Usenet Providers

This is a (probably incomplete) list of Usenet providers, in alphabetical order. Included are pay-access Usenet providers who sell accounts to individuals, free providers, a few web-based services, and shell-account providers. Providers who do only outsourcing but do not sell individual accounts are not included. Presence here should not be taken as an endorsement, and lack of presence here should not be taken as lack of endorsement. If you run a Usenet service, and you're not listed here, or the information is incorrect, contact me.

All prices below are the month-to-month prices, not reflecting any discounts for long-term prepayment, and are in US dollars, unless otherwise noted.

If you were planning to email me to ask me which service I recommend, please don't. I am currently employed by one of the below providers, so I do not give recommendations as I would be biased.

Airnews
Base pricing of $9.95/month for 300k access, with faster speeds and a cheaper no-binaries account available. Service level tops out at 4 megabit/sec with 6 connections available and no download limit at all, for $99.95/month, including an email account as well.
AllTheNewsgroups
Service offered by Voicenet. Starts at $5.95 for 2 gig/month, or $9.95 for 10 gig/month, with higher limits available.
Altopia
Claim to fame is being “uncensored,” meaning no cancels, no spam filtering, and no newsgroups removed no matter how bogus. Tiered pricing according to the download speed you want. Starts at $6/month for a no-binaries account, and $12/month for full access at 32k speed.
Archives News Service
Offers NNTP and Web (using DNewsWeb) access for $6.95 per month. Web site is apparently currently down (March 2004).
Astraweb
Unlimited downloads based on speed limit, or capped downloads with no speed limit. $10/month gets you unlimited volume at a 600k speed limit, $15/month for 2M speed. Metered plans start at $10 for 25 gigs, with the account not expiring until you use up the quota.
Ball and Ball
No longer in operation.
Barditch
Located in Texas. $15/month. While they have an unsatisfactory rating with the BBB, read their response before coming to any conclusions. They also continue (as of March 2004) to spam Usenet with advertisments for themselves.
Buzzard News
Service offered by California Prime Line. Starts at $6.95/month, with a limit of either 1.5 gigs/day or 20 gigs/month. Offers plans with unlimited downloads at high speed. Also offers a free web-based service (registration required).
Claranews
Service located in the UK, offered by Clara.net, a UK Internet service provider. Accounts start at £29.99/year with a 10 gig/month limit.
Easynews
Offers NNTP access as well as a web-based interface with pre-decoded files from binary groups. $9.98 for one month or 6 gigs of downloads, whichever comes first. Confusingly, they only count 75% of your NNTP downloads toward the limit (attempting to compensate for encoding overhead), so the limit for NNTP is actually 8 gigs/month. Headers are not counted. Website includes interesting status reports about the service, including pictures of their equipment, though these have not been updated recently. Currently among the longest binary retention available. Not to be confused with easynews.de, easynews.net, or EasyUsenet, none of which are related to this service.
Easynews.de
This service is in Germany, and the website is in German. This is not the same as easynews.com, but, confusingly enough, is the same as easynews.net. 4.60 Euros per month. A free 2-week trial is available.
Eskimo North
Eskimo North sells remote-access shell accounts that also include NNTP access to their full-feed news server. Their shell services are among the more extensive still available these days, including email, webspace, ftp space, and mailing lists. $9/month.
Giganews
Tiered pricing according to download volume, starting at $11.95 for a 10 gig monthly limit. Long retention, aggressive pricing.
GlobalNews
In Italian. Offers a free web interface, and NNTP access for 25,000 Lira per month.
Gradwell
Located in the UK, Gradwell offers text-only Usenet service for 20 UKP per year.
GUBA
The Gigantic Usenet Binaries Archive stores pictures and videos from Usenet groups and makes them available and searchable via a web interface. $10/month.
Individual.net
DFN-CIS (FU Berlin)
This free (registration required), text-only Usenet service was formerly known as DFN-CIS or FU Berlin. It is operated by Freie Universität Berlin, in Germany. They require a valid email address on all posts and provide no binary groups.
