Key Takeaway: “No streams were found” is not a Stremio bug, it is Stremio telling you that no installed addon returned a result. In my testing the cause was almost always one of four things: no stream addon installed, a debrid key that stopped working, a metadata mismatch, or a genuinely unseeded title.
This is the single most misunderstood message in Stremio, because it looks like an app failure when it is really an empty answer. Stremio ships with no stream sources at all, so the error is the expected result until you add addons that supply them.
I reproduced this error deliberately on a Fire TV Stick 4K Max, a Google TV Streamer, and the Windows desktop app, breaking one link in the chain at a time so I could match each symptom to its real cause. What follows is ordered by how often each cause actually turned out to be responsible during that testing.
What “No Streams Were Found” Actually Means
Stremio is not reporting a crash or an outage here. It is telling you, accurately, that every stream addon you have installed was asked for this title and none of them came back with anything playable.
- Stremio Ships Empty: the app contains no video sources of its own, so a fresh install will show this message on absolutely every title you open.
- It Is Per Title: the message applies to the specific episode or film you opened, not to your whole setup, which is why one title fails while others work.
- Addons Were Queried: Stremio did contact your installed addons and waited for answers, so the app itself is functioning exactly as designed here.
- Silence Looks Identical: an addon that timed out and an addon that genuinely found nothing produce the same message, which is what makes this confusing.
- Not An App Fault: if Stremio itself will not load or crashes, that is a separate problem covered in our Stremio not working guide.
How to Tell Which Link in the Chain Failed
A stream reaches you through four separate stages, and the error looks identical whichever one broke. These five tests isolate the failing stage in about two minutes without changing any settings.
| Stage | What You See | What It Points To |
|---|---|---|
| 1. The title | A popular older film plays fine | The original title simply has no indexed sources |
| 2. The addon | Every single title comes back empty | No stream addon installed — only metadata |
| 3. The debrid | Streams are listed but none will start | Expired plan or a regenerated API token |
| 4. The network | Works on mobile data, not at home | DNS filtering or ISP-level domain blocking |
| 5. The catalogue | One entry empty, the duplicate works | Metadata or season-numbering mismatch |
- Stage One, The Title: load a widely watched film from a few years back; if that works, the original title simply had no indexed sources behind it.
- Stage Two, The Addon: open the puzzle-piece panel and confirm a stream addon is present, because a metadata-only setup fails on absolutely every title equally.
- Stage Three, The Debrid: results that appear but refuse to play point past the addon entirely, which narrows the fault to your debrid account.
- Stage Four, The Network: tether to a phone hotspot; instant results on mobile data prove the block sits on your home connection rather than anywhere else.
- My Two Minute Order: I always run these in this exact sequence, because each one rules out a whole category before the next test begins.
Why an Empty List Usually Means No Stream Addon
This is the most common cause by a wide margin, and it catches almost everyone who installs Stremio for the first time. The addon catalogue mixes two very different kinds of addon together.
| Addon Type | What It Supplies | Fixes “No Streams”? |
|---|---|---|
| Metadata / catalogue | Posters, titles, descriptions, lists | No — Cinemeta is this type |
| Torrent scraper | Playable links scraped from torrent sites | Yes |
| Debrid-native | Cached links served via your debrid account | Yes, and fastest to start |
| Index-based | Links from a prebuilt central database | Yes |
| Subtitles | Subtitle files only, no video | No |
- Two Addon Types: catalogue addons supply posters, descriptions, and lists, while stream addons supply the actual playable links behind each title.
- Cinemeta Is Default: the addon installed by default provides metadata only, so a fresh Stremio browses beautifully and plays absolutely nothing.
- Check The Tags: in the addon catalogue, look for entries tagged torrents, debrid support, or http streams rather than metadata or catalogue.
- Install At Least Two: a single stream addon leaves you exposed whenever its server has a bad day, so two gives you a working fallback.
- Our Movie Roundup: our list of the best Stremio addons for movies shows exactly which entries supply real playable streams.
Metadata Mismatches That Hide Working Streams
Sometimes streams genuinely exist but your addon cannot find them, because the identifier Stremio sent does not match how the release was named or catalogued at the source.
- Wrong Season Numbering: anime and long-running series are frequently split differently by trackers, so episode twelve of season two may be catalogued elsewhere.
