this post was submitted on 07 Mar 2026
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This was one of my biggest motivations for moving to usenet. I don't like exposing myself by seeding. I have a giant folder full of copyright notices forwarded by my ISP because of it, and I don't want to pay for a vpn as it's far more expensive than usenet and just moves the problem/target to the vpn provider.
But an ssl connection to a usenet server goes unnoticed... Plus WAY faster download speeds, far more consistency in available files, and less spam/garbage content (at least in my experience, anecdotal).
Torrents took anywhere from an hour to multiple days before either completing or giving up and trying a different torrent. And then there's the seeding process ontop.
NZBs (usenet) take at the very most, 5min to finish or fail, at which point a new one can be tried automatically by sonarr/radarr if it had failed. Requests for media are now pretty much always ready to watch within 25min of requesting, and most of that is waiting for the library scan to trigger (I'm using SAMBA so filesystem updates can't trigger scans automatically, they're on a timer instead)
How do I get started with Usenet? I'm on a private tracker right now which has excellent speeds (maxes out my 500 Mbit connection usually, so I can't tell what speeds I might achieve if fully utilized), but it would of course be nice not having to seed.
Things you need:
A Usenet provider such as EasyNews or Astraweb. Usenet services host the content. Be aware that some services like GigaNews just rehost from the same pool of servers as a lot of others, also a tad scummy. There’s a lot to look into here for features like connection limits, retention, and download speed. You can also purchase “block accounts” which let you buy blocks of data to use on demand with no expiration. Astraweb is great for this as a secondary source since they have their own servers and can host different content than other hosts. Look for promo codes online when signing up for one as you can usually get solid rates via referrals for like $7-$15 a month. Block accounts can run like $25 for 100GB of download.
A Usenet downloading client like SabNZBD for downloading NZB files (pronounced: newzbins)
An Indexer, such as Drunken Slug, NZBGeek, NZB Finder, or OMGWTFNZBs. Indexers help you find the content you’re looking for in the giant pool of hosted content on Usenet services. Usually good to have more than 1 indexer, even if using a free account on another. Usually run about $15 a year.
Usenet can be tied into Arrs programs like Sonarr and Radarr for automated downloading which makes things a lot easier especially when you set up your library correctly. See Trash Guides for help with this.
Personally I recommend running this all through Docker, but it’s not necessary.
Also even with Usenet, I’d still recommend a VPN. Can never be too safe.
You've done a pretty good job here, so I'll just add this:
A map of providers and some info on their benefits.
https://www.ngprovider.com/current-usenet-map.php
There's also a ton of info about usenet, how it works, and what to look for, on that site. (you may have to manually go to the homepage to see the rest)
Wow, I’ve never seen this before. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks so much for this.
So like, I'm looking to spend at least $15/month unless I can get a discount via a promo code? Might as well start paying for Netflix at that point. Right now I'm running up $0/month with access to anything I want at top speeds for my high speed connection. I don't know if using Usenet is worth it for my situation.
IIRC there’s some cheaper ones out there around $5, but it’s been a long time since I’ve shopped for a Usenet service. The way I look at it is I’m not having to pay for Netflix, Prime, Peacock, Disney +, HBO, HiDive, etc. just to watch the shows and movies I want. I do pay for Crunchyroll, but that’s mostly because I don’t want to pull and store long shows like One Piece, but that might change with their recent price increase.
Right, same with my private torrent tracker but for $0/month. I don't think Usenet is for me, I guess. Maybe if my tracker gets nuked somehow, which it hasn't after like 20 years, then I'll have to consider Usenet. 😅
For me, Usenet isn't about availability; but speed, risk exposure, and convenience.
Torrents take longer, even with lots of quality seeds and fast network speeds; mostly because of the seeding process. Plus, while you are seeding: you have to publicly expose yourself as a content host, even if just through a VPN. Hosts are what copyright holders target, they don't GAF about the people downloading, they try to take down the hosts to stop the spread. Finally you have to keep the content you downloaded in the format you downloaded, at least until seeding is done.
