Vimeo Pro members and higher have access to the direct links to their converted video files, which can be used to download or play videos hosted on Vimeo through a third-party player or web page.
Here's a short video about direct links:
Accessing your video’s download links
To access your third-party links, open your video from the video manager and select Advanced to the right of the player. Open the Distribution tab and scroll to the Video file links section. Choose “Download the video” and grab any of the URLs provided.
⚠️Caution: The download URLs provided do not expire. Once your download URLs are out there, anyone who knows the link will be able to download your videos. The only way to stop this is to delete your video from Vimeo.
2K/4K direct links
Direct links for 2K/4K are not currently provided in the video settings page, but they can be obtained using our API (note: developer skills are required).
Visit developer.vimeo.com/api to review our API documentation.
Privacy for your videos in third-party players
Vimeo's privacy settings and custom embed settings do not apply to third-party player links. The third-party player you're using might support its own set of customizations, but you will need to check out their support documentation for more info.
Third-party player links do not expire, so anyone can view your videos through these URLs. If you add them to a third-party player outside of Vimeo, people may be able to find and share these links.
Please note: When you paste a third-party player link in a browser, it redirects to a link with an expiring token. When sharing third-party links, make sure that you are copying the link address directly from your video settings (which starts with https://player.vimeo.com/external/) and not the redirected link in the browser (which starts with https://fpdl.vimeocdn.com/ or https://gcs-vimeo.akamaized.net).
Analytics for your videos in third-party players
There isn’t very much data we can gather from views that don’t occur within the Vimeo player. We can only approximate the number of times the video file is being played. Multiple impressions / views by the same viewer in the same browser session will not be counted (like they are when our own player is used).
We also cannot count finishes or any engagement analytics for these views. In many cases, we will still be able to detect the website where the view is happening, the location of the view, and the device, however, this is less reliable than it would be with our own player.
Downgrading to a Basic or Plus membership
If you downgrade to Basic or Plus, any direct links you've shared or embedded will no longer work (for example, your embedded video will no longer load). If you decide to re-upgrade to Pro or higher, your links will automatically reactivate.