Embed only

Put the film on your client’s site.
Keep the watch page invisible.

Embed only is one of five visibility modes. It lets the iframe play while both watch routes return 404 to everyone but you, so the video lives on the client's page and nowhere else. Here is how to set it, how the player is styled, and the one thing it does not do.

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Updated September 2026

The mode

The watch page returns 404,
and the embed keeps playing.

Every film here carries exactly one of five visibility modes: Private, Password, Unlisted, Public, Embed only. Four of them decide who may open the film’s own page. The fifth one decides something different, and it is the one you want when the film belongs on a client’s website rather than on a page of ours.

With Embed only selected, both watch routes for that film, the short link and the clean handle-and-slug link, return a not-found page to everyone except you. The embed route is the exception: it still serves the film. So the iframe on your client’s homepage plays normally, and anyone who strips the URL back to our domain finds nothing there. The film has no page of its own to be shared, indexed or stumbled onto.
That is a narrow, useful behaviour, and it maps to a specific job: the sizzle reel above the fold on an agency site, the product film on a landing page, the recruitment piece on an intranet. In each case the client wants the video on their page and nowhere else, with their brand around it and none of ours inside it.

5

visibility modes

Private, Password, Unlisted, Public, Embed only

404

on both watch routes

for everyone except the owner

11

player switches

plus three colour pickers

0

platform logos

on any plan, the free one included

How to do it

From upload to a live embed,
four steps, no code review.

1

Upload the export

Drop the finished file in. Nothing is re-encoded, so the file the visitor streams is the file you exported. The free Starter plan holds 5 GB and one film at a time; paid plans hold more of both.

2

Set visibility to Embed only

In the film's settings, pick Embed only from the five modes. Both watch routes go dark immediately for everyone but you. Nothing about the embed URL changes.

3

Style the player

Turn off what the client's page does not need: title, views, share button, AirPlay. Set Primary, Accent and Background to their brand. Upload the client's own logo if the piece should carry one.

4

Paste the iframe

Copy the embed code into the page. Per-embed URL overrides let one film behave differently in two places on the same site, so a hero band can autoplay muted and looping while the same film plays normally in a case study below.

The gotcha worth reading twice

A password-protected film never renders in an embed. Password and Embed only are alternatives, not a stack. If you set a password expecting the iframe to ask for it, the iframe will not play at all. Choose Password when the viewer should type a code on our page, and Embed only when the film has to live inside a page you do not control. There is no configuration that gives you both on one film.

What the visitor sees

No platform logo,
eleven switches and three colours.

The player carries no platform branding and no watermark, on any plan, free included. The only logo that can appear inside the frame is the creator’s own PNG, and it ships off by default with no tier gate. Our wordmark appears in exactly one place, on the fallback card shown when a film is unavailable.
The eleven toggles are Custom logo, Title, Views, Share button, Play button, Volume, AirPlay, Fullscreen, Autoplay, Muted and Loop. Three colour pickers cover Primary, Accent and Background. Six settings can also be overridden in the embed URL itself, accent, autoplay, muted, loop, title and background, and background accepts a transparent value so the player can sit directly on the client’s own colour without a black box behind it.

Chrome you can remove

Title, views, the share button, AirPlay and fullscreen each have their own switch, so a hero video can render as pure picture with no interface at all.

Colour that matches the site

Primary, Accent and Background are pickers in the dashboard and accent and background are also URL overrides, which is how one film matches two different sections.

The exact export

There is no transcode step anywhere. What plays in the iframe is your file. The trade is that a thin connection buffers rather than dropping to a lower rendition, because there is no lower rendition.

Against the two defaults

The same job on
Vimeo and YouTube.

