Is qBittorrent Down? Real-Time Status & Outage Checker

qBittorrent is an open-source BitTorrent client with 28,000+ GitHub stars and the most popular self-hosted download client for home media servers. It offers a full Web API (qBittorrent-nox for headless operation), RSS automation, sequential downloading, IP binding, and search plugins. It integrates with Sonarr, Radarr, Lidarr, and other *arr apps via its Web API, making it the standard BitTorrent backend for automated media pipelines. Available on Linux, macOS, Windows, and as a Docker container. When qBittorrent goes down or loses authentication, every *arr app loses its download client, queued grabs stall, and your media pipeline stops completely.

qBittorrent exposes its Web API on port 8080 by default. Monitoring authentication, transfer state, and active torrent health is the fastest way to catch failures before they cascade into hours of missed downloads.

Quick Status Check

#!/bin/bash
# qBittorrent health check
# Usage: QB_USERNAME=admin QB_PASSWORD=adminadmin ./qbittorrent-check.sh

QB_HOST="${QB_HOST:-http://localhost:8080}"
QB_USERNAME="${QB_USERNAME:-admin}"
QB_PASSWORD="${QB_PASSWORD:-adminadmin}"
PASS=0
FAIL=0

echo "=== qBittorrent Health Check ==="
echo "Host: $QB_HOST"
echo ""

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

# 2. Check port 8080 is open
if nc -z localhost 8080 2>/dev/null; then
  echo "[OK]   Port 8080 is open"
  PASS=$((PASS+1))
else
  echo "[FAIL] Port 8080 is not reachable"
  FAIL=$((FAIL+1))
fi

# 3. Check app version (unauthenticated)
VERSION=$(curl -sf --max-time 10 "$QB_HOST/api/v2/app/version")
if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
  echo "[OK]   API responding — qBittorrent v$VERSION"
  PASS=$((PASS+1))
else
  echo "[FAIL] /api/v2/app/version did not respond"
  FAIL=$((FAIL+1))
fi

# 4. Authenticate and get SID cookie
SID=$(curl -sf --max-time 10 -c - \
  --data "username=$QB_USERNAME&password=$QB_PASSWORD" \
  "$QB_HOST/api/v2/auth/login" | grep SID | awk '{print $NF}')
if [ -n "$SID" ]; then
  echo "[OK]   Authentication succeeded — SID obtained"
  PASS=$((PASS+1))
else
  echo "[FAIL] Authentication failed — check username and password"
  FAIL=$((FAIL+1))
fi

# 5. Check transfer info (requires auth)
if [ -n "$SID" ]; then
  TRANSFER=$(curl -sf --max-time 10 \
    -b "SID=$SID" \
    "$QB_HOST/api/v2/transfer/info")
  if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
    DL_SPEED=$(echo "$TRANSFER" | grep -o '"dl_info_speed":[0-9]*' | cut -d: -f2)
    echo "[OK]   Transfer info accessible — DL speed: ${DL_SPEED:-0} B/s"
    PASS=$((PASS+1))
  else
    echo "[FAIL] /api/v2/transfer/info did not respond"
    FAIL=$((FAIL+1))
  fi
fi

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

Python Health Check

#!/usr/bin/env python3
"""
qBittorrent health check
Authenticates via Web API, checks version, transfer info, DHT status, torrent states,
and global stats.
"""

import os
import sys
import json
import urllib.request
import urllib.error
import urllib.parse
import http.cookiejar

QB_HOST = os.environ.get("QB_HOST", "http://localhost:8080")
QB_USERNAME = os.environ.get("QB_USERNAME", "admin")
QB_PASSWORD = os.environ.get("QB_PASSWORD", "adminadmin")

results = []
failures = 0
cookie_jar = http.cookiejar.CookieJar()
cookie_handler = urllib.request.HTTPCookieProcessor(cookie_jar)
opener = urllib.request.build_opener(cookie_handler)


