Readarr Setup Guide: Automate Ebook Downloads on Your Seedbox

What Is Readarr?

Readarr is an ebook and audiobook management tool — the book equivalent of Sonarr (TV) and Radarr (movies). It monitors your reading list, searches indexers for new releases, and downloads them automatically to your seedbox.

Project status: the upstream Readarr project announced its retirement in 2025, largely due to problems with its metadata service. Existing installs keep working and the app remains available on your dashboard, but expect limited updates. We note honest workarounds below — for many book workflows, Calibre plus manual grabs covers the gap.

Installing Readarr

1. Dashboard → Apps → Find Readarr → Install
2. Open Readarr (default port: 8787)

Configuration

Add Download Client

1. Settings → Download Clients → Add → Select ruTorrent (rTorrent) or Deluge
2. Host: localhost, Port: 8080 (rTorrent) or 8112 (Deluge)
3. Category: readarr

Add Indexers

1. Settings → Indexers → Add your book tracker or use Prowlarr to sync indexers

Set Root Folder

1. Settings → Media Management → Add root folder: ~/media/Books/

Adding Books

1. Library → Add New → Search for an author
2. Select the author → Choose which books to monitor
3. Readarr searches your indexers and downloads matching releases

Quality Profiles for Books

Book “quality” works differently from video. Readarr’s profiles rank formats — typically you want EPUB preferred for ebooks (best device compatibility, easy conversion), with MOBI/AZW3 as fallbacks. If you collect audiobooks, keep them in a separate quality profile (M4B/MP3) and ideally a separate root folder — mixing text and audio in one profile is the most common cause of Readarr grabbing the wrong edition.

Known Quirks (and Honest Workarounds)

• Metadata matching is the weak spot — Readarr’s author/edition database can miss or mismatch obscure titles, and since the project’s retirement this won’t improve. If a book won’t match, use a manual interactive search, or grab it directly in ruTorrent and let Calibre organize it.
• Author-based model — Readarr tracks authors, then books. Adding one book by a prolific author imports that author’s whole bibliography as unmonitored entries; that’s normal, not a bug.
• Availability varies — books have far fewer public sources than TV/movies. A good private book tracker or Usenet indexer makes more difference than any setting.

Integration with Calibre

For the best experience, use Readarr alongside Calibre. Readarr downloads the books; Calibre organizes, converts formats, and serves them via web browser. Readarr can hand finished downloads to a Calibre server automatically (Settings → Media Management → use the Calibre integration when adding your root folder). Prefer reading in the browser or on e-ink? Calibre-web serves your library with a clean OPDS feed.

Audiobooks?

If audiobooks are your main use case, consider skipping Readarr and running Audiobookshelf instead — it’s a dedicated audiobook and podcast server with proper mobile apps, and it’s under active development. Many users run Calibre for ebooks + Audiobookshelf for audio and drop Readarr entirely.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Readarr still safe to use after its retirement?

Yes — the app runs fine and your existing automation keeps working. “Retired” means no new features and eventually stale metadata, not that the software stops. We keep it installable because it still works; we just won’t pretend it has a future roadmap.

What should I use instead of Readarr?

For ebooks: Calibre (+ Calibre-web) with manual or tracker-RSS grabs. For audiobooks: Audiobookshelf. There’s no perfect drop-in successor; that’s the honest state of book automation right now.

Why won’t Readarr find a book my indexer clearly has?

Usually a metadata mismatch — Readarr searches by its own idea of the book’s title/edition. Try the interactive search (magnifying glass → manual), which shows raw results and lets you force-grab the right one.

Do book downloads affect my ratio?

Torrent-based grabs seed like anything else (good for ratio — books are small and long-lived). Usenet grabs via SABnzbd/NZBGet have no ratio component. See seeding rules explained.

Related Pages

• Audiobookshelf seedbox — the better home for audiobooks
• Calibre setup · Calibre-web library
• Prowlarr setup · SABnzbd setup
• All one-click apps · Plans & pricing