I prefer to use Tdarr to automatically transcode downloaded content into h265 (HEVC) to reduce it's size. Most content is found in h264 (AVC); converting it, on average, reduces its size by ~30% while maintaining good quality. Overall this step has saved me at least ~7TB so far (Tdarr reports it's saved 4.8TB, but I converted a ton of stuff with Embys convert feature before implementing Tdarr). That conversion can only be done after seeding or the torrent breaks as the original files are no longer available to seed. Usenet removes the seeding step completely, so I can do whatever I want with the files as soon as they've downloaded, which in it self only takes 5min.
VPN is probably a good idea regardless of what you use, yeah. I haven't used a VPN in 20+ years of pirating. 😅 Probably a bad idea. 🫣
Torrents I'm fine with seeding. I never stop seeding my downloads. More data for the people!
I only download H.265 releases, so no need to reencode. I just dump all my downloaded movies in a movies/ directory, and all my shows in series/{Show Name}/{season XX boxset}/. Plex recognized everything fine, and now Jellyfin does as well after ditching Plex (because Plex don't give af about their users, as I've noticed, story for another time).
I'm surprised Usenet content is mostly just H.264. sounds a bit behind the times.
Anyway, filled one 4 TB recently which is like ten years old, recently been getting closer and closer to filling a 10 TB drive, and got a completely unused 24 TB drive waiting to be installed. Bought while storage was still cheap. 😅 Should be set for the coming years.
That together with the top speeds of my tracker, and free price, hard to beat unless you're worried about your ISP cracking down on you (which I'm not really as I'm based east of the pond).
I think I'll hold off on Usenet for the time being.
I appreciate all the advice! 🌹
I don't have time rn, I'm literally leaving for work rn; but I'll write up some details later tonight if nobody else has.
Following
You need a download client (eg. SABnzbd) and an account with an indexer (which will cost money). To automate the process of downloading you can put things like Sonarr/Radarr/Lidarr on top, but those are optional.
See my comment above
I don't understand why usenet is a thing. It really liked it in the early days and it was basically like lemmy. Groups for different topics and also federated. Now it's used to distribute warez but since it wasn't made for it so stuff has to be base64 encoded and split into pieces....
I think most people don’t realize that Usenet is older than the World Wide Web. It’s still a thing because it wasn’t corporatized like the Web was.
AT&T used to include Usenet access as part of your Internet connection since both Usenet and the Web are on the Internet but they quit doing that some years ago (back in the halcyon days of DSL).
And this was commonly seen as a Bad Thing (see the Eternal September) because normies change the culture of specialist spaces when they show up in large numbers.
You say that like it's an issue. With modern Usenet binary downloaders (SABnzbd) and indexers, you don't have to browse groups. In fact you most likely can't. The indexer provides you with the map where the files are located (the nzb files) and SABnzbd finds them, starts downloading them, checks if all files are downloadable and keeps going or stops if there aren't even enough files available to attempt a repair.
All of that is abstracted from the user. You tell Radarr/Sonarr what movie/series you want and it will handle everything, from querying the indexers to passing the nzb along to SABnzbd and to automatically restart the process if somehow the download fails.
It's a shame no one uses Usenet for its original purpose though. It was reddit before the internet itself.
From a user perspective it's not a problem. I'm just sad what an abomination my beloved pre-reddit has become. Also it's super weird like using bicycles for international shipping instead of container ships without telling the user and hiding the whole process in the background.
Yeah I totally get what you mean. Keep it mind that Usenet was already abandoned in the traditional sense by the time the warez scene took it over. Silver lining is that warez is keeping it alive. We could still keep it going in discussion groups.
Are you still using Usenet as it was meant for? Do you know of any newsgroup that are particularly active to this day?
I'm not using it any more and I last time I tried it was overwhelmed with spam. I agree that warez are keeping it alive nowadays. At least it's infrastructure, the soul is gone.
On a side note: There are still a few active BBSs around.
It's more under the radar since it's harder to do