XS News Review

Summary

XS News has been running since 2005 out of the Netherlands. They're one of a handful of providers sitting on the Abavia backbone, which makes them genuinely independent of the Omicron family that controls Newshosting, Eweka, Easynews, and most of the other big names. If you're building a multi-provider setup in SABnzbd or NZBGet and you want real backbone diversity, XS News is one of the providers that actually delivers it.

The numbers are respectable: 3,800+ days retention, 134,000+ newsgroups, 99.8% completion rate, and 100 Gbit/s backbone uplinks. They won't blow the doors off the retention charts, but they cover the practical range that most users need. Where XS News gets interesting is pricing. Annual plans start at $3.75/mo for the Basic tier, and block accounts are non-expiring with 200 connections included. That's a lot of connections for a block account.

The site design looks like it was built in the early 2010s and hasn't changed much since. That's cosmetic, not functional. The service behind it works fine. They've recently added a US server location, which is a meaningful upgrade for North American users who previously had to route everything through Europe. XS News isn't going to top anyone's "best overall" list, but it fills a specific role well: affordable, independent backbone access with fair pricing and no surprises.

Plans and Pricing

XS News runs three tiers on both monthly and annual billing. The annual pricing is where the value sits, with 25-40% discounts depending on the tier.

The Elite plan at $5.98/mo annual is the obvious pick for anyone who actually downloads regularly. Unlimited speed, 100 connections, and the per-month cost is barely more than a fancy coffee. The Basic plan exists for people who want a cheap backup provider and don't need throughput. The Pro plan is fine but the gap between Pro and Elite is so small on annual billing that there's not much reason to stop at 50 Mbit.

Monthly pricing is reasonable but not exceptional. If you're testing the service, they also offer a 5-day pass, which is a better way to try before committing to even a monthly plan. Most providers don't offer anything like that.

All pricing is available in EUR, USD, and GBP. The site supports multiple languages and currencies natively, so European users aren't stuck converting from USD and eating exchange fees.

Block Accounts

Block accounts are where XS News quietly stands out. Four tiers, all non-expiring, all with 200 connections.

200 connections on a block account is generous. Most providers cap block connections at 30 or 50. The non-expiring aspect matters too. You buy a 1 TB block, use it over two years as a backup fill, and the remaining data doesn't vanish at some arbitrary cutoff. The 5 TB block at $59.95 is currently on sale and works out to about $0.012 per GB, which is competitive with anything else on the market.

For multi-provider setups, an XS News block on the Abavia backbone paired with an unlimited subscription on a different backbone is a clean, cost-effective configuration. You get backbone diversity without paying two monthly subscriptions.

Backbone and Infrastructure

XS News runs on the Abavia backbone. This is one of the few truly independent backbones still operating. It's not Omicron. It's not a reseller. The article paths are distinct, which means pairing XS News with an Omicron-family provider gives you genuine fill redundancy.

Infrastructure includes servers in both Europe and the United States. The US server is a relatively new addition and it's a welcome one. Before that, North American users were hitting European endpoints and dealing with transatlantic latency on connection setup. With the US server, latency drops and throughput consistency improves for anyone west of the Atlantic.

Backbone uplinks run at 100 Gbit/s. That's plenty of headroom. Individual user speed is still constrained by your plan tier, but the backbone capacity means you're not fighting congestion at the provider level during peak hours. The infrastructure is serious even if the marketing is quiet about it.

Here's something most XS News reviews miss: Usenet.Prime sells subscription packages that include XS News access on the Abavia backbone alongside their own service. Same XS News experience, more coverage in one account. If you were going to buy XS News anyway, the Prime bundle is usually the smarter purchase. Read the Prime review

Retention and Completion

3,800+ days of binary retention across 134,000+ newsgroups. That's roughly 10.4 years of articles available for download. It's not the deepest retention in the market. Omicron-backed providers push past 5,000 days. But 3,800 days covers the overwhelming majority of what people actually look for. Content older than a decade is niche territory, and most of it has been reposted within the retention window anyway.

Completion sits at 99.8% according to XS News, and that tracks with what I've seen in testing. Recent content pulls down clean with minimal par2 repair needed. Older content near the retention boundary gets spottier, which is normal for any provider. The 99.8% figure is credible for content within the first few years of the retention window.

