VLC media player
How much does VLC media player cost?
Prices are current as of 8 Sept 2026.
VLC media player has no in-app products on record in the United States.
10+ alternatives to VLC media player
| VLC media player |   VN: Photo & Video Editor |   Video Lite |   MX Video Player HD |   Compress Photos & Pictures |   Video Player - All in One |   Video Compress - Shrink Videos |   MX Player- Video Player* |   MX Player - All Video Player |   MX Video Player:Media Player |   Video Converter and Compressor | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rating / 5 | 3.6 | 4.7 | 4.8 | 4.5 | 4.7 | 4.5 | 4.5 | 4.5 | 4.3 | 4.4 | 4.7 |
| Reviews | 29K | 4.8M | 1.3M | 158K | 67K | 37K | 32K | 29K | 20K | 17K | 9.2K |
| Released | 2013 | 2018 | 2021 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2016 | 2019 | 2021 | 2018 | 2019 |
| Monthly price | — | $7.99 | $0.99 | $4.99 | $4.99 | $4.99 | — | — | $0.99 | $2.99 | $2.99 |
| Annual price | — | $69.99 | — | $9.99 | $5.99 | $29.99 | — | — | $9.99 | $14.99 | $17.99 |
| One-time price | — | $3.00 | — | $3.99 | $12.99 | $79.99 | $1.99 | $1.99 | — | $3.99 | $19.99 |
The going rate for each plan in United States, in its own currency, shaded from the cheapest price on the row to the dearest. Plans fewer than four in ten of the priced apps sell are left out.
VLC media player reviews
3.6 out of 5, based on 29,198 reviews.
What people like
- Plays almost any video format you have
- Completely free and never sells out
- Works well on iPad and iPhone
What they complain about
- Playlists often disappear or get wiped
- No picture-in-picture mode for video
- Music library sorting is unstable
- Audio skips the first second of songs
Excellent beyond words
VLC is honestly one of those apps that deserves far more recognition and support. It’s completely free, yet it offers features that many paid media players don’t provide nearly as well. It plays an incredible variety of audio and video formats, and the viewing experience is extremely practical. Being able to easily control subtitles, volume, and screen brightness while watching makes such a difference, especially when you use it frequently. What impresses me most is that VLC continues to be developed as a free and open-source project while providing such a powerful, reliable, and genuinely useful player. If you’re looking for a media player, give VLC a try before paying for something else. And if you already use and appreciate it, consider supporting the people behind it so they can continue developing and improving this amazing app. ❤️🏆
Garbage
Don’t use this idc that it’s free it barely works
PDF?
Why no pdf viewer?
Screen brightness miss-swipes
I've gotten to the point of not using vlc because of the annoyance of mistakenly swipping up or down and vlc dimming or brightening my screen when I don't want it to. At least allow the user to disable that function.
Good but buggy
Overall a solid media player, probably some of the best features you can find in a mobile app, but is prone to freezing/crashing (at least for me on an iPhone 15 Pro Max)
Sync with Photos App??
VLC has been one of my go to, opensource, video apps for over a decade on my Macs. I just downloaded it for iOS and love all the fratures it has, but is still missing a critical, seemingly obvious, integration with the native Apple Photos app. It would be great if VLC could recognize media content in the Photos app and even be able to view albums as playlists. I’m still giving the app 5 stars, but hopefully they will add this feature soon!
No Picture-InPicture mode
When will there be Picture-In-Picture mode?
VLC pauses
When im listening to music and accidentally do something that pauses the music when i unpause theres no audio and also the album art is a bit small
Great Player, But It Needs Better Music Library Features
I’ve been using VLC on iPhone as my primary offline music player, and it’s stable and reliable. However, there are several features that would make it much better for users with large music libraries. 1. The music library order changes by itself. Every few weeks, the order of my songs changes even though I haven’t modified my files. Please make the library order stable and predictable. 2. Please add more sorting options, including: * Date Added * File Creation Date * File Modification Date * Import Order These sorting methods are essential for users who regularly add new music and want their newest songs to appear at the top. 3. Please add a Favorites feature. Being able to mark songs as favorites and access them from a dedicated playlist would greatly improve the music experience. 4. Please improve music library management. Users with large offline collections (thousands of songs) need more powerful organization and browsing tools. 5. Please preserve the selected sorting method permanently. VLC should remember the user’s preferred sorting option and never change the order automatically. VLC is already one of the best free media players on iOS. Adding these features would make it an excellent offline music player as well. Thank you for your amazing work!
