Autobrr on a Seedbox: IRC and RSS Race Automation

What Autobrr Is

Autobrr watches IRC announce channels and RSS feeds, applies your filters, and pushes matching torrents to your client the second they're posted. It's the modern replacement for autodl-irssi, written in Go, with a clean web UI and saner config.

If you race on private trackers, Autobrr is the tool that turns "I might catch this release" into "I caught it before the page even rendered."

Why Run It on a Seedbox?

Race grabs are won and lost in milliseconds. Three things matter:

• Always on. A missed announce is a lost race.
• Network proximity to the tracker. A seedbox in a major EU datacenter is closer to most trackers than your home connection.
• Fast download. 10 Gbit means the file is yours before anyone else's torrent has started.

Bytesized covers all three. EU servers in Luxembourg, France, and Netherlands keep tracker latency low.

Installing Autobrr

Open the Bytesized Panel, find Autobrr in the app catalog, click install. Panel sets up the binary, the database, the reverse proxy, and gives you a clean HTTPS URL.

Click "Open" to land on the setup wizard.

First-Run Setup

The wizard:

1. Create the admin user. Username and password.
2. Add your download client. qBittorrent, Deluge, rTorrent, all supported. Use the internal URL from the panel.
3. Add a tracker network. Pick from the built-in list. Most major private trackers have presets that handle the IRC channel and announce parsing.
4. Add filters. Filters are the heart of Autobrr. Match on size, category, group, encoder, freeleech status, scene name pattern, anything you want.

Filters Are Where the Work Lives

Filters look intimidating at first; they're actually pretty simple. A typical filter:

• Match on category: Movies > 1080p
• Group whitelist: a list of release groups you trust
• Size: 5-15 GB
• Freeleech only: yes
• Send to qBittorrent with category racing

Save the filter, set it to "Enabled," and Autobrr starts grabbing matches.

The Autobrr docs have a filter cookbook with sane starting points; copy one of those, adapt to your taste.

Pairing With Cross-Seed

Autobrr fetches the new release into qBittorrent. Cross-seed (a separate tool, not bundled here yet) then matches that file against other trackers you're on and registers it as a cross-seed where supported. The result: one download, ratio building on multiple trackers at once.

For the topical guide on this whole setup see Autobrr & Cross-Seed: Automated Ratio Building.

Common Gotchas

IRC connect fails. Tracker IRC servers do strict checks on the bouncer source. The Bytesized IPs are fine on most trackers; if a specific one rejects, you may need to register your seedbox IP with the tracker's IRC operator.

Filters not firing. Most often the filter is too tight. Loosen the size range or the group whitelist and watch the Releases tab to see what's coming through.

Torrent rejected by client. qBittorrent or Deluge category doesn't exist. Create the category in the client first, then reference it in the filter.

Race losses to faster grabbers. Some races are won by raw IRC parsing speed. Autobrr is fast; if you're consistently losing, it might be a tracker latency issue rather than a tool issue. EU trackers from EU servers is the right pairing.

FAQ

Is Autobrr free? Yes. Free and open source.

Will it work with rTorrent? Yes. Same setup as qBittorrent or Deluge.

Does Bytesized run an IRC bouncer for me? Autobrr handles its own IRC connection. You don't need a separate bouncer.

Will it work on the Lite plan? Yes. Autobrr is light on resources. The advantage of the bigger plans is more storage to actually keep the racing-grabbed releases.

Can it grab from public trackers? Yes, where they have IRC announces or RSS feeds. Filters work the same.

Ready to Set It Up?

Browse Appbox plans, install Autobrr from the panel, plug in your tracker networks, write your first filter.