What is Piped used for?

Piped is a privacy-friendly alternative YouTube frontend with no ads or tracking, feeds, playlists and a public API, plus instances you can host yourself. It is a good fit for watching YouTube without Google tracking and hosting a shared frontend for friends.

Is Piped open source?

Yes. Piped is open source under the AGPL-3.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at TeamPiped/Piped and is written mainly in Vue.

Yes. Piped is open source, so the software itself is free to use. A managed cloud version is also available.

Can I self-host Piped?

Yes. Piped can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.

What is Piped an alternative to?

Piped is an open-source alternative to YouTube. Other open-source alternatives to YouTube include Invidious, FreeTube and LibreTube.

Is Piped actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to Piped was on 1 October 2026. The project has 10k stars on GitHub.

Piped: open-source alternative to YouTube

About Piped

Piped is an open-source alternative frontend for YouTube designed to be efficient. The project points to YouTube's data collection practices as the problem and offers a way to watch and listen to content without sending your activity to Google. It does not use the official YouTube APIs and makes no connections to Google's servers from the client.

User features include no ads, no tracking, infinite scrolling, light and dark themes, login, feeds and playlists, audio-only playback, 4K support, embedded videos and progressive web app support. It integrates with SponsorBlock, LBRY and Return YouTube Dislike through RYD-Proxy, and it can bypass geo restrictions through a federated network built on Matrix. A public JSON API and multi-region load balancing are among the technical features.

The backend is written in Java and uses NewPipeExtractor, while the frontend is built with Vue. Piped is licensed under AGPL-3.0. A list of public instances is in the documentation, and people who want to run their own instance can use the chat rooms and docs for help, rather than opening issues.

Key features

No ads and no tracking
Feeds, playlists and login
SponsorBlock and Return YouTube Dislike integration
Audio-only playback and 4K support
Public JSON API
Federated instances over Matrix

Good fit for

→Watching YouTube without Google tracking
→Hosting a shared frontend for friends

Built with: Vue; Java
Tags: youtube; privacy; frontend; newpipe; sponsorblock; self-hosted; vue; video

Piped: questions and answers

What is Piped used for?: Piped is a privacy-friendly alternative YouTube frontend with no ads or tracking, feeds, playlists and a public API, plus instances you can host yourself. It is a good fit for watching YouTube without Google tracking and hosting a shared frontend for friends.
Is Piped open source?: Yes. Piped is open source under the AGPL-3.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at TeamPiped/Piped and is written mainly in Vue.
Is Piped free?: Yes. Piped is open source, so the software itself is free to use. A managed cloud version is also available.
Can I self-host Piped?: Yes. Piped can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.
What is Piped an alternative to?: Piped is an open-source alternative to YouTube. Other open-source alternatives to YouTube include Invidious, FreeTube and LibreTube.
Is Piped actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to Piped was on 1 October 2026. The project has 10k stars on GitHub.