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Tools: Sonarr vs Radarr: What's the Difference?

2026-03-12 0 views admin
Tools: Sonarr vs Radarr: What's the Difference?

Quick Verdict

Overview

Feature Comparison

Installation Complexity

Community and Support

Use Cases

Choose Sonarr If...

Choose Radarr If...

Choose Both If...

Running Both Together

Final Verdict

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Radarr just Sonarr for movies?

Can I run Sonarr and Radarr on the same server?

Do I need Prowlarr if I have both Sonarr and Radarr?

What about Lidarr and Readarr?

Does Radarr handle TV shows or Sonarr handle movies?

Related Sonarr and Radarr are not competitors -- they are complementary tools that handle different media types. Sonarr automates TV show management (series, seasons, episodes). Radarr automates movie management (individual films). If you watch both TV shows and movies, you want both. They share the same codebase origin, the same UI paradigm, and the same integration ecosystem. Think of them as two halves of a complete media automation stack. Updated March 2026: Verified with latest Docker images and configurations. Sonarr is an automated TV series management tool. It monitors for new episodes of shows you follow, searches indexers for releases, sends them to your download client, and organizes the files in your library. It tracks seasons, episodes, air dates, and quality profiles to keep your TV collection up to date without manual intervention. Radarr does the same thing for movies. It started as a fork of Sonarr in 2017, adapted to handle films instead of episodic content. Instead of tracking seasons and episodes, Radarr manages individual movie files -- monitoring for releases, grabbing the best quality available, and upgrading files when a better release appears. Both projects use LinuxServer.io Docker images, integrate with the same indexers (via Prowlarr), and send downloads to the same clients (qBittorrent, Transmission, SABnzbd). The UI is nearly identical because they share the same codebase heritage. If you learn one, you already know the other. The setup for both is nearly identical. Both use LinuxServer.io images with the same environment variables (PUID, PGID, TZ), the same volume mount pattern (/config, media path, downloads path), and the same restart policy. The only differences are the image name, container name, media volume path, and port number. If you can set up one, you can set up the other in under two minutes. Both need the same post-install steps: connect a download client, add indexers (or connect Prowlarr), set quality profiles, and add media to monitor. Complexity: Equal. Both are trivial single-container deployments with no database dependencies. Sonarr can use slightly more memory with very large libraries because it tracks more granular data -- every season and episode across hundreds of series generates more database entries than an equivalent number of movies. In practice, both are lightweight and will run comfortably on any hardware that can run Docker, including a Raspberry Pi 4. Neither tool touches your media files during normal operation (outside of renaming/moving on import). The CPU cost comes from periodic RSS checks and indexer searches, which are brief and infrequent. Both projects share the same Servarr wiki and Discord server. The communities overlap heavily -- most users run both tools. Bug reports and feature requests are handled on separate GitHub repos, but the development teams coordinate closely. If a major UI improvement lands in one, it typically makes its way to the other. Most users run Sonarr and Radarr side by side as part of the *arr stack. Here is a combined Docker Compose that includes both, plus Prowlarr for centralized indexer management and qBittorrent as the download client: Key points for running both together: Sonarr and Radarr are not an either/or decision. They solve different problems (TV shows vs movies) using the same approach (automated monitoring, searching, downloading, and organizing). Radarr exists because Sonarr's developers built such a good system for TV automation that someone forked it to do the same for movies. If you watch TV shows, install Sonarr. If you watch movies, install Radarr. If you watch both -- and most people do -- install both. They run side by side with minimal resource overhead, share the same download client and indexer infrastructure via Prowlarr, and together give you a fully automated media pipeline. The real power of both tools is the *arr ecosystem they belong to. Add Prowlarr for indexer management, Bazarr for subtitles, qBittorrent for downloads, and Jellyfin for playback. That stack replaces every streaming subscription with a self-hosted media system you fully control. Essentially, yes. Radarr started as