Meganetnews
Meganetnews offers accounts with pricing starting at $5.95/month with a 100 meg/day download limit, up to $64.95/month for 5 gigs/day. Also offers a web interface, and SSL access. Their association with NNTPServer is reported to be a managed hosting arrangement; they do not use the same servers as the resellers.
Mes-news.com
Free service (registration required) offering both NNTP and web access (and dialup UUCP, if you're into that sort of thing). The site is in French and has no English version.
Msen
No longer offering this service.
Netcom UK
Netcom's free Usenet service has been discontinued due to abuse. Thanks to the spammers and flooders for destroying yet another valuable resource.
News2Me
This is a new, web-based service for binary groups. Posting is not supported. $9.95/month with a 50 gig/month limit.
Newscene
Located in Omaha, but has a server on the US east coast and one returning soon on the west coast. $12.99/month for a 5 gig/month download limit, with higher limits available. Headers are not counted. Will sell speed-capped, unlimited accounts on special request. Newscene's service appears to be resold by Premium News, with web pages and pricing in German.
News Dudes
No longer in operation.
Newsfeeds
Advertises uncensored access and anonymous posting ability. Has several different servers including “specialized” servers for such things as binaries, mp3s, etc. $9.95/month for basic access; $19.95/month for “premium” access including all the various specialized servers. There are daily per-server download limits, which vary from one server to another and depending on which level of service you purchase. They have a chart detailing their convoluted range of options here. Note that the same level of “anonymity” is offered by many of the other premium providers. For binary users, taking advantage of this service pretty much requires a multi-server binary downloader. Users report that moderated groups are not configured correctly. Binaries.net and Usenet.com appear to be Newsfeeds.com operating under different names.
Newsfeeds.com Resellers
There are a number of companies reselling Newsfeeds.com service. Newsfeeds has recently changed their reseller deals so that reseller accounts no longer have access to the regular Newsfeeds servers, but to dedicated servers for the resellers. Reseller accounts are download-limited, but the limits (and prices) will vary from one reseller to another, so shop around. Newsfeeds resellers include: Anonymousnewsfeed.com, BillyNews, CEGI, CIT-News, EterNews, Hotgroups, NapaSoftware, Newsgroup.co.uk, Privacy.to, Spidernews, Sucknews.com, TheNewsgroups.com, UncensoredNewsfeed.com (aka Supernewsfeed.com, aka Netfeeds.net, aka XXXNewsfeed), Usenet-access.com, Usenet-X, XXXNetnews.com, and XXX-News (aka Adult-usenet.com). Resellers Alibis.com, Budgetnews, and UsenetNewsServer.Com still offer access to all of the "main" Newsfeeds servers.
Newshosting
Provides a text-only account, speed limited to 120k with no access to the binary groups, for $5/month; and a full-access account with an 8 gig/month limit for $10/month. You can restart your month if you reach your limit before it ends. Shared Secrets, TitanNews, UsenetGuide, and AtlantisNews all appear to be reselling Newshosting service.
Newsguy
Home of the SpamHippo spam filter. $39.95/year or $5.95/month for “basic” access 3 gig/month download limit), and $99.95/year or $14.95/month for “extra” access with a 15 gig/month limit. Also offers a 30 gig/month account for $29.95. Includes two email accounts, webspace, and a web interface to Usenet. NNTPJunkie appears to be reselling Newsguy service for $9.95/month with a 30 gig/month limit (and their website is a clone of Newsguy's).
NewsRanger
Web-based Usenet access for $2.95 for 5 days, and then $4.95 per month thereafter. No longer giving out free accounts. No access to alt.binaries groups.
Newsreader.com
Offers both web-based access and NNTP access. The web interface is designed to be a “good newsreader” rather than a “good website.” Binaries are decoded inline. $8.95/month.
News-Service
Located in Amsterdam. 7 Euros per month with a 5 gig/month limit. This service is also resold by Premium Usenet (£6 per month and up), Cyberdream ($12.95 first month, $11.50/month thereafter) NewsDome ($9.95/month for 10 gigs) (also resells NNTPServer, also does business as News4u2), and HornyRob ($12.50/month).
News-Services.com
Does not appear to sell individual accounts any more.
Newsville
Service offered by Virtual Interactive Center. $11.95/month for unlimited service.
