.8.6.36 |
| Sites | 1,000+ |
| macOS | 11.0 or later |
| Size | 714 MB |
| Price, direct | From $19.99 |
| Via Setapp | Included, from $14.99/month |
Features: trimming before download, a built-in media converter, browser extensions, subtitles, thumbnail extraction, 4K/8K/60fps.
714 MB is worth noticing. That is a bundled FFmpeg and a bundled browser engine, which is how the converter and the extraction work. Not a criticism — just where the size goes.
The trimming feature, and the free version of it
In Pulltube you paste a link, drag two handles, download, and get the piece.
The free equivalent is one flag:
yt-dlp --download-sections "*3:40-7:15" "URL"
There is a real difference in what happens next, and it favours the command.
Pulltube generally downloads the video, then trims it. You wait for the
whole file. --download-sections asks YouTube’s server for approximately the
byte range covering those timestamps and never fetches the rest. In testing on
2026-07-31, pulling ten seconds out of a ten-minute 4K video produced a 93 KB
file in about two seconds. The full video at that quality is 1.27 GB.
For a forty-second clip out of a two-hour stream, that is not a small optimisation — it is the difference between two seconds and forty minutes.
The command also does things the handles cannot:
yt-dlp --download-sections "*-30-0" "URL" # the last 30 seconds
yt-dlp --download-sections "Introduction" "URL" # a chapter, by name
yt-dlp --split-chapters "URL" # every chapter separately
Selecting a chapter by name is genuinely useful and no GUI here offers it.
Where the handles win
You can see what you are cutting. Typing *3:40-7:15 means you already
know the timestamps; dragging means you can find them. For “the bit where he
explains the thing”, scrubbing a waveform beats scrubbing your memory.
There is also a real precision difference. By default the command cuts at the
nearest keyframe, which can land a second or two off. --force-keyframes-at-cuts
fixes it by re-encoding around the boundaries, which is slower. Pulltube
handles that for you.
The full piece on --download-sections
covers the syntax, including the format-selection trap that makes it return 403.
The converter
Pulltube bundles format conversion. Worth asking whether you need it.
Most conversion people do is unnecessary. YouTube’s audio is already AAC, so “convert to MP3” makes the file worse and takes longer for a compatibility benefit almost nobody still needs. Extracting is instant and lossless:
yt-dlp -f bestaudio[ext=m4a] "URL"
When you genuinely need a conversion, FFmpeg does it:
brew install ffmpeg
ffmpeg -i input.webm -c:v libx264 -crf 18 -c:a aac -b:a 192k output.mp4
Which is a fair illustration of the whole trade: the free tool is more capable
and less pleasant, and a bundled converter is a real convenience for anyone who
does not want to learn -crf.
Pulltube versus Downie
Both are paid Mac apps with broad site coverage and similar prices. Briefly:
- Downie — larger site list (1,200+), a much longer track record, a licence policy that is unusually generous, and a developer who publishes when major upgrades are coming.
- Pulltube — trimming as a first-class feature, a bundled converter.
If trimming is the reason you are here, Pulltube. Otherwise Downie is the safer buy. Both are on Setapp, which makes the comparison cheap to run yourself.
Where a free tool actually replaces it
If you only use YouTube. Then Pulltube’s 1,000 sites are 999 you are not using, and the free options do the remaining one at least as well.
If you want the clip fast. --download-sections genuinely beats
download-then-trim, and it is not close.
If you want to see what the program does. Pulltube is closed source.
For the record on my own app: it does not do trimming. It downloads whole videos from YouTube. If your use case is clips, the command above is the right tool and I would rather say that than sell you something that does not fit.
In one table
| Pulltube | yt-dlp | TBD | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | From $19.99 | Free | Free |
| Sites | 1,000+ | 1,000+ | YouTube only |
| Trim before download | Yes, visually | Yes, and skips the rest | No |
| Converter | Built in | Via FFmpeg | No |
| Interface | Mac app | Command line | Mac app |
| Source | Closed | Open | Open |
| Size | 714 MB | ~40 MB | ~43 MB + FFmpeg |
The recommendation
Clips from many sites, regularly, and you want handles rather than timestamps → Pulltube is a fair $19.99, and it is on Setapp if you already pay for that.
Clips from YouTube, occasionally → --download-sections. It is faster and
free, and this is one of the rare cases where the free tool is not just cheaper
but genuinely better at the thing.
Whole videos from YouTube, with a window rather than a terminal → the free Mac front-ends, including mine.
More: a free Downie alternative, 4K Video Downloader’s free tier, and the free Mac downloaders, honestly.