- Anime Uses Kitsu: many anime titles are identified by Kitsu rather than IMDb, and addons that only accept IMDb identifiers return nothing for them.
- Regional Title Variants: films released under different names in different markets can miss entirely, so searching the original title often surfaces results.
- Very New Releases: a title added to the catalogue before any release exists will always come back empty until sources actually appear.
- Try The Other Entry: duplicate catalogue entries for the same film are common, and the second one frequently returns a full list of streams.
Telling a Debrid Failure Apart From an Addon Failure
These two produce the same empty list, and guessing wrong costs you an evening. The distinction is visible if you know which signal to read before you start changing anything.
- Empty Versus Unplayable: no results at all points at the addon, while a full list where nothing starts points squarely at the debrid layer instead.
- Test It Across Addons: if every installed addon goes quiet simultaneously, the shared component is your debrid account rather than any individual addon.
- Read The Dashboard: the debrid provider’s own panel shows subscription status and recent requests, which answers the question faster than any Stremio-side test.
- Remove Debrid Temporarily: rebuild the manifest without a debrid key; if peer-to-peer results appear, the addon is healthy and the account is not.
- I Lost An Evening: I regenerated my own token mid-test and blamed the addon for forty minutes before the dashboard showed the requests failing.
Why Some Titles Genuinely Have No Streams
It is worth accepting that a share of these errors are correct answers. No addon can conjure a source that does not exist, and certain categories of title fail consistently.
- Very Recent Releases: anything still in cinemas or released within days will have few or no sources, regardless of which addons you have installed.
- Obscure Back Catalogue: older films that were never widely distributed digitally often have nothing available at any quality on public sources.
- Regional Television: local broadcast series from smaller markets are rarely indexed, which is where multilingual addons earn their place in a setup.
- Dead Seeder Counts: a torrent listed with zero seeders is not a working stream, so the addon correctly declines to offer it to you.
- Documentaries And Shorts: niche factual titles and short films are among the most consistently empty categories I encountered during testing.
Which Kind of Block Are You Actually Hitting?
Network problems come in three distinct varieties here, and the fix differs for each. Treating them as one thing is why people install a VPN and find nothing improves at all.
- DNS Level Filtering: the mildest form, applied at your resolver, and it clears entirely by pointing the router at a public DNS service instead.
- ISP Domain Blocking: deeper filtering that survives a DNS change, so this is the case where routing around it genuinely becomes necessary.
- Debrid IP Locking: the opposite problem, where your debrid provider refuses requests because the address changed after you authenticated the session.
- Read The Pattern: uniform failure across every title means a block, while failures scattered across some titles only means indexing rather than networking.
- Order Matters Here: change DNS first and test, because reaching for a VPN immediately can trigger the debrid address lock described above.
Why the Error Follows You Across Devices
People often reinstall on a second device and are surprised to see the same message immediately. That is expected behaviour, and understanding why saves a lot of wasted effort.
- Addons Sync Centrally: your addon list is stored against your Stremio account, so signing in elsewhere reproduces the same configuration and the same gaps.
- Debrid Keys Travel Too: a configured manifest carries your debrid credentials with it, meaning a dead key fails identically on every device you own.
- Reinstalling Rarely Helps: removing and reinstalling the app does not touch the account-level addon list, which is where the actual problem usually lives.
- Sign Out Properly: a genuine sign-out and fresh sign-in forces a clean pull of your addon list rather than reusing a locally cached one.
- Fix It Once: because the configuration is central, correcting it on one device silently repairs every other device attached to that account.
How I Reproduced and Fixed This Error
Rather than collecting fixes from forum threads, I recreated each failure on purpose so I could confirm which symptom belongs to which cause and which advice is simply wrong.
- Three Devices Tested: every scenario ran on a Fire TV Stick 4K Max, a Google TV Streamer, and the Windows desktop build for comparison.
- One Variable Changed: each test broke exactly one link in the chain, so the resulting symptom could be attributed to that change with confidence.
- Twenty Title Sample: results were checked against a fixed set of twenty titles spanning blockbusters, older films, anime, and regional television series.
- Peak And Quiet Hours: every addon was queried in busy evening hours and again early morning, because rate limiting only shows up under load.
- Live Data Verified: install counts, versions, and problem reports were read from the community addon catalogue on 21 July 2026 rather than recalled from memory.
Where a fix only worked in specific conditions, that limitation is stated rather than quietly left out.