Both alternatives can embed a video on a client site. What differs is what the mode costs, what the player is allowed to look like, and what happens to the file on the way in.

uncompressed.io
Vimeo
YouTube
Embed-onlyprivacy mode
Yeson every plan,free included
“Available withpaid plans”
Unlisted or Privateare the options
Cheapest planwith the mode
Free Starter5 GB, one filmat a time
Starter, $12 a monthbilled annually,$20 month-to-month
Not applicable
Platform logoin the player
None on any planYour own logo,off by default
“If you are on a Free orBasic plan, you cannotremove watermarks”
modestbranding “isdeprecated and hasno effect”
Embed optionson the free tier
11 switches,3 colour pickers,6 URL overrides
Player size, embedprivacy, autoplay,mute, loop
controls=0 hidescontrols; overlaysin front are forbidden
Restrict whichsites may embed
Not offered
Paid plans choosethe specific sites,or disable embedding
Not documented
What happensto the file
No re-encode.The exact bytesyou uploaded
“Re-encoded intoseveral formats”
“Always re-encodesvideos”
File and free-planceilings
50 GB per file,5 GB free plan
300 GB per file,1 GB for the freeaccount’s lifetime
256 GB or 12 hours,whichever is less

Vimeo prices in USD from the pricing page; the page localises and displays CAD in Canada. Vimeo and YouTube figures fetched 5 September 2026, sources listed below.

The YouTube row deserves a sentence of its own, because it is the option most client sites reach for first. There is no unbranded YouTube embed. The modestbranding parameter “is deprecated and has no effect”, and the API terms state that you “must not display overlays, frames, or other visual elements in front of any part of a YouTube embedded player”, which closes the usual workaround of covering the chrome with your own div. Related videos cannot be turned off either: setting rel to 0 only restricts them to the same channel. The privacy options documented for a YouTube video are Public, Unlisted and Private, with no embed-only among them. Unlisted is the nearest thing, and an unlisted video “can be seen and shared by anyone with the link”, while Private requires each viewer to be signed in to the account the video was shared with.

Read this before you promise a client anything

Embed only is not access control.
It hides a page.

This is the part most pages about embed privacy leave out, so it goes near the top of ours. Embed only removes the film’s own watch page. It does nothing about the person already looking at the page where the film is embedded.

Anyone who can open your client’s page can read the iframe source, and from there the media URL, with tools that ship inside every browser. That is not a flaw in the mode, it is what the mode is: a visibility setting, not a wall. Use it to keep a film off search results and off a public profile, to keep a launch video from being found a week early on a URL somebody guessed, and to keep the client’s page the only place the film has a life. Do not use it as the protection layer for something that would cause real damage if it escaped.
When the film genuinely must not leak, the answer is the Vault tier, and it works by refusing to be a web page at all. Vault masters play only in the native app, screen capture is blocked, the frame carries a session watermark, an invisible per-person forensic mark is applied and shipped today, files are AES-256 encrypted at rest and links are short-lived. It is a different product decision from an embed, and that is the point: an embed exists to be viewed by strangers on a public web page, so it can never be the same thing as a screener under NDA.

Where Vimeo is the better tool

If your requirement is that the film may only play on domains you name, Vimeo does that and we do not. Its paid plans let you “Choose which specific sites the video can appear on” and “Disable embedding altogether in the privacy settings”. That is a real capability on their side of the table, it is the correct answer to “stop competitors from lifting our iframe onto their site”, and no amount of our other advantages substitutes for it. Two things to price in alongside it: the mode sits behind a paid plan, and if the subscription lapses to Free, Vimeo’s help centre states that Password, Unlisted and Embed-only videos “will be switched to Private” and that “embeds will stop working”. On a client’s live homepage, that is a blank rectangle that appears without anyone touching the page.

Picking the mode

Every film ends up as
one of these five.

Private

Nobody but you. The right default while a cut is still moving, and the state a film should sit in between jobs.

Password

A code you give the client, checked on our page before the film renders. Not compatible with embedding, so this is the choice when the viewer comes to us. See the password guide for how the gate is enforced.

Unlisted

A link that works for anyone holding it, with no page of ours pointing at it. Good for a quick approval, weak as a secret, since a forwarded link is a working link.

Public

Listed on your profile and open to anyone. The right mode for a reel you want found.

Embed only

The subject of this page. The watch routes go dark, the iframe keeps playing. Choose it when the client's own page is the only place the film should exist.

Two of those modes deserve their own pages, and they exist: how the password gate is enforced and sharing without asking a client to make an account. When the job ends and the client needs the master file rather than a stream, the delivery guide covers the download side.