Playing flac streaming audio from the Internet
I tried it and the sound is amazing. Two surprises. 1. The app cannot play some flac streams. I pasted a URL for one of those into Safari address bar and the music played. 2. The app does not (or fails to) extract some flac metadata. Another player that I tried consistently extracted and displayed the station logo (or CD cover, if available), piece name, and composer or performer name from the same streams. VideoLan team! We trust in you and waiting.
What are these reviews?
Does it have bugs that need fixed? Yes does it need to be updated? Yes but dissuading people from getting it is dumb because i’m fairly sure you don’t have a better recommendation. The only suggestion i would make is to add looping support for file types that can have loop points .wav and the like. edit: what’s the point of that edit:Sent!
No picture-in-picture is a dealbreaker
It’s 2026, No picture-in-picture is a dealbreaker. Seriously, it was unacceptable years ago and it’s unacceptable now. And tbh, even on PC vlc is overrated.
Better than the stock player but still has some issues
songs would load and play instantaneously at the same time, making the first second of each song i play chopped off from the rest.
Player won’t mirror correctly
When I mirror VLC to my TV, the interface doesn’t display. I only see a black screen. Everything else works fine. I don’t know what’s going on. 🤷♂️
Troublesome at playing music
would be 10/10 but there’s a fatal bug I’ve noticed where music seems to randomly pitch up and down no matter what I do, I’m using AirPods Pro’s, and it’s incredibly frustrating. Otherwise its nice to see VLC on the store
Great! But could improve!
First time using this app and I love it! I did want to suggest the need to add a sorting capability throughout the files. It should have multiple ways to sort, A-Z, etc. Plus improve on this and it’ll be an even more useful app! Thanks! I love that you added multiple cloud storage accessibilities! That was so helpful!
Plays anything but..
Pros: There isn’t any video or music file this can’t play. CONS: Awful, awful, AWFUL user interface. Small skip buttons. Gestures to skip don’t reliably work.
Problem with music playing.
Sometimes I'm not able to loop, pause, or shuffle my music unless I refresh the entire app. Can you guys fix this? Also can you guys let us edit the metadata for various files like what apple music on desktop does and being able to sort music within playlists by albums, artists, etc? It's a good music and video player besides that.
.
Not good interface, hard app
VLC is like an old friend
One of the few, great constants in the computer world. It is a powerful tool but ’m not skilled enough to use it for more than the basic music player activities. However I will always bring it in on any new devices, like a favorite classic music album.
How has this app been so trash for so long
How has this app been so trash for so long
We need this update
The app is good for looking at files and playing old video files from 2001 that windows media player doesn't support but there's one issue. I want to watch DVDs on my iPad and I don't know how to do that on VLC mobile. Can you fix that?
Meh
I use the app to listen to audio files and this app has a weird issues where it skips the first second of the song and it’s really annoying because that’s my only issues with the app.
The best digital media viewer to exist
As someone who is fond with unique video/photo formats, this player is absolutely amazing! I have never had more fun playing around with unique video codecs with unique audio codecs and such.
Doesn’t work
Tried downloading some twitch vods onto it so I could work with them on my iPhone. Just says playback failed on even the smallest of videos. Even tested clips. Can’t do anything. Don’t waste your time with this app.
Not too bad.
App would sometimes crash when I do the most basic things, but it’s an amazing alternative to youtube. Shuffle mode always plays the first song in the playlist and then shuffles only the rest for some odd reason, but that’s not much of an issue for me.