Addons That Fix an Empty Stream List: Top Picks!
Every addon below returned streams on my twenty-title test set and supplies genuine playable sources rather than metadata alone, which is what an empty list is usually missing.
1) AIOStreams
AIOStreams solves a different problem to everything else here: rather than being another source, it consolidates the addons and debrid services you already use into one configurable layer. That means a single result list with your own filtering, sorting, and formatting rules applied across every source at once.
The feature that matters most for people locked out of Torrentio is stream proxying, which routes playback through MediaFlow Proxy or StremThru and works around the IP restrictions that break debrid on shared connections. I found the setup page genuinely dense, but once configured it is the most powerful option in this comparison by some distance. Treat it as a weekend project rather than a five-minute fix, and it will outlast every other addon on this list.
Features:
- Consolidates Everything: multiple addons and debrid services are merged behind one manifest, so you manage a single entry instead of six competing ones.
- Custom Filtering Rules: results can be filtered, sorted, and formatted to your own specification, which no other addon in this list offers.
- Built In Proxying: streams can route through MediaFlow Proxy or StremThru, bypassing the IP restrictions that break debrid playback on shared connections.
- Seven Public Instances: the catalogue lists seven hosted instances, giving it more redundancy than any other addon covered in this guide.
- Usenet Support Included: alongside torrents and debrid it handles usenet sources, which very few Stremio addons bother to index at all.
- Updated Two Days Ago: version 2.31.1 landed on 19 July 2026 under a named developer, which is a rare level of transparency here.
- I Needed An Hour: I set this up last and it took me roughly an hour to configure properly, far longer than the others.
| Pros | Cons |
| Most powerful and flexible option | Steepest setup of anything here |
| Proxying bypasses IP restrictions | Overkill for casual viewers |
| Seven instances for redundancy | Depends on other addons underneath |
| Named, active developer | Configuration page is dense |
Pricing: Free to install and use on the public ElfHosted instance. A private ElfHosted instance is $9/month with the full addon bundle at $29/month (checked 21 July 2026). Debrid billed separately.
Link: aiostreams.elfhosted.com
2) MediaFusion
MediaFusion is the broadest addon on this list, and it is the one I keep for anything that is not mainstream English-language content. Alongside standard torrent and debrid streaming it carries Bollywood, Asian drama, live TV, and direct HTTP streams, with catalogues in Tamil, Hindi, Malayalam, Kannada, and English.
That range makes it a genuine complement to Torrentio rather than a like-for-like replacement. Version 6.0.1 was refreshed on 18 July 2026, three days before I checked, and the ElfHosted instance carried zero problem reports. Reasonable rate limits apply to the public instance, which is a fair trade for something offered free. If your watching is limited to Hollywood films, this is more addon than you need; if it is not, nothing else comes close on breadth.
Features:
- Widest Content Range: torrents, debrid, live TV, and direct HTTP streams sit in one addon, covering ground that most torrent-only options simply ignore.
- Strong Indian Catalogue: Tamil, Hindi, Malayalam, and Kannada titles are indexed properly rather than appearing as poorly labelled dubs buried in results.
- Most Recent Update: version 6.0.1 landed on 18 July 2026, making it the most actively maintained addon anywhere in this comparison.
- Multiple Hosted Instances: three public instances are listed, giving you somewhere to fall back to when the default one is under heavy load.
- Contactable Operator: ElfHosted publishes a real abuse contact address, which is unusual in this space and a meaningful signal of accountability.
- Optional Self Hosting: the project can be deployed on your own hardware if you would rather not depend on a shared public instance.
- I Use It For Sport: I keep MediaFusion installed specifically for its live TV catalogue, which nothing else on this list matches.
| Pros | Cons |
| Covers far more than torrents | Interface is busier than rivals |
| Excellent multilingual catalogues | Rate limits on the public instance |
| Updated within the last week | More configuration options to learn |
| Named abuse contact published | Overkill for simple movie streaming |
Pricing: Free to install and use on the public ElfHosted instance. A private ElfHosted instance is $9/month and the addon bundle is $29/month (checked 21 July 2026). Debrid billed separately.
Link: mediafusion.elfhosted.com
3) Comet
Comet is the addon I move to first whenever Torrentio goes quiet, and it is the one that has replaced Torrentio outright on my main Firestick. It is built around debrid from the ground up rather than treating it as an add-on option, which shows in how quickly the stream list appears.
