NNTP server recs please

Eternal September

AIOE

Any one of the many paid usenet providers. Random "best of" page from a DuckDuckGo search:

news.individual.net ?10/year

I'm happy with eternal-september.org. It's completely free to register and use, and it has always seemed competently run. It does not carry any binary groups.

Retention is claimed to be 160 days for the big-8 hierarchies, but all groups I've looked at have posts dating back at least a couple of years and often longer.

If you need binary groups and/or longer retention times, Giganews advertises 17+ years retention for text groups and 3+ years for binary groups. I don't have personal experience with them, though.

Rayner

I am also happy with the free service from Eternal September - in your OP you didnt say if you were willing to consider a paid service ?

FYI I just loaded up about 118,000 news headers from rec.crafts.metalworking and there seems to be readable items (not just headers) going back to around 2009

It will cost you nothing to look

AT

I use GigaNews, their $7.99 a month service. It works VERY well.

Jon

us.newsleecher.com

Pricing

The $3.99 package does not include USENET downloads from Newsleecher, only the use of their search service. The Pure Usenet package is USENET access only and the Ready-to-Go package offers both the search service and USENET access. Name Price Download Limits Connections Client Plus $3.99/month Search Only, No Downloads None Pure Usenet $9.49/month Unlimited 30 Ready-to-