NewzPig
This service appears to be dead. There were a number of reports just before they disappeared of users getting multiple charges on their credit cards, and thus far I have not heard any reports of these charges being refunded by NewzPig.
NNTPServer
NNTPServer is outsourcing-only (no individual accounts), but individual accounts there are sold by a number of resellers. The reseller arrangements are somewhat mysterious, including straight reselling arrangements, managed hosting, and server colocation, but the various resellers usually pretend to be running their own servers and it is difficult to determine whether they do in fact have their own servers or are selling access to NNTPServer's machines. NNTPServer has server farms on the US east and west coasts. Services which appear or are known to be involved with NNTPServer include:
1Usenet
$3.95/month for 100 megs/day, higher limits available. Upfront about being a reseller.
BubbaNews
Web-based and NNTP, $9.95/month, also with a free account option.
EasyUsenet
Web-based and NNTP, $9.95/month.
NewsDome
Also resells News-service.com. Starts at $5.95/month for 250 megs/day. Also does business as News4u2, with different price packages.
OnlyNews
$7.95/month, 250 meg/day limit.
SonicNews
$3.99/month for 100 megs/day, higher limits available. Reported to be a managed hosting arrangement with NNTPServer.
TeraNews
Free (with $3.95 setup fee) for 50 megs/day, $7.95/month for 250 megs/day.
ValueNews
$3.95/month for 100 megs/day, $16.95/month for 1.5 gigs/day, for all available reseller servers, and also includes access to Newsfeeds.com reseller servers.
NuthinButNews
Offers a variety of pricing options according to daily download limits and the number of simultaneous streams allowed. Starts at $5.95/month for a 50 meg/day limit with 3 streams, or $9.95/month for 100 meg/day. Also has a free, non-binary web-based interface. A DNewsWeb interface including binary groups is also provided for subscribers.
Nyx
Nyx offers free Unix shell accouts which include newsreading access. They don't provide NNTP access to their news server, but if you are a shell user this could be an option. Also includes email and web space. Requires identification to get an account.
Omeganews
No longer exists.
Randori
Randori is now reselling service from Usenetserver.
Slurp News
Individual accounts are $14.95/month with no download limit. (The web page plays music when you load it, shut off your speakers if you're at work.)
Supernews
Sophisticated spam filtering. Tiered pricing, $10.95/month with a 10 gig/month download limit, or $4.95/month for text-group access only. Has recently increased binary retention dramatically. Auto-processes signed control messages in the Big-8 and many other hierarchies. Supernews service is resold by Panic, including a bundle with their Unison newsreader, and by Forté, makers of the Windows Agent newsreader (only the metered accounts here are from Supernews). Usenet Planet also resells Supernews access, rate-limited to 256k, for $9.95/month.
Triton
$25 for 3 months, with no monthly accounts available. Website is sparse with information, but doesn't mention any download limits.
Uncensored-News
As the name suggests, the selling point here is uncensored, unlogged access. $9.95/30 days, 500 meg/day download limit. Higher limits are available, including $100/30 days for unlimited service. Not to be confused with uncensorednewsfeed.com, which is a Newsfeeds.com reseller with a similar name.
Usenet Binaries
This is a web-based service for downloading pre-decoded binaries from Usenet groups. Picture groups can be viewed as thumbnails. $9.95/month for full unlimited access. A free account is available to try out the service, with a 3 meg/day download limit.
Usenet Replayer
Free, web-based Usenet access.
UsenetServer
Offering unlimited downloads, speed limited to 2 megabits per second, for $14.95/month. Their web-based service at Webusenet.com appears to have been discontinued. The unlimited accounts at Forté are resold from Usenetserver, and Randori accounts now are as well.

A comparison table of some providers, including price, download limits, and connection limits, can be found here.

Another list of Usenet providers (which also includes outsourcing and feed providers) can be found here.

If you were planning to email me to ask me which service I recommend, please don't. I am currently employed by one of the above providers, so I do not give recommendations as I would be biased.

Usenet stuff  |  Providers  |  by Jeremy Nixon, copyright © 2003  |  updated 22 June 2004