The public ElfHosted instance answered every query I sent it during testing, and the catalogue records zero problem reports against it over the same twenty-four hours in which Torrentio collected thirty-one. Version 2.0.0 is a genuine rewrite rather than a patch, and the project runs an active Discord where outages get acknowledged within hours instead of being left to guesswork. If you only take one recommendation from this guide, take this one.
Features:
- Fastest Result List: streams populate in roughly two seconds on the public instance, which is noticeably quicker than Torrentio managed on the same title and connection.
- Debrid First Design: Real-Debrid, AllDebrid, TorBox, Premiumize, and Offcloud are supported natively rather than bolted onto a peer-to-peer addon as an afterthought.
- Six Public Instances: the catalogue lists six separate hosted instances, so a single server going down does not take the whole addon offline for everyone.
- Clean Cached Filtering: cached results are clearly marked and can be prioritised, which removes the guesswork that causes most stalled playback attempts.
- Active Discord Support: the developer maintains a public community channel where outages and configuration questions get real answers rather than silence.
- Open Source Project: the code is public and self-hostable, so you can run a private instance if the shared one becomes congested during peak hours.
- My Everyday Pick: I have had Comet installed for months and it has never once returned an empty list on a mainstream film.
| Pros | Cons |
| Fastest stream list I measured | Debrid account effectively required |
| Zero problem reports in 24 hours | Public instance can rate-limit |
| Six instances for redundancy | No catalogue browsing of its own |
| Active developer community | Configuration page is fairly technical |
Pricing: Free to install and use. The public ElfHosted instance costs nothing; a private ElfHosted instance is $9/month and the full addon bundle is $29/month (checked 21 July 2026). A debrid subscription is separate.
Link: comet.elfhosted.com
4) TorrentsDB
TorrentsDB is a direct fork of Torrentio, which makes it the most natural landing spot if you liked how Torrentio behaved and simply want it to work. The developer has added providers on top of the original list and built a cache that has grown quickly since the project launched in mid-2025. Because the interface and result formatting are inherited, there is essentially nothing new to learn.
I switched a Google TV Streamer over to it during testing and the results looked so similar that I had to check the addon list to confirm which one was answering. Its manifest was reachable with zero problem reports on 21 July 2026. For most people leaving Torrentio, this is the shortest possible move: install it, paste the same debrid key, and carry on exactly as before.
Features:
- Familiar Torrentio Layout: results are formatted almost identically to the original addon, so the switch requires no adjustment to how you pick streams.
- Expanded Provider List: the fork adds sources on top of Torrentio’s original set, including YTS, EZTV, and 1337x among many others.
- Fast Growing Cache: the project maintains its own cache layer that has expanded steadily since launch, improving how often results resolve instantly.
- Broad Debrid Support: Real-Debrid, AllDebrid, TorBox, EasyDebrid, DebridLink, Premiumize, Offcloud, and Put.io all connect without any extra configuration steps needed.
- Clean Health Record: the community catalogue logged zero problem reports across the very same day that Torrentio accumulated thirty-one separate complaints.
- Independent Infrastructure: the fork runs on its own separate servers, so whatever congestion affects Torrentio has no bearing on whether this responds.
- I Swapped Mid-Episode: I installed it while a Torrentio stream was failing and had the same episode playing again within two minutes.
| Pros | Cons |
| Nearest thing to Torrentio itself | Younger project with shorter track record |
| More providers than the original | Smaller install base than Comet |
| Zero reported problems in 24 hours | Documentation is minimal |
| Wide debrid compatibility | Still version 1.0.0 |
Pricing: Free to install and use, with no subscription or account of its own. Full functionality assumes a separate debrid subscription, which starts at roughly €3/month with AllDebrid (checked 21 July 2026).
Link: stremio-addons.net
5) ThePirateBay+
ThePirateBay+ comes from thebeastlt, the same developer behind Torrentio itself, which makes it an interesting fallback when the flagship addon misbehaves. It focuses on a single well-known source rather than scraping two dozen, so results are narrower but arrive quickly. It is a peer-to-peer addon at heart, meaning no debrid layer sits between you and the swarm.
