Wiki / Setup — connections & keys

TheTVDB

What it is for. An extra source for TV matching, mostly useful when a show is matching to the wrong series or an episode order looks wrong.

Cost. Free for personal use. TheTVDB does sell subscriptions, and some integrations ask for a subscriber PIN alongside the key, but a key for a home media server does not cost anything.

You can skip it to start with. Kustos matches TV fine on TMDB alone. Add it when something is actually mismatching.

First, make a free account at thetvdb.com. Once you are signed in:

Go to Developers → API and Data Licensing and press Get Started. Read the pricing table on the way past: under $50k a year is free, and it asks only for attribution.

The licensing tiers. A home media server is the top row - free, requires attribution.

On the sign-up form, pick Less than $50k per year for revenue, then give the project a name and a sentence describing it. A personal media server is an honest answer to both.

The form is three fields. The revenue tier is the one that decides whether you are charged, and it restates "Free - requires attribution" under your choice.

Submit it. The key is issued immediately and appears under Your API Keys, marked Active.

The issued key, with its project name and status. Note the page says API keys are per-project now, which is why the form asked for a project rather than just your account.

In Kustos, Connections → TheTVDB, paste it, and press Save.

If something asks for a subscriber PIN, that is TheTVDB's user-supported option and is separate from the key. Kustos wants the key.