Migrate from Real-Debrid to TorBox or Usenet
Legal Responsibility
This guide covers the technical mechanics of migrating between cloud storage providers and downloaders. Users are solely responsible for ensuring all content accessed, stored, or streamed through any of these setups is legally obtained and complies with applicable copyright laws and the terms of service of Real-Debrid, TorBox, and any Usenet provider. ElfHosted provides hosting infrastructure only and does not provide, curate, or facilitate access to copyrighted content. See our Acceptable Use Policy for details.
Some ElfHosted users reach a point where Real-Debrid's single-IP concurrency rule and periodic service disruptions make running a Radarr / Sonarr stack against it more fragile than they'd like. Moving off is straightforward in principle, but they've built a library worth of Radarr / Sonarr history pointing into the RD mount, and a hard cut leaves them with a shelf full of broken symlinks.
This guide walks the practical migration path: switch your subscription to a TorBox- or Usenet-backed personal media stack, let the new tooling salvage what it can from your old library, prune what it can't, and let the arrs refill the rest. Your watch state, request history, arr configuration, and library structure all survive the switch.
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Why move off Real-Debrid in 2026?
Four overlapping problems, each one enough to push some users off; the combination is what's driving the current migration wave.
The single-IP ban risk
Real-Debrid's terms allow you to use your account from any public IP address, but not from more than one IP at the same time. In practice this means:
- Forgetting to disconnect a VPN before launching Stremio / Kodi can trip the limit.
- Your partner watching on a phone outside Wi-Fi while you stream at home will trip it.
- An arr stack that grabs from one location while you watch from another will trip it.
Repeated violations result in temporary suspensions, then permanent bans. TorBox's Essential and Pro tiers allow concurrent streams from multiple IPs (5 and 10 respectively) without the ban risk; Usenet has no equivalent concept (Usenet bills per byte / per month from your provider, not per stream). For a household of more than one human, the per-IP-binding is on its own often the trigger to migrate.
Account purges and service outages
Real-Debrid has had recurring account-purge events, where large numbers of users find their library counts drop overnight as cached entries are removed, alongside periodic outage days. For an arr stack that depends on a stable storage backend, that unpredictability is a real operational cost.
The structural fragility for arr stacks
The combination above means that operating a Radarr / Sonarr stack with Real-Debrid as the storage backend now requires:
- A monitoring layer to detect when previously-cached items stop resolving.
- A cleanup layer to prune dead torrents and broken symlinks.
- A re-search layer to refill what was removed.
- A discipline of never running RD from more than one location, which conflicts with how most households actually use a media server.
TorBox (via CatBox) and Usenet (via NzbDAV) both eliminate at least three of those problems by design. Combined, they cover the fourth.
Pick a target
Three viable destinations, each with a different shape:
| Target | What it gets you | What carries across from RD | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| TorBox via CatBox | Lazy-materialised debrid, unlimited library size, no IP-binding ban risk | The subset of your RD library that's also cached on TorBox imports virtually with one click | Users staying in the "torrent-backed cloud library" world but tired of RD's instability |
| Usenet via NzbDAV | On-demand article streaming, no per-IP bans, ~5 year retention on most providers, no cache-retention games | Nothing imports directly (Usenet has no equivalent of a cached-hash check), but Cleanuparr / a re-search will refill most of the library from NewsNab indexers | Users who want to leave debrid entirely and prefer Usenet's predictability |
| Hybrid (TorBox + Usenet, recommended) | Both backends running side-by-side, so any item missing from TorBox's cache can be picked up from Usenet and vice versa | TorBox import covers the cached subset, Usenet re-search backfills the rest | Users with large, long-tail libraries who want the highest coverage and the most resilience |
The hybrid path is the strongest result and is what most users land on after migrating. Start with one of the single-target guides below; you can layer the other one in afterwards, the two stacks coexist cleanly.
Migration steps
Full setup guide
The step-by-step setup is available to logged-in customers. Sign in to continue →
Frequently asked questions
Can I get banned from Real-Debrid for using two devices at once?
Yes. Real-Debrid permits use from any single public IP address but not two at the same time. Streaming from home Wi-Fi while a family member streams on cellular, or having a VPN connected on one device while another is direct, both trip the limit. Repeated violations escalate from temporary suspension to permanent ban. TorBox doesn't have this restriction (Essential and Pro tiers allow 5 / 10 concurrent IPs respectively), and Usenet doesn't have an equivalent concept at all.
Do I lose my watch state?
For Plex: no, watch state is bound to your Plex account, not the server. Jellyfin and Emby keep watch state in their own server databases, which stay intact during a backend migration (you're swapping the downloader and the mount, not the Jellyfin / Emby database).
Can I keep Real-Debrid running while I migrate?
Not within the ElfHosted stack — the subscription switch in step 1 removes Decypharr and the RD mount as part of the new stack rolling in. Your Real-Debrid account itself is independent of the ElfHosted subscription, so it can keep running for any external use (the RD web UI, DebridMediaManager, Stremio addons elsewhere); it's just no longer wired into your arr stack. If you want to keep using RD inside your stack alongside TorBox or Usenet, ask in Discord about hybrid stack variants.
Will my Radarr / Sonarr history be preserved?
Yes. The arrs keep their full grab history through the migration. What changes is the download client they grab against and, for TorBox, the mount the existing library symlinks resolve to.
How long does the migration take?
Active work: a couple of hours for the TorBox path, less for Usenet. Coverage typically reaches its long-term level within a day or two on a Cleanuparr-driven stack, as the arrs steadily re-grab everything that wasn't recovered automatically.
Can I migrate back to Real-Debrid if I don't like TorBox / Usenet?
Yes. The arrs are downloader-agnostic; you can re-add Decypharr at any point and continue grabbing against RD. The CatBox virtual-library and Usenet virtual-library both coexist with a Decypharr setup without conflict.
What about my custom quality profiles, indexers, and lists?
All Radarr / Sonarr / Prowlarr config is unchanged by this migration. Only the download-client connection (and for TorBox, the addition of CatBox as a Torznab indexer) changes.
What if items are missing on both TorBox and Usenet?
This is rare for mainstream content. For long-tail items that aren't on either, you can add them to TorBox directly (TorBox will cache them and CatBox can then virtualise them), or grab them as .nzb from a specialty indexer. Hybrid setups have the highest coverage by far; single-backend setups occasionally need a manual grab.
How do I get help?
- For general use of the individual tools, refer to each app's upstream site
- For specific support re your ElfHosted configuration, see the ElfHosted support options
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