Is Prowlarr Down? Real-Time Status & Outage Checker

Prowlarr is an open-source indexer manager and proxy for the *arr suite with 4,000+ GitHub stars. It centralizes indexer management for Sonarr, Radarr, Lidarr, and Readarr — supporting 500+ Usenet and torrent indexers and syncing configuration automatically to all connected *arr apps via API. Prowlarr replaces the older Jackett proxy and is the hub of any automated media server stack. When Prowlarr goes down, all connected *arr apps lose their indexer access simultaneously: Sonarr can't find new TV episodes, Radarr can't find new movies, and the entire automated media pipeline stalls.

Prowlarr runs on port 9696 and exposes a v1 REST API. Because a single Prowlarr failure cascades to every downstream *arr app, it is the highest-priority component to monitor in a home media server stack.

Quick Status Check

#!/bin/bash
# Prowlarr health check
# Usage: PROWLARR_API_KEY=your_key ./prowlarr-check.sh

PROWLARR_HOST="${PROWLARR_HOST:-http://localhost:9696}"
PROWLARR_API_KEY="${PROWLARR_API_KEY:-your_api_key_here}"
PASS=0
FAIL=0

echo "=== Prowlarr Health Check ==="
echo "Host: $PROWLARR_HOST"
echo ""

# 1. Check process is running
if pgrep -x "Prowlarr" > /dev/null 2>&1 || pgrep -f "Prowlarr.exe" > /dev/null 2>&1; then
  echo "[OK]   Prowlarr process is running"
  PASS=$((PASS+1))
else
  echo "[FAIL] Prowlarr process not found"
  FAIL=$((FAIL+1))
fi

# 2. Check port 9696 is open
if nc -z localhost 9696 2>/dev/null; then
  echo "[OK]   Port 9696 is open"
  PASS=$((PASS+1))
else
  echo "[FAIL] Port 9696 is not reachable"
  FAIL=$((FAIL+1))
fi

# 3. Check system status API
STATUS=$(curl -sf --max-time 10 \
  -H "X-Api-Key: $PROWLARR_API_KEY" \
  "$PROWLARR_HOST/api/v1/system/status")
if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
  VERSION=$(echo "$STATUS" | grep -o '"version":"[^"]*"' | cut -d'"' -f4)
  echo "[OK]   API responding — Prowlarr v$VERSION"
  PASS=$((PASS+1))
else
  echo "[FAIL] /api/v1/system/status did not respond"
  FAIL=$((FAIL+1))
fi

# 4. Check health endpoint for WARNING/ERROR items
HEALTH=$(curl -sf --max-time 10 \
  -H "X-Api-Key: $PROWLARR_API_KEY" \
  "$PROWLARR_HOST/api/v1/health")
if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
  ISSUE_COUNT=$(echo "$HEALTH" | grep -o '"type":"' | wc -l | tr -d ' ')
  if [ "$ISSUE_COUNT" -eq 0 ]; then
    echo "[OK]   Health check clean — no issues reported"
  else
    echo "[WARN] Health check returned $ISSUE_COUNT issue(s):"
    echo "$HEALTH" | grep -o '"message":"[^"]*"' | cut -d'"' -f4 | while read -r msg; do
      echo "       - $msg"
    done
  fi
  PASS=$((PASS+1))
else
  echo "[FAIL] /api/v1/health did not respond"
  FAIL=$((FAIL+1))
fi

# 5. Check indexer count
INDEXERS=$(curl -sf --max-time 10 \
  -H "X-Api-Key: $PROWLARR_API_KEY" \
  "$PROWLARR_HOST/api/v1/indexer")
if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
  COUNT=$(echo "$INDEXERS" | grep -o '"id":' | wc -l | tr -d ' ')
  echo "[OK]   $COUNT indexer(s) configured"
  PASS=$((PASS+1))
else
  echo "[FAIL] /api/v1/indexer did not respond"
  FAIL=$((FAIL+1))
fi

echo ""
echo "=== Result: $PASS passed, $FAIL failed ==="
[ "$FAIL" -eq 0 ] && exit 0 || exit 1

