Prowlarr indexers show "unavailable" or stay blocked by Cloudflare

Published 28 July 2026 · Updated 31 July 2026 · SparkBox team

You open Prowlarr and every indexer has a red "unavailable" mark, or a specific Cloudflare-protected site stays blocked even though you tagged it for FlareSolverr. In almost every case this is one of three things: a VPN tunnel that hasn't finished reconnecting after an update, a FlareSolverr proxy that was never actually registered, or a "you haven't added an indexer yet" setup state that only looks like a fault.

Rather not hand-wire the proxy? SparkBox re-runs its indexer bootstrap on every start and re-registers the FlareSolverr proxy for you if it went missing. See the walkthrough →

First, know what you're looking at

Some terms used throughout, in plain English:

• Indexer — a search source Prowlarr queries (a tracker or Usenet index). Prowlarr passes results on to the download apps in your stack.
• Indexer proxy — a helper Prowlarr routes certain indexer requests through. FlareSolverr is one of these.
• FlareSolverr — a small service that solves Cloudflare's "are you human?" challenge so Prowlarr can reach sites protected by it.
• VPN tunnel — the encrypted link some setups route all download traffic through. If it's down, Prowlarr can't reach anything outbound.

Match your symptom to the right section below. Fixing the wrong cause wastes time.

Cause 1: Indexers went "unavailable" right after an update

This is the most common one and the most misleading, because every indexer fails at once, which feels catastrophic. It usually isn't.

When you update, your networking layer restarts. If your download traffic is routed through a shared VPN tunnel, that tunnel takes a few seconds to a couple of minutes to re-establish. During that window Prowlarr keeps trying to open outbound connections and they all fail. In the Prowlarr log this shows up as raw .NET connection errors — lines mentioning HttpConnectionPool.ConnectAsync and TCP-connect failures. That fingerprint is the tell: it means the network path itself is down, not that any individual indexer rejected you.

Fix it

1. Confirm the VPN is actually up. Check whatever tool manages your tunnel and wait until it reports a live connection. Don't skip this — restarting Prowlarr before the tunnel is back just reproduces the same failure.
2. Restart the media stack. Prowlarr caches its indexer health state, so it won't automatically re-test everything the instant the network returns. Restart the media services so it re-opens connections cleanly. On SparkBox that's restart media; on other setups, restart the Prowlarr container or service.
3. Re-test in the UI. Go to Settings → Indexers, and use the test button, or wait for the next scheduled health check. The red marks should clear.

Cause 2: A Cloudflare-protected indexer stays blocked despite the FlareSolverr tag

This is the trap that catches almost everyone who enables FlareSolverr after their initial setup. You add the flaresolverr tag to the indexer, save, and… the site is still blocked. The tag looks right, so it feels like a Prowlarr bug.

Here's the mechanism. The flaresolverr tag is only a label. It tells Prowlarr which indexers should be routed through a FlareSolverr proxy — but it does nothing unless a FlareSolverr proxy entry actually exists in Prowlarr. That entry lives under Settings → Indexers → Indexer Proxies. If it was never created, the tag points at nothing, and the request goes out un-proxied and gets blocked by Cloudflare.

Why does the entry go missing? On automated setups, the proxy is registered during the initial bootstrap pass. But if FlareSolverr is only enabled later, that bootstrap doesn't necessarily run again — so the proxy registration step is skipped, and you're left with a tag and no proxy behind it.

Fix it manually

1. Confirm FlareSolverr is running. The proxy is useless if the service behind it isn't up. Check that your FlareSolverr container/service is running and healthy.
2. Open Settings → Indexers → Indexer Proxies in Prowlarr. Look for a FlareSolverr entry. If there is none, that's your problem.
3. Add a FlareSolverr proxy. Click to add a new proxy, choose FlareSolverr, and set the Host to the address Prowlarr can actually reach FlareSolverr on. On the same container network that's usually the service name and its port (for example http://flaresolverr:8191/), not 127.0.0.1. Give it a Tag of flaresolverr.
4. Match the tags. The tag on the proxy and the tag on the indexer must be identical. Prowlarr only routes an indexer through a proxy when they share a tag. Confirm your Cloudflare indexer carries the same flaresolverr tag.
5. Test the indexer. Save, then test the previously-blocked indexer. It should now succeed.

Cause 3: Prowlarr says "add an indexer" — and that's not a fault

If Prowlarr (or a dashboard summarising it) shows something like "add an indexer" or "one media setup step left," and you've never actually added an indexer, nothing is broken. This is a setup state: Prowlarr is healthy, it just has nothing to search yet.

It's easy to misread because an unconfigured indexer stage and a genuinely failing indexer can look similar at a glance. The distinction that matters: a setup state means you never configured it; a fault means something you did configure has now stopped working (VPN, downloads, storage, or an indexer login).

Fix it

1. Go to Indexers → Add Indexer. Add at least one indexer and fill in whatever it needs (URL, login, or API key).
2. Test and save. Once one indexer is present and passing, the "add an indexer" prompt clears.
3. Don't chase a phantom fault. If your dashboard was showing this as green/neutral rather than red, that was intentional — it's a to-do, not an outage.

Frequently asked

Why are my Prowlarr indexers unavailable right after an update?

An update restarts your networking, including any VPN tunnel Prowlarr routes through. While the tunnel is still reconnecting, every outbound connection fails and all indexers show unavailable. The log shows raw .NET TCP-connect failures. Once the VPN is back, restart your media stack and they recover.

I applied the flaresolverr tag but a Cloudflare-protected indexer is still blocked. Why?

The tag alone does nothing. There must be a matching FlareSolverr entry under Settings → Indexers → Indexer Proxies, tagged with the same value. If FlareSolverr was enabled after your initial setup, that proxy entry may never have been created, so the tag routes to nothing and the site stays blocked.

Prowlarr says "add an indexer" — is something broken?

No. That's a setup state, not a fault. It means Prowlarr is healthy but has no indexers configured yet. Add one under Indexers → Add Indexer and the prompt clears. Real faults show connection or authentication errors on indexers you already added.

Does restarting fix a Prowlarr indexer marked unavailable?

Often, when the cause was a transient network or VPN drop — restarting forces Prowlarr to re-open connections after the tunnel returns. If it's still unavailable after a clean restart with a confirmed-up VPN, the problem is the indexer itself or your proxy setup.