I would treat this as a supporting addon rather than a primary one, and its five problem reports in twenty-four hours put it in better shape than Torrentio but behind the debrid-native options above. It is free, it needs no subscription, and it will not disappear tomorrow, but the narrower source list means you will notice the gaps on older or less popular titles fairly quickly in practice.
Features:
- Same Developer Lineage: built by thebeastlt, who also created Torrentio, so the result formatting and general behaviour feel immediately familiar.
- Single Source Focus: it queries one large public tracker rather than two dozen, which keeps response times short and predictable in use.
- Covers Anime Too: the catalogue tags include anime alongside movies and series, so it is not limited to mainstream Western releases.
- Peer To Peer Streaming: streams come directly from the swarm without any debrid requirement, which suits people who do not want a subscription.
- Long Track Record: listed since October 2022 with 394 catalogued installs, giving it one of the longer histories among surviving addons.
- Still Maintained: the listing was refreshed on 8 July 2026 and its manifest responded normally on the community status page.
- I Keep It Third: I use this only as a backup when my first two addons both come back empty on an older title.
| Pros | Cons |
| Made by Torrentio’s own developer | Only five reports but not zero |
| Fast, predictable responses | Single source limits coverage |
| No debrid subscription needed | Peer-to-peer exposes your IP |
| Long, stable track record | Weak on obscure releases |
Pricing: Free to install and use, with no account, subscription, or trial. Because it streams peer-to-peer rather than through a cache, no debrid plan is needed (checked 21 July 2026).
Link: stremio-addons.net
6) Jackettio
Jackettio is the specialist choice, and it is the only addon here that will pull from private trackers you already have accounts on. Instead of scraping public torrent sites it queries a Jackett instance and hands the results to your debrid service, which means your own indexer configuration decides what you can find. That makes it powerful and demanding in equal measure.
The public ElfHosted instance carried zero problem reports when I checked, and I found it consistently returned higher-quality releases than the public scrapers, simply because private trackers hold better encodes. If you do not already run Jackett and hold accounts on private trackers, skip this one entirely and pick something higher up the list, because the setup cost will not repay you. If you do, it is comfortably the best quality-per-stream option covered here.
Features:
- Private Tracker Support: it integrates with indexers you already have accounts on, which public scrapers cannot reach under any configuration.
- Jackett Powered Search: queries route through a Jackett instance, so your own indexer list determines coverage rather than a fixed provider set.
- Debrid Resolution Built In: results are handed straight to your debrid service for instant playback rather than relying on live peer connections.
- Self Hostable Design: the project is built to run on your own hardware, which removes any dependence on a shared public instance entirely.
- Two Hosted Instances: ElfHosted runs public instances with reasonable rate limits, for people who would rather not self-host any infrastructure of their own.
- Clean Health Record: zero problem reports were logged against it in the twenty-four hours before the catalogue was checked on 21 July 2026.
- My Best Encodes: I consistently pulled better release quality from this than from any public scraper during side-by-side testing on the same titles.
| Pros | Cons |
| Reaches private trackers | Requires a Jackett setup |
| Best release quality in testing | Least beginner-friendly here |
| Fully self-hostable | English-language interface only |
| Zero reported problems | Useless without tracker accounts |
Pricing: Free and open source, with no paid tier. The public ElfHosted instance is free; a private instance is $9/month (checked 21 July 2026). A debrid subscription and Jackett access are separate.
Link: jackettio.elfhosted.com
7) StremThru Torz
StremThru Torz takes a different approach to everything else here: instead of scraping torrent sites on demand, it serves a crowdsourced index that users contribute to collectively. That makes it fast and unusually resistant to the provider outages that quietly shrink Torrentio’s results, because there is no scraper to break. The trade-off is coverage, since the index only holds what the community has added.
I found it excellent for popular releases and thin for anything obscure. With eighty-one catalogued installs it is the smallest addon in this comparison, but version 0.102.1 shows a project being iterated on constantly rather than left to drift. Think of it as a fast, dependable second opinion rather than a full replacement for a scraper-based addon, and it earns its place.
Features:
- Crowdsourced Index: results come from a shared community database rather than live scraping, which sidesteps the provider outages that break scraper-based addons.
- Very Fast Responses: querying a static index is quicker than contacting two dozen torrent sites, and the difference is obvious on slower hardware.
- No Scraper Fragility: when a torrent site goes offline the index is unaffected, so your results do not silently thin out over time.
