ThumbnailsGrabber.com is a free, browser-based tool for saving the thumbnail image of a YouTube video or Short, a TikTok video or a Vimeo video in every size the platform stores. There is no signup, no watermark, no upload and no software to install. The site's code history goes back to July 2023, and it is available in English, Spanish, Portuguese, German, French and Italian.
The site is built and maintained by David, who publishes its open-source code and research under the cdwm account on GitHub, npm and dev.to. It is a small, independently run site on static hosting with no ads on any page; the tools are free and will stay free.
Questions, bug reports and corrections go to chaim@cdwebmarketing.com. Bug reports that include the video link and the size you expected get fixed fastest.
YouTube stores each video's thumbnails at fixed addresses on i.ytimg.com, built from the video ID. The grabber reads the ID out of whatever link you paste, builds those addresses, and hands you the image files straight from YouTube's servers. Nothing is proxied through us and nothing you paste is stored. The URL guide documents every one of those addresses so you can do the same in your own code.
The TikTok and Vimeo downloaders use each platform's public oEmbed endpoint in the same way, again entirely in your browser. The tester and resizer work on images you choose locally; those images never leave your device.
For traffic counts the site loads Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics, as described in the privacy policy. The embeddable widget is the exception: it loads no analytics, no fonts and no cookies, because it runs on other people's websites.
Most claims about YouTube thumbnails online are repeated rather than checked. We test them. On 7 September 2026 we requested eight thumbnail files for each of 8,664 public videos and published the results as YouTube Thumbnail Statistics 2026, with the method, the charts and the per-video CSV under a CC BY 4.0 licence. Two findings changed our own pages: a missing maxresdefault.jpg is served as an HTTP 404 whose body is still a 120x90 grey JPEG, so an image tag renders it as if it had loaded; and the realistic maximum size is 1280x720, so we make no 4K or 1080p promises anywhere on the site.
When we get something wrong we fix the page rather than leave it. In September 2026 we corrected our own earlier wording that the placeholder arrives with HTTP 200; it does not, and every guide now says so.
The site is also listed on Product Hunt and SaaSHub.
You are welcome to link to any page. If you use numbers from the study, cite it as: Thumbnails Grabber (2026). YouTube Thumbnail Statistics 2026: Data From 8,664 Videos. https://thumbnailsgrabber.com/youtube-thumbnail-statistics. If you want a thumbnail downloader on your own page, use the widget rather than copying the tool.