a fork of Sonarr in 2017, adapted for movies instead of TV series. The UI, concepts (quality profiles, indexers, download clients), and workflow are nearly identical. The differences are in how they track media -- Sonarr handles series/season/episode hierarchies while Radarr handles individual movie files. Yes, and this is the standard setup. They use different ports (8989 and 7878), different config volumes, and different media directories. They share a download client and indexers without conflict. Combined, they use around 200-300 MB of RAM idle. You do not strictly need it, but you strongly should use it. Without Prowlarr, you have to configure every indexer separately in both Sonarr and Radarr. With Prowlarr, you configure indexers once and it syncs them to all connected *arr apps. This also makes adding or removing indexers much simpler. The *arr family extends beyond TV and movies. Lidarr handles music (same concept, forked from Sonarr). Readarr handles books and audiobooks. All of them share the same UI paradigm and integrate with Prowlarr and the same download clients. No. Each tool is purpose-built for one media type. Sonarr cannot manage movies and Radarr cannot manage TV shows. This is by design -- the monitoring, searching, and organization logic is fundamentally different for episodic content versus standalone films. Templates let you quickly answer FAQs or store snippets for re-use. 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services: sonarr: image: lscr.io/linuxserver/sonarr:4.0.16 container_name: sonarr environment: - PUID=1000 - PGID=1000 - TZ=America/New_York volumes: - sonarr_config:/config - /path/to/tv:/tv - /path/to/downloads:/downloads ports: - "8989:8989" restart: unless-stopped services: sonarr: image: lscr.io/linuxserver/sonarr:4.0.16 container_name: sonarr environment: - PUID=1000 - PGID=1000 - TZ=America/New_York volumes: - sonarr_config:/config - /path/to/tv:/tv - /path/to/downloads:/downloads ports: - "8989:8989" restart: unless-stopped services: sonarr: image: lscr.io/linuxserver/sonarr:4.0.16 container_name: sonarr environment: - PUID=1000 - PGID=1000 - TZ=America/New_York volumes: - sonarr_config:/config - /path/to/tv:/tv - /path/to/downloads:/downloads ports: - "8989:8989" restart: unless-stopped services: radarr: image: lscr.io/linuxserver/radarr:6.0.4 container_name: radarr environment: - PUID=1000 - PGID=1000 - TZ=America/New_York volumes: - radarr_config:/config - /path/to/movies:/movies - /path/to/downloads:/downloads ports: - "7878:7878" restart: unless-stopped services: radarr: image: lscr.io/linuxserver/radarr:6.0.4 container_name: radarr environment: - PUID=1000 - PGID=1000 - TZ=America/New_York volumes: - radarr_config:/config - /path/to/movies:/movies - /path/to/downloads:/downloads ports: - "7878:7878" restart: unless-stopped services: radarr: image: lscr.io/linuxserver/radarr:6.0.4 container_name: radarr environment: - PUID=1000 - PGID=1000 - TZ=America/New_York volumes: - radarr_config:/config - /path/to/movies:/movies - /path/to/downloads:/downloads ports: - "7878:7878" restart: unless-stopped services: sonarr: image: lscr.io/linuxserver/sonarr:4.0.16 container_name: sonarr environment: - PUID=1000 - PGID=1000 - TZ=America/New_York volumes: - sonarr_config:/config - /data/media/tv:/tv - /data/downloads:/downloads ports: - "8989:8989" restart: unless-stopped healthcheck: test: ["CMD", "wget", "--quiet", "--tries=1", "--spider", "http://localhost:8989/ping"] interval: 30s timeout: 10s retries: 3 start_period: 40s radarr: image: lscr.io/linuxserver/radarr:6.0.4 container_name: radarr environment: - PUID=1000 - PGID=1000 - TZ=America/New_York volumes: - radarr_config:/config - /data/media/movies:/movies - /data/downloads:/downloads ports: - "7878:7878" restart: unless-stopped healthcheck: test: ["CMD", "wget", "--quiet", "--tries=1", "--spider", "http://localhost:7878/ping"] interval: 30s timeout: 10s retries: 3 start_period: 40s prowlarr: image: lscr.io/linuxserver/prowlarr:2.3.0 container_name: prowlarr environment: - PUID=1000 - PGID=1000 - TZ=America/New_York volumes: - prowlarr_config:/config ports: - "9696:9696" restart: unless-stopped qbittorrent: image: lscr.io/linuxserver/qbittorrent:5.1.4 container_name: qbittorrent environment: - PUID=1000 - PGID=1000 - TZ=America/New_York - WEBUI_PORT=8080 volumes: - qbittorrent_config:/config - /data/downloads:/downloads ports: - "8080:8080" # Web UI - "6881:6881" # BitTorrent traffic - "6881:6881/udp" restart: unless-stopped volumes: sonarr_config: radarr_config: prowlarr_config: qbittorrent_config: services: sonarr: image: lscr.io/linuxserver/sonarr:4.0.16 container_name: sonarr environment: - PUID=1000 - PGID=1000 - TZ=America/New_York volumes: - sonarr_config:/config - /data/media/tv:/tv - /data/downloads:/downloads ports: - "8989:8989" restart: