Scryer vs. Sonarr and Radarr

Sonarr and Radarr are mature, and if you run one of each for one person they work well. Scryer is built for the setup most people actually end up with: movies, series, and anime, several people, more than one quality tier, subtitles, and requests. It does that as one process instead of five or six.

Moving an existing setup? Follow the migration guide before retiring anything.

Where They Differ

	Sonarr / Radarr	Scryer
Scope	One app per media type	Movies, series, and anime in one catalog
Quality tiers	One instance per tier (1080p Radarr, 4K Radarr)	One library per tier, same instance
Users	Single admin, or a portal in front	Per-user permissions and library boundaries
Requests	Seerr or similar	Native, with per-library approval rules
Subtitles	Bazarr	Built in
Indexers	Prowlarr syncs to each app	One indexer list, routed per facet
Release preference	Custom formats, often via TRaSH sync	Scoring personas, overrides, and Rego rules
Parsing	Regex, context-free	Context-aware beam parser
Archived torrents	Left for manual cleanup	Extracted and imported
Integrations	Compiled in	Plugins
Import lists	Trakt, Plex watchlist, and others	Not yet

Feature Coverage

Feature	Scryer	Sonarr / Radarr
Monitor titles, RSS grabs, interactive search	✅	✅
Completed download handling and manual import	✅	✅
Rename and organize files	✅	✅
Quality profiles, upgrades, delay profiles	✅	✅
Advanced release decision rules	✅	✅
Post-processing scripts and webhooks	✅	✅
Activity, history, wanted, cutoff unmet	✅	✅
Import lists and watchlist sync	❌	✅
Media requests with approval queue	✅	❌
Multiple libraries per media type	✅	❌
Per-user permissions	✅	❌
Anime as its own media type	✅	❌
Subtitle providers and sync	✅	❌
Plugin ecosystem	✅	❌

Integration Coverage

Scryer ships plugins for nearly every download client, indexer, and notification target Sonarr and Radarr support. Widely used ones are stable. The long tail is marked beta: functional, not yet exercised by many installs.

Category	Stable	Beta	Missing
Download clients	SABnzbd, NZBGet, qBittorrent	Transmission, Deluge, rTorrent, uTorrent, Aria2, Flood, Download Station, NZBVortex, Hadouken, Tribler, RQbit, Pneumatic, Freebox, blackholes	Vuze
Indexers	Newznab, Torznab, Prowlarr, Torrent RSS, NZBGeek, DogNZB, AniNZB	BroadcastheNet, HDBits, IPTorrents, FileList, TorrentLeech, Nyaa, Fanzub
Notifications	Email, Webhook, Jellyfin	Plex, Emby, Discord, Telegram, Slack, Pushover, ntfy, Gotify, Apprise, Notifiarr, Kodi, Trakt, custom script, and the rest of the *arr list
Subtitles	OpenSubtitles, Subdl, Jimaku	Enhanced sync	Bazarr’s longer provider list

Anything not listed can be added as a plugin without a core release.

Multiple Libraries, Multiple People

Sonarr and Radarr treat each media type as one flat bucket. Scryer puts libraries under each facet, each with its own roots, defaults, and viewers.

That models real households directly: Kids, Anime Movies, Rated R+, Mainline TV. Each points at different folders, and you decide who can see, manage, or request into each. An admin sees them all in one Movies catalog.

Anime Is A Media Type, Not A Series Setting

Scryer’s anime facet knows about filler, recaps, specials, and canon movies that sit between seasons. If your library has anime beyond a few mainstream titles, this is where Scryer stops feeling like a compatible replacement and starts feeling purpose-built.

Parsing And Search Speed

Scryer’s parser uses library context and a beam search rather than a fixed regex chain, so it extracts quality, source, group, edition, language, and anime numbering more reliably. The same design makes interactive search on long-running series noticeably faster, because large result sets are parsed and scored quickly.

Imports Finish The Job

Sonarr and Radarr treat a large .rar in a completed download as leftover cleanup. Scryer extracts supported archives during import and places the media, removing a whole class of “why didn’t this import?” tickets on torrent-heavy setups.

Preferences Without Custom Formats

Most custom format stacks encode a handful of intents: prefer good groups, prefer a source, care or not about size, handle HDR. Scryer collapses those into four personas you pick per library. When you need more, Rego rules go further than custom formats can. See Custom Rules Vs Custom Formats.

Comparison overview maps every tool in a split stack to its place in Scryer.
Migrate From Sonarr/Radarr imports instances, libraries, clients, and indexers.
Core Model defines facets, libraries, and catalogs.