M3u playlist Oddities
The IOS version of VLC is the only viable alternative we have to Apple Music, but the fact that my .m3u playlists aren’t importing correctly is a huge bummer. VLC can see and even read them, but only one or two songs actually populate in the playlists (when there are more like 10 or more in the playlist) and I genuinely cannot figure out why. It would be so nice if this could be fixed, or if the way to fix it was more obvious. I want to be able to update my playlists on my Linux PC and then copy the updated playlists onto my iPhone to sync them. It just does not seem reliable or stable atm. I hate manually remaking my playlists. Please find a way to streamline this and make it more accessible
Great
Best media player I ever use
Who is this app for?
It lacks MOST basic playback features for audio. Seriously who is this app for? Are the developers developmentally disabled or do they just live in a cave? No ‘go to artist’, no ‘now playing. NO SEARCH FUNCTION. This is borderline obsolete and unusable
Almost perfect
Great app for downloading and viewing videos but they still don’t have Picture in Picture for iPhone.. my only complaint right now
bug
Playlists are not played in alphabetical order after sorting alphabetically. Can add 5 seconds forward and 5 seconds backward function?
Not sure what’s up with the crackhead reviewers
This app is fantastic. Works flawlessly on iPad and iPhones. Ty VLC volunteers, you guys made magic with this.
Deletes your videos
Randomly it will delete a video and the storage space will then turn into a system file which then cannot be removed without factory resetting your iPad.
Need a setting to prevent controls from disappearing
I use VLC for audio language lessons and I need to use the Rewind button frequently. This would work a lot better if the controls would stop disappearing every few seconds.
Unable to import folders
I try to import albums but since they're downloaded in folder format I have to "quick look" at each of them and then download each of them individually, I wish there was a better way to do it but otherwise the app is good
Great
VLC is great the only issue I’ve had is queue being cleared when the app is closed then opened again I appreciate that the devs have gotten it to work this well tho
Latest IOS update disabled file uploading.
The app is now useless for uploading mp3 files from a windows machine. I wasted an entire day trying to fix this. Deleted all uploaded files when reinstalled.
Pretty good
Pretty good for iPhone music player the fact that you can’t save from your phone to Apple Music sucks VLC is pretty good!
TWO THINGS I'D FIX
1. Add PiP 2. Fix the stutter that happens when an audio track is played
Love this player!
In 25 years in existence they have never sold out, even denying 8 figure offers! So it will always be free and be the media player that can play any format you throw at it!
Broken
Recently has stopped adding thumbnails for videos I open to the main tab. Thus I am unable to switch between videos, or even to exit the app and resume playing them.
Playlists could be improved
At random moments Playlists will just have their saved songs wiped, there’s also a personal issue of not being able to have playlist art or a button to play/shuffle music with you needing to select a song first. With this aside this app is extremely good for listening to tracks offline. Responding to devs: I can only seem to find the button on albums [which I didn’t see initially thank you for the heads up]
Support
No jellyfin support huh
VLC media player FAQ
- Is VLC media player free?
- Yes. The app is free, in all 175 countries it sells in, and it sells nothing inside it.
- Does VLC media player have a free trial?
- No. None of its offers (US) come with a free trial.
- What are the best alternatives to VLC media player?
- VN: Photo & Video Editor (4.7 from 4,807,183 reviews, premium from $1.00), Video Lite (4.8 from 1,336,996 reviews, premium from $0.99) and MX Video Player HD (4.5 from 157,645 reviews, premium from $0.99).
VLC media player download
Last updated 5 months ago.
VLC media player sells in 175 countries. It was released 13 years and 2 months ago, on 18 Jul 2013. It holds a 3.6 rating from 29,198 reviews.
Supports 47 languages: English, Afrikaans, Arabic, Basque, Belarusian, Bosnian, Breton, Khmer, Catalan, Corsican, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Faroese, Finnish, French, Galician, Georgian, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Malay, Marathi, Norwegian Bokmål, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, sc, Chinese, Sinhala, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Tamil, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian.
How much does VLC media player make?
Third-party estimates for the last 30 days, worldwide — not the store's own figures, which Apple publishes for nobody.