Questions

Frequently asked

What exactly does embed only do?

It is one of five visibility modes on a film: Private, Password, Unlisted, Public and Embed only. With Embed only selected, both watch routes for that film return 404 to everyone except you, the owner, while the embed route keeps serving the film. The result is that the video plays inside the iframe on your client's page, and someone who finds or guesses the watch URL sees a not-found page instead of the film.

Can I put a password on an embedded video?

No, and this is the one gotcha worth knowing before you plan a page. A password-protected film never renders in an embed. Password and Embed only are alternatives, not a stack: pick Password when the viewer should type a code on our page, pick Embed only when the film has to appear inside your client's own page. If you want both a code and a page you control, the honest answer is that you cannot have them on the same film.

Does the player show your logo?

There is no platform logo and no watermark on any plan, the free one included. The only logo that can appear is your own PNG, and it is off by default with no tier gate. The wordmark shows up in one place only, on the fallback card that says the video is unavailable.

Is embed only a form of access control?

No. It hides the watch page. It does not stop someone who can already open your client's page from reading the iframe source or the media URL out of it. Treat embed only as a way to keep the film off search and off a public profile, not as a wall. If the film genuinely must not leak, the Vault tier is the answer: native-app playback only, screen capture blocked, a session watermark, a forensic per-person mark, AES-256 at rest and short-lived links.

How much of the player can I change?

Eleven switches: Custom logo, Title, Views, Share button, Play button, Volume, AirPlay, Fullscreen, Autoplay, Muted and Loop. Plus three colour pickers for Primary, Accent and Background. Six of those can also be overridden per embed in the URL, so the same film can autoplay muted and looping in a hero band and behave normally further down the page. Background accepts a transparent value for embeds that sit on your client's own colour.

Is the embedded file re-encoded?

No. The player streams the exact bytes you uploaded, so what your client's visitors see inside the iframe is your export, not a platform rendition of it. There is also no lower rendition to fall back to, which is the honest trade: a thin connection buffers instead of quietly switching to a mushy version.

Can I do this on the free plan?

Yes. Embed only, per-film passwords, unlisted links, the custom slug, original-file downloads and the unbranded player are all available on the free Starter plan. The Starter limits are 5 GB of storage and one film at a time, so a client site that needs three videos embedded at once needs a paid plan for the storage and the film count, not for the embed feature itself.

Embed it unbranded, on any plan

Embed only, the eleven player switches and the unbranded player are available on every plan, including the free Starter plan. No platform logo, no re-encode, no bandwidth meter.

See plans and pricing

Sources

  1. 1.Vimeo Help Center, video privacy settings and the plans each one requires (fetched 5 September 2026)
  2. 2.Vimeo Help Center, customizing the embedded player by plan (fetched 5 September 2026)
  3. 3.Vimeo Help Center, removing watermarks from your videos (fetched 5 September 2026)
  4. 4.Vimeo Help Center, what happens when a paid plan lapses to Free (fetched 5 September 2026)
  5. 5.Vimeo Help Center, storage limits on the free plan (fetched 5 September 2026)
  6. 6.Vimeo Help Center, transcoding and the formats a video is re-encoded into (fetched 5 September 2026)
  7. 7.Vimeo pricing page, self-serve plan prices in USD (fetched 5 September 2026)
  8. 8.YouTube IFrame Player API, player parameters including modestbranding and rel (fetched 5 September 2026)
  9. 9.YouTube API Services, required minimum functionality for embedded players (fetched 5 September 2026)
  10. 10.YouTube Help, unlisted videos and playlists (fetched 5 September 2026)
  11. 11.YouTube Help, private videos and playlists (fetched 5 September 2026)
  12. 12.YouTube Help, upload file size and length limits (fetched 5 September 2026)
  13. 13.YouTube Help, re-encoding on upload (fetched 5 September 2026)
  14. 14.uncompressed.io pricing, plans and storage (fetched 5 September 2026)

Keep reading

Password-protect a video linkShare a video with no client account neededDeliver final video files to clientsSecurity and Vault
Embed a Video on a Client Website Without Making It Public