If you're after maximum retention depth above all else, XS News isn't the answer. But if you want solid completion on the content you'll actually download, 3,800+ days at 99.8% is a practical, honest number. No inflated claims here.

Speed and Connections

Connection counts range from 10 on Basic to 100 on Elite and 200 on block accounts. The Elite tier at 100 connections with unlimited speed is more than enough to saturate most residential connections. I've had no trouble filling a gigabit pipe on the Elite plan from the EU servers, and the new US server performs similarly for North American users.

Speed is where plan selection matters. The Basic plan caps at 10 Mbit, which is fine as a background fill provider but won't work as a primary if you have any kind of modern broadband. The Pro plan at 50 Mbit is usable. The Elite plan removes the cap entirely. If you're buying XS News as a primary provider, just get Elite. The annual price difference between Pro and Elite is barely $1.00/mo.

Block accounts at 200 connections with no speed cap are particularly well-suited for fill duty. You point SABnzbd or NZBGet at the XS News block as a backup server, give it a high connection count, and it hammers through missing articles fast when your primary misses something. That's the ideal use case for these blocks.

Security and Privacy

XS News supports TLS/SSL with 256-bit encryption on all connections. Standard ports, standard configuration. Works out of the box with every NNTP client. They maintain a no-logs policy, which is about as good as you can verify from the outside. Netherlands-based operations fall under Dutch privacy law, which is generally favorable compared to some other jurisdictions.

There's no VPN bundled with the service. If you want a VPN, you'll need to source that separately. For Usenet specifically, SSL encryption on the NNTP connection is what matters, and that's fully supported here. Your ISP sees encrypted traffic to a Usenet server. They don't see article content or newsgroup names.

The combination of SSL encryption and no-logs policy is table stakes for any Usenet provider in 2026, and XS News checks both boxes without making a big production out of it.

Payment Options

Seven payment methods is a solid lineup. The crypto options (Bitcoin and Ethereum) matter for users who want to keep their Usenet subscription off their credit card statement. iDEAL support makes sense given the company's Dutch roots, and SEPA/Wero coverage handles the broader European market.

Multi-currency support in EUR, USD, and GBP means you see pricing in your local currency without having to do mental math or get hit with conversion fees from your bank. It's a small thing, but it signals a provider that actually thinks about the user experience outside of the US market.

What Users Say

XS News has a smaller community footprint than the big Omicron brands or the top-tier independents. You won't find hundreds of threads about them on r/usenet. The conversations that do exist tend to be practical: people asking about Abavia backbone compatibility, block account value, or how XS News compares to other non-Omicron options.

Trustpilot reviews lean positive. Users mention reliability and value for money as common themes. Complaints, when they show up, tend to focus on the older site design and the fact that retention doesn't match the deepest providers. Neither of those is a deal-breaker for most users.

The smaller community presence isn't necessarily a negative. It means XS News doesn't attract the kind of attention that leads to aggressive DMCA targeting, and it means the infrastructure isn't oversubscribed by users who signed up because of a viral Reddit thread. Quiet providers that do their job without drama have real value in a multi-provider setup.

Users who run XS News as a secondary or fill provider alongside an Omicron subscription report good results. The Abavia backbone fills gaps that Omicron misses, which is exactly what you want from backbone diversity. That's the use case where XS News gets its best reviews.

Final Thoughts

XS News is a solid middle-tier provider that earns its place through backbone independence and fair pricing. The Abavia backbone gives you genuine diversity against the Omicron family. Retention at 3,800+ days covers the practical range. Block accounts with 200 connections and no expiration are some of the best-value blocks in the market. The addition of a US server addressed the biggest infrastructure gap they had.

It won't win awards for website design. It doesn't have the deepest retention. It doesn't bundle a VPN or offer post-quantum encryption. But it does what a Usenet provider should do: deliver articles reliably, offer reasonable pricing, and stay out of your way. If you need an affordable backup on an independent backbone, or if you want a primary provider that costs less than $6.00/mo on annual billing, XS News does the job.

For power users building a multi-backbone configuration, an XS News block paired with an Omicron unlimited plan is one of the most cost-effective setups available. You get backbone diversity for the price of a single block purchase. That's the play here, and it's why XS News keeps showing up in experienced users' server lists year after year.