- Frequent Releases: version 0.102.1 reflects an unusually high release cadence for a Stremio addon, suggesting genuine ongoing maintenance.
- Debrid Compatible: it hands resolved links to your debrid service in the same way the scraper-based addons do, with no unusual setup.
- Lightweight Footprint: the addon adds very little overhead to Stremio, which matters on an entry-level Fire TV Stick with limited memory.
- I Pair It Up: I run this alongside Comet rather than alone, because together they cover the gaps each one leaves.
| Pros | Cons |
| Immune to scraper outages | Coverage limited to indexed content |
| Very fast result lists | Smallest install base here |
| Frequent version releases | Weak on obscure or old titles |
| Light on device resources | Best used as a secondary addon |
Pricing: Free to install and use, with no paid tier of its own. As with the other addons here, instant playback assumes a debrid subscription such as TorBox from $3/month (checked 21 July 2026).
Link: stremio-addons.net
How Many Addons Should You Actually Install?
More is not better here, and an overloaded addon list is its own cause of slow, messy results. There is a sensible middle ground that most setups should aim for.
- Two Or Three Sources: that range covers almost everything without producing the duplicated results and long waits that larger lists create.
- Mix The Types: pair a broad scraper with an index-based addon, so a scraper outage does not empty your list completely on its own.
- One Catalogue Addon: a single metadata provider is enough, and running several creates duplicate entries that trigger the mismatch problems described earlier.
- Prune Dead Entries: addons whose servers have gone offline still get queried and slow every search down, so remove them when they stop answering.
- Order Matters Little: Stremio queries addons in parallel rather than in sequence, so arranging them carefully makes no measurable difference to results.
What Actually Changes When You Add a Debrid Service
This is worth quantifying rather than asserting. I ran the same twenty-title set with a debrid account connected and again without one, and the difference was not where I expected it.
- Empty Lists Barely Moved: the number of titles returning nothing at all changed very little, because finding links is the addon’s job rather than the debrid service’s.
- Playable Results Jumped: what changed sharply was how many listed streams actually started, since cached copies play immediately instead of waiting on seeders.
- Older Titles Benefited Most: back-catalogue films with single-figure seeder counts went from unwatchable to instant, which is the clearest argument for subscribing.
- It Fixes The Wrong Thing: if your complaint is genuinely an empty list, add another stream addon first, because debrid will not populate it for you.
- Costs Stay Low: plans start at roughly three euros monthly, which our debrid services comparison breaks down in full detail.
Verdict:
“No streams were found” is Stremio being honest rather than broken. In my testing the cause was a missing stream addon far more often than anything else, followed by a dead debrid key and then a genuinely unseeded title.
- AIOStreams: the most complete fix if you are willing to spend an hour configuring it, because it consolidates every source and debrid account behind one list.
- MediaFusion: the best single choice for anyone whose empty lists are on non-English or regional titles, thanks to its multilingual catalogues.
- Comet: the quickest way to go from an empty list to working streams, and the addon I would install first on a brand-new Stremio setup.
FAQs
What does “no streams were found” mean in Stremio?
It means every stream addon you have installed was queried for that title and none returned a playable result. It is an empty answer rather than a crash. Stremio ships with a metadata addon only, so a fresh install shows this on every title.
Is Stremio broken when this message appears?
No. The message means every installed addon was queried and none returned a result for that specific title. The app is working as designed. In my testing the fault was in the addon list, the debrid key, or the title itself rather than Stremio.
Why do some films work but others show nothing?
Scattered failures point at indexing or identifier matching rather than configuration. Anime identified by Kitsu instead of IMDb, series with non-standard season numbering, very new releases, and obscure back-catalogue titles were the categories that failed most consistently in my testing.
Can a dead debrid key cause this error?
Yes, and it is one of the least obvious causes. An expired subscription or a regenerated API token stops links resolving, and most addons report that as no results rather than as an authentication failure. Check your debrid dashboard first.
Will a VPN fix no streams were found?
Only when the cause is network-level blocking, which shows up as every title failing at once. Test on a mobile hotspot first. If streams appear there, a VPN or a DNS change will help; otherwise it will make no difference at all.
Does the error mean I installed the wrong addon type?
Often, yes. The catalogue mixes metadata addons, which supply posters and lists, with stream addons, which supply playable links. Look for entries tagged torrents, debrid support, or http streams. Cinemeta, installed by default, provides metadata only.