unless-stopped healthcheck: test: ["CMD", "wget", "--quiet", "--tries=1", "--spider", "http://localhost:8989/ping"] interval: 30s timeout: 10s retries: 3 start_period: 40s radarr: image: lscr.io/linuxserver/radarr:6.0.4 container_name: radarr environment: - PUID=1000 - PGID=1000 - TZ=America/New_York volumes: - radarr_config:/config - /data/media/movies:/movies - /data/downloads:/downloads ports: - "7878:7878" restart: unless-stopped healthcheck: test: ["CMD", "wget", "--quiet", "--tries=1", "--spider", "http://localhost:7878/ping"] interval: 30s timeout: 10s retries: 3 start_period: 40s prowlarr: image: lscr.io/linuxserver/prowlarr:2.3.0 container_name: prowlarr environment: - PUID=1000 - PGID=1000 - TZ=America/New_York volumes: - prowlarr_config:/config ports: - "9696:9696" restart: unless-stopped qbittorrent: image: lscr.io/linuxserver/qbittorrent:5.1.4 container_name: qbittorrent environment: - PUID=1000 - PGID=1000 - TZ=America/New_York - WEBUI_PORT=8080 volumes: - qbittorrent_config:/config - /data/downloads:/downloads ports: - "8080:8080" # Web UI - "6881:6881" # BitTorrent traffic - "6881:6881/udp" restart: unless-stopped volumes: sonarr_config: radarr_config: prowlarr_config: qbittorrent_config: services: sonarr: image: lscr.io/linuxserver/sonarr:4.0.16 container_name: sonarr environment: - PUID=1000 - PGID=1000 - TZ=America/New_York volumes: - sonarr_config:/config - /data/media/tv:/tv - /data/downloads:/downloads ports: - "8989:8989" restart: unless-stopped healthcheck: test: ["CMD", "wget", "--quiet", "--tries=1", "--spider", "http://localhost:8989/ping"] interval: 30s timeout: 10s retries: 3 start_period: 40s radarr: image: lscr.io/linuxserver/radarr:6.0.4 container_name: radarr environment: - PUID=1000 - PGID=1000 - TZ=America/New_York volumes: - radarr_config:/config - /data/media/movies:/movies - /data/downloads:/downloads ports: - "7878:7878" restart: unless-stopped healthcheck: test: ["CMD", "wget", "--quiet", "--tries=1", "--spider", "http://localhost:7878/ping"] interval: 30s timeout: 10s retries: 3 start_period: 40s prowlarr: image: lscr.io/linuxserver/prowlarr:2.3.0 container_name: prowlarr environment: - PUID=1000 - PGID=1000 - TZ=America/New_York volumes: - prowlarr_config:/config ports: - "9696:9696" restart: unless-stopped qbittorrent: image: lscr.io/linuxserver/qbittorrent:5.1.4 container_name: qbittorrent environment: - PUID=1000 - PGID=1000 - TZ=America/New_York - WEBUI_PORT=8080 volumes: - qbittorrent_config:/config - /data/downloads:/downloads ports: - "8080:8080" # Web UI - "6881:6881" # BitTorrent traffic - "6881:6881/udp" restart: unless-stopped volumes: sonarr_config: radarr_config: prowlarr_config: qbittorrent_config: - You primarily watch TV shows and want new episodes grabbed automatically as they air - You want season pack support for catching up on older series - You need granular series monitoring (all seasons, latest only, first season only) - You follow ongoing series and want hands-off episode tracking - You want calendar-based air date monitoring - You primarily collect movies and want automated quality upgrades - You want to maintain a movie wishlist that auto-downloads when releases become available - You prefer browsing and adding movies from TMDb/IMDb/Trakt lists - You want to track theatrical, digital, and physical release dates for upcoming films - You need simple one-file-per-title library management - You watch both TV shows and movies (this is most people) - You want a complete automated media pipeline - You are building a full *arr stack with Prowlarr, Bazarr, and a download client - Shared downloads directory. Both Sonarr and Radarr point to the same /data/downloads path so they can see completed downloads from the shared download client. - Separate media directories. TV shows go to /data/media/tv, movies go to /data/media/movies. Keep them separate for clean library organization. - Prowlarr as the indexer hub. Configure your indexers once in Prowlarr, and it syncs them to both Sonarr and Radarr automatically. No duplicate indexer configuration. - Single download client. Both tools send downloads to the same qBittorrent instance. They tag downloads with their app name so there are no conflicts. - Add Bazarr for subtitles. Bazarr integrates with both Sonarr and Radarr to automatically download subtitles for your media. - Feed into Jellyfin or Plex. Point your media server at /data/media/ and it picks up both TV shows and movies. Both Sonarr and Radarr can send notifications to your media server when new content is imported. - How to Self-Host Sonarr - How to Self-Host Radarr - How to Self-Host Prowlarr - How to Self-Host qBittorrent - How to Self-Host Bazarr - How to Self-Host Jellyfin - Jellyfin vs Plex: Which Media Server? - Docker Compose Basics

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