Readarr Is Retired: Setup + What to Use for Books Now
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“the project’s metadata has become unusable” and that they no longer had time to rebuild it. Readarr
still installs and runs on your seedbox — and if you already have a working library it will keep
working — but book lookups increasingly fail, and there will be no further fixes.
If you are setting up a book stack today, skip to what to use
instead.
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
- Dashboard → Apps → Find Readarr → Install
- Open Readarr (default port: 8787)
Configuration
Add Download Client
- Settings → Download Clients → Add → Select rTorrent (ruTorrent)
- Host: localhost, Port: 443, with the httprpc URL path from your app card
- Category: readarr
Add Indexers
- Settings → Indexers → Add your book tracker or use Prowlarr to sync indexers
Set Root Folder
- Settings → Media Management → Add root folder: ~/media/Books/
Adding Books
- Library → Add New → Search for an author
- Select the author → Choose which books to monitor
- 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.
Is there an *arr for books? What to use instead
This is the most common question we get from people arriving here after searching for “Radarr for
books” or “an *arr for ebooks”. The honest answer in 2026: there is no fully maintained *arr for
books. Readarr was it, and it is retired. What works now depends on what you actually want.
- You want an automated, *arr-style searcher — LazyLibrarian is
the closest match still in development. It searches your indexers for authors and titles and hands
results to your download client, the same shape as Readarr, with its own metadata sources. It is
available in our one-click app installer. - You want a proper ebook library you can read from anywhere —
Calibre-Web-Automated. It watches a folder, imports and converts what lands there,
and serves the result as a browsable library with OPDS support for e-readers. This is the option most
people actually wanted when they went looking for Readarr. See
Calibre-Web on a seedbox and
Calibre setup. - You want audiobooks — Audiobookshelf, which handles
audiobooks and podcasts far better than Readarr ever did, with progress sync across devices. See
Audiobookshelf setup. Pair it with
AudiobookRequest if you want a request front-end. - You just want to find books — Openbooks for IRC sources, or
point Prowlarr at a book
tracker and search manually. For most libraries this plus Calibre-Web-Automated beats any automation.
All of the above are in the one-click app installer in your client area — no manual container
work required.
Should I still install Readarr?
Install it only if you already know its quirks and have a library built around it. For a new setup,
LazyLibrarian plus Calibre-Web-Automated gives you the same outcome without depending on a metadata
service nobody is maintaining. Nothing about Readarr is going to improve from here.
Manage your seedbox apps from your phone: your seedbox apps in Dashboarr, the free Android and iOS app that connects straight to your seedbox apps.
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
Related articles
Put this into practice
EvoSeedbox ships with one-click app installs and up to 10 Gbps per box.
