Best iOS Apps for Sonarr and Radarr in 2026: Helmarr, Ruddarr, and LunaSea Compared
If you run a self-hosted media stack, you have probably wished you could manage it from your phone instead of juggling browser tabs over a VPN. On iOS there are a few real options in 2026, and they take very different approaches. This is a straight comparison of the three apps most people consider: Helmarr, Ruddarr, and LunaSea. The goal is to help you pick the one that fits your setup, not to talk anything down.
We build Helmarr, so treat this as our point of view. We have tried to keep the facts about every app accurate and current as of June 2026. If something has changed by the time you read this, check each app’s own page before deciding.
What to look for in a mobile arr client
A good mobile client for the arr ecosystem comes down to a few things:
- How many of your services it supports. A media stack is rarely just Sonarr and Radarr. Most setups also run an indexer manager, one or more download clients, a request system, and something for playback stats and server health.
- Whether those services feel connected. Managing each app in its own isolated screen is only a small step up from opening separate web UIs. The real win is when the parts of your stack reference each other in one place.
- How native it feels. A client you open several times a day should feel like it belongs on the platform: fast, fluid, and built with the system’s own design language rather than a cross-platform shell.
- Whether it is still maintained. Self-hosted services update often. A client that is no longer in active development will slowly drift out of step with them.
At a glance
| Helmarr | Ruddarr | LunaSea | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Platforms | iOS, iPadOS, macOS | iOS, iPadOS | iOS, Android (cross-platform) |
| Services supported | 23+ across the whole stack | Radarr and Sonarr | Broad, multi-service |
| Design | Native SwiftUI, Liquid Glass | Native SwiftUI | Flutter, cross-platform |
| Unified stack view | Yes | Focused on two services | Per-service |
| Active development | Yes | Yes | Stopped |
| Price | Free with premium | Free, open source | Free, open source |
Helmarr
Helmarr is a native app for iPhone, iPad, and Mac that aims to cover the whole stack rather than a slice of it. It connects to more than 23 services, including Sonarr, Radarr, and Lidarr for library automation, Prowlarr, NZBHydra2, and Jackett for indexers, qBittorrent, Transmission, Deluge, SABnzbd, and NZBGet for downloads, Overseerr, Jellyseerr, and Seerr for requests, and Plex with Tautulli, plus Unraid, for playback stats and server health.
The point of that breadth is not the count. It is that the parts of your stack stop behaving like separate silos. From one dashboard you can see what Sonarr is searching for, watch the matching download progress in your client, check who is streaming through Tautulli, and glance at the health of the host it all runs on. The same picture would otherwise take several browser tabs and a few logins to assemble.
Because Helmarr is built in SwiftUI and uses Apple’s Liquid Glass design, it also feels like a first-party app. Scrolling is smooth, widgets are configurable, and it fits in next to the rest of your iPhone or Mac rather than looking like a web page in a frame. It connects directly to each service over its own API with no central control plane in between, and it works with reverse proxies and access tokens for secure remote use.
Helmarr is a free download with optional premium features, and it holds a 4.8 star rating across hundreds of App Store reviews.
Ruddarr
Ruddarr is a well-made, open source SwiftUI app for iOS and iPadOS. It is clean, fast, and clearly built by people who care about the platform, and if your only goal is to manage Radarr and Sonarr from your phone it does that job nicely.
The trade-off is scope. Ruddarr focuses on those two services. That is a deliberate, reasonable choice, and for a minimal setup it may be all you need. But if your stack also includes an indexer manager, download clients, a request system, or playback monitoring, those pieces live outside the app, and you are back to the browser for everything that is not Radarr or Sonarr.
If you want a focused, free, open source companion for just those two services, Ruddarr is a solid pick. If you want one place for the whole stack, it will leave gaps.
LunaSea
LunaSea earned a lot of goodwill, and for good reason. It was a broad, cross-platform, open source controller that covered many services across iOS and Android, and for years it was the default recommendation for people who wanted a multi-service mobile client.
The important thing to know in 2026 is that active development has stopped. The app still exists and may still work for some setups, but it is no longer being updated to track changes in the services it connects to. For software that talks to APIs which keep evolving, that matters over time. Being built on Flutter also meant it never felt fully native on iOS the way a SwiftUI app does, though many people happily looked past that for the breadth it offered.
If you already rely on LunaSea and it works for you, there is no urgency to change. But if you are choosing a client today and want something that will keep pace with your stack, its paused development is the main thing to weigh.
How to choose
- You run more than Sonarr and Radarr, and want one native app for all of it. Helmarr is built for exactly this, and the more services you run, the more the unified view pays off.
- You run only Radarr and Sonarr and want a focused open source app. Ruddarr is a clean, capable choice.
- You are deciding fresh and want something actively maintained. Lean toward an app that is still in development, since self-hosted services keep changing underneath any client.
There is no single right answer for every setup. The best client is the one that covers what you actually run and still feels good to open every day. If that happens to be your whole stack in one native place, that is the gap Helmarr was built to fill.
Helmarr is available on the App Store for iPhone, iPad, and Mac.