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=10):
    url = f"{QB_HOST}{path}"
    req = urllib.request.Request(url)
    try:
        with opener.open(req, timeout=timeout) as resp:
            return 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}")


def api_get_json(path, timeout=10):
    return json.loads(api_get(path, timeout))


def api_post(path, data, timeout=10):
    url = f"{QB_HOST}{path}"
    body = urllib.parse.urlencode(data).encode()
    req = urllib.request.Request(url, data=body,
                                  headers={"Content-Type": "application/x-www-form-urlencoded"})
    try:
        with opener.open(req, timeout=timeout) as resp:
            return 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("=== qBittorrent Python Health Check ===")
print(f"Host: {QB_HOST}\n")

# 1. App version — no auth required
try:
    version = api_get("/api/v2/app/version")
    check("App version API", True, f"qBittorrent v{version.strip()}")
except RuntimeError as e:
    check("App version API", False, str(e))

# 2. Authenticate — POST username/password, get SID cookie
authenticated = False
try:
    result = api_post("/api/v2/auth/login", {
        "username": QB_USERNAME,
        "password": QB_PASSWORD,
    })
    if result.strip() == "Ok.":
        authenticated = True
        check("Authentication", True, f"logged in as '{QB_USERNAME}'")
    else:
        check("Authentication", False, f"unexpected response: {result.strip()}")
except RuntimeError as e:
    check("Authentication", False, str(e))

# 3. Transfer info — download/upload speed and DHT status
if authenticated:
    try:
        transfer = api_get_json("/api/v2/transfer/info")
        dl_speed = transfer.get("dl_info_speed", 0)
        up_speed = transfer.get("up_info_speed", 0)
        dht_nodes = transfer.get("dht_nodes", 0)
        dht_ok = dht_nodes > 0
        check(
            "Transfer info",
            True,
            f"DL {dl_speed // 1024} KB/s, UP {up_speed // 1024} KB/s",
        )
        check(
            "DHT nodes",
            dht_ok,
            f"{dht_nodes} nodes connected"
            + ("" if dht_ok else " — DHT disabled or no peers; public torrents may be affected"),
        )
    except RuntimeError as e:
        check("Transfer info", False, str(e))
else:
    check("Transfer info", False, "skipped — not authenticated")

# 4. Torrent list — breakdown by state
if authenticated:
    try:
        torrents = api_get_json("/api/v2/torrents/info")
        states = {}
        for t in torrents:
            state = t.get("state", "unknown")
            states[state] = states.get(state, 0) + 1
        error_count = states.get("error", 0) + states.get("missingFiles", 0)
        total = len(torrents)
        summary = ", ".join(f"{v} {k}" for k, v in sorted(states.items()))
        ok = error_count == 0
        check(
            "Torrent states",
            ok,
            f"{total} total: {summary}"
            + ("" if ok else f" — {error_count} in error/missingFiles state"),
        )
    except RuntimeError as e:
        check("Torrent states", False, str(e))
else:
    check("Torrent states", False, "skipped — not authenticated")

# 5. Global sync stats — cumulative download/upload
if authenticated:
    try:
        maindata = api_get_json("/api/v2/sync/maindata")
        server_state = maindata.get("server_state", {})
        dl_total = server_state.get("dl_info_data", 0) // (1024 ** 3)
        up_total = server_state.get("up_info_data", 0) // (1024 ** 3)
        free_space = server_state.get("free_space_on_disk", 0) // (1024 ** 3)
        ok = free_space > 5
        check(
            "Disk free space",
            ok,
            f"{free_space} GB free on download disk"
            + ("" if ok else " — critically low, downloads will stall"),
        )
        check("Session totals", True, f"downloaded {dl_total} GB, uploaded {up_total} GB")
    except RuntimeError as e:
        check("Global sync stats", False, str(e))
else:
    check("Global sync stats", False, "skipped — not authenticated")

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

Common qBittorrent Outage Causes

Architecture Overview

Uptime History

Monitor qBittorrent Automatically

qBittorrent failures are invisible to *arr apps until they try to queue a new download — by then your media pipeline may have been broken for hours. ezmon.com monitors your qBittorrent endpoints from multiple external probes and alerts your team via Slack, PagerDuty, or SMS the moment the Web API stops responding or authentication starts failing.

Set up qBittorrent monitoring free at ezmon.com →