Python Health Check

#!/usr/bin/env python3
"""
Prowlarr health check
Checks system status, health issues, indexer count, connected *arr apps, and live search.
"""

import os
import sys
import json
import urllib.request
import urllib.error

PROWLARR_HOST = os.environ.get("PROWLARR_HOST", "http://localhost:9696")
PROWLARR_API_KEY = os.environ.get("PROWLARR_API_KEY", "your_api_key_here")

HEADERS = {
    "X-Api-Key": PROWLARR_API_KEY,
    "Accept": "application/json",
}

results = []
failures = 0


def check(label, ok, detail=""):
    global failures
    status = "OK  " if ok else "FAIL"
    if not ok:
        failures += 1
    msg = f"[{status}] {label}"
    if detail:
        msg += f" — {detail}"
    results.append(msg)
    print(msg)


def api_get(path, timeout=15):
    url = f"{PROWLARR_HOST}{path}"
    req = urllib.request.Request(url, headers=HEADERS)
    try:
        with urllib.request.urlopen(req, timeout=timeout) as resp:
            return json.loads(resp.read().decode())
    except urllib.error.HTTPError as e:
        raise RuntimeError(f"HTTP {e.code} from {path}")
    except Exception as e:
        raise RuntimeError(f"Request failed: {e}")


print("=== Prowlarr Python Health Check ===")
print(f"Host: {PROWLARR_HOST}\n")

# 1. System status — version and OS
try:
    status = api_get("/api/v1/system/status")
    version = status.get("version", "unknown")
    branch = status.get("branch", "unknown")
    os_name = status.get("osName", "unknown")
    check("System status API", True, f"v{version} ({branch}) on {os_name}")
except RuntimeError as e:
    check("System status API", False, str(e))

# 2. Health endpoint — list WARNING or ERROR items
try:
    health = api_get("/api/v1/health")
    issues = [h for h in health if h.get("type") in ("warning", "error")]
    if not issues:
        check("Health endpoint", True, "no issues reported")
    else:
        check("Health endpoint", False, f"{len(issues)} issue(s) found")
        for issue in issues:
            print(f"       [{issue.get('type','?').upper()}] {issue.get('message','')}")
except RuntimeError as e:
    check("Health endpoint", False, str(e))

# 3. Indexer count — total and enabled
try:
    indexers = api_get("/api/v1/indexer")
    total = len(indexers) if isinstance(indexers, list) else 0
    enabled = sum(1 for i in indexers if i.get("enable", False))
    ok = enabled > 0
    check(
        "Indexers",
        ok,
        f"{total} configured, {enabled} enabled"
        + ("" if ok else " — no enabled indexers!"),
    )
except RuntimeError as e:
    check("Indexers", False, str(e))

# 4. Connected *arr apps
try:
    apps = api_get("/api/v1/applications")
    total_apps = len(apps) if isinstance(apps, list) else 0
    synced = sum(1 for a in apps if a.get("syncLevel") not in (None, "disabled"))
    check("Connected *arr apps", True, f"{total_apps} app(s) configured, {synced} with sync enabled")
except RuntimeError as e:
    check("Connected *arr apps", False, str(e))

# 5. Live search test — verify at least one indexer responds
try:
    results_data = api_get(
        "/api/v1/search?query=test&indexerIds=0&type=search", timeout=30
    )
    hit_count = len(results_data) if isinstance(results_data, list) else 0
    ok = hit_count > 0
    check(
        "Live search test",
        ok,
        f"{hit_count} result(s) returned"
        + ("" if ok else " — all indexers may be failing"),
    )
except RuntimeError as e:
    check("Live search test", False, str(e))

# Summary
print(f"\n=== Result: {len(results) - failures} passed, {failures} failed ===")
sys.exit(0 if failures == 0 else 1)

Common Prowlarr Outage Causes

Architecture Overview

Uptime History

Monitor Prowlarr Automatically

Prowlarr is the single point of indexer failure for your entire *arr stack — when it goes down or its indexers silently start returning errors, Sonarr and Radarr both stop finding content, but neither app surfaces a clear alert. ezmon.com monitors your Prowlarr endpoints from multiple external probes and alerts your team via Slack, PagerDuty, or SMS the moment the API stops responding or health checks detect indexer failures.

Set up Prowlarr monitoring free at ezmon.com →