BLOCKNEWS

Blocks run at full speed. There is no throttled cheap tier here, which matters more on a fill account than it sounds, since a slow backup feed turns every repair into a wait. Our US/EU bench held 624 to 645 Mb/s on 50 SSL connections, flat across the pull. Lower than the leaders and entirely adequate for the job: a fill feed is asked for a handful of missing articles, not a sustained gigabit.

Advertised at 4,500+ days, around twelve years, and the deepest of the four providers added to this board in the 2026-08 roster change. That number is the whole reason to consider BlockNews over a cheaper European block: a fill feed is only useful if it reaches back further than the gaps you are filling, and 4,500 days clears the Dutch independents by several years. Retention is depth, not completeness. But on a backup account, depth is most of what you are buying.

NetNews, with US and EU spools. A real network rather than a rebadged reseller feed, which is why this scores respectably for a slot-twelve entry. The important caveat is family: BlockNews is the sister brand to Frugal Usenet, which runs NetNews/Abavia on its primary, so buying both is buying one network twice. Against a UsenetExpress or Omicron primary, though, NetNews is genuinely separate infrastructure and does the job a fill feed exists to do.

Claimed at 99%+. Completion, the share of requested articles that actually arrive, is the only axis a block account really has to win, because that is its entire function: you point your reader at it after the primary comes up short. In our checks it recovered articles the shallower European feeds could not, which is the deep-retention advantage doing exactly what you paid for.

Four hosts (news., usnews., eunews. and eunews2.) on SSL 563, 443 and 5563, with fifty connections. Both US and EU spools, which is better coverage than several full subscriptions on this board offer, and useful on a fill account because you want it reachable from wherever the primary is not.

US and EU, which for a backup feed is the right shape: you want it geographically unlike your primary rather than everywhere at once. No APAC, no documented IPv6. The plaintext port list (119, 23, 2000, 8080, 9000) is there for restrictive networks; use 563 or 443 and leave the rest alone.

256-bit SSL, US jurisdiction, and documentation that is adequate rather than notable. There is no detailed logging policy to praise or criticise, which puts BlockNews mid-board by default. On a block account bought to fill gaps behind a primary you already trust, that is a smaller concern than it would be on a sole subscription. But it is worth being clear that the reason this axis is unremarkable is a shortage of published detail, not a record of problems.

None, and on a block-only provider that is entirely coherent. Nobody buys a fill feed for its bundled software. Your NNTP session is encrypted by SSL either way, and a VPN would conceal that the session exists rather than protect what it carries. Absent feature, low score, no complaint.

Cards, PayPal and Bitcoin. Advertised August 2026: from around $0.20/GB, with blocks that never expire, which is the pricing model that makes this whole category work, since an unused fill feed costs you nothing while it waits. There is no monthly subscription to renew, no promo rate to spring back, and nothing to cancel. For a backup account that is close to the ideal commercial shape.