Torrent file downloads from Cloudflare-protected indexers fail (bypasses Prowlarr's FlareSolverr proxy)

[TrashedPandai]

Summary

When downloading a release from a Cloudflare-protected torrent indexer (e.g., LimeTorrents), the download fails because Questarr fetches the .torrent file directly from the indexer rather than routing through Prowlarr's download proxy — which has FlareSolverr configured to handle Cloudflare challenges.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Configure Prowlarr with FlareSolverr as an indexer proxy, tagged to Cloudflare-protected indexers
2. Add a Cloudflare-protected torrent indexer (e.g., LimeTorrents) in Prowlarr
3. Search for a game in Questarr — results from LimeTorrents appear (search works because it goes through Prowlarr → FlareSolverr)
4. Click download on a LimeTorrents result

Expected Behavior

Questarr routes the .torrent download through Prowlarr's proxy endpoint, which uses FlareSolverr to bypass Cloudflare, then passes the file to the download client.

Actual Behavior

{"level":50,"module":"downloaders","error":{},"msg":"Error downloading file, passing URL to Transmission"}
{"level":30,"module":"express","method":"POST","path":"/api/downloads","statusCode":500,
  "response":{"success":false,"message":"All downloaders failed. Errors: Transmission: Fail...",
  "attemptedDownloaders":["Transmission"]}}

Questarr's safeFetch() attempts to download the .torrent file directly from the indexer URL. Cloudflare blocks this request. It then falls back to passing the raw URL to Transmission, which also can't bypass Cloudflare.

Confirmation

Downloading the same game from an indexer that provides magnet links (e.g., 1337x) works perfectly — because the magnet URI is passed directly to the download client with no HTTP fetch needed.

Environment

• Questarr: latest Docker image (dev tag)
• Prowlarr with FlareSolverr configured and working for search
• Transmission as download client

Suggested Fix

Possible approaches:

• Ensure the download URL uses Prowlarr's proxy endpoint rather than the raw indexer URL
• Add optional HTTP proxy support (so users can route through FlareSolverr or similar)

[Doezer]

Thanks for letting me know

[prestonsmartuk]

Yeah this is needed. Any idea when 1.3.0 will be released? I've not deployed it yet as quite a few things in 1.3.0 I need.

[Doezer]

Hopefully before end of month

[TrashedPandai]

Looking forward to it!

[Doezer]

I pushed a tentative fix in fix/prowlarr-flaresolverr-proxy-download
If you can check from the build that'd be good, else let me know and I'll build an image

[TrashedPandai]

Tested the fix branch against my setup (Prowlarr 2.3.0.5236 + FlareSolverr v3.4.6 + Transmission + LimeTorrents).

Prowlarr + FlareSolverr resolves the Cloudflare fine now thank you! but the download still fails. Prowlarr returns a 301 redirect to a magnet link, and the Transmission downloader's safeFetch uses default redirect behavior so Node tries to follow it and crashes:

HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Location: magnet:?xt=urn:btih:523F3350...

TypeError: fetch failed: URL scheme must be a HTTP(S) scheme

The qBittorrent downloader already handles this correctly. it uses redirect: "manual" and has a redirect-following loop. The Transmission client is missing the same treatment.

[TrashedPandai]

Although the open issue was for the flaresolverr issue which seemed fixed on my end so i will close