Retention is the number every provider leads with, and it has quietly become the least useful spec in the market. It measures the age of the oldest article, not how much of the old feed survived — and it is a property of the backbone, not the brand you bought it from.
The honest case for and against. Encrypted NNTP already does the job most people buy a VPN to do — so what is the VPN actually for?
Retention gets all the attention, but the legal regime a backbone runs under quietly decides which articles vanish. The same NZB loses different parts on a DMCA feed than on an NTD one — and that gap is the whole case for diversity.
The market looks like dozens of independent providers. It collapses to about six backbones. Knowing which brand sits on which feed is the difference between real redundancy and paying twice for the same articles.
A block account is not a cheap unlimited plan — it is backbone insurance. Here is what to actually buy in 2026, and the one rule that decides whether it does anything for you.
UsenetAgency and UsenetPrime both ran promotions on r/usenet in the same week. Read as a buyer, they are a clean study in contrasts: backbone, billing model, and what the comment section tells you.
"Accepts Bitcoin" tells you nothing on its own. The processor behind the checkout decides whether you stayed anonymous or just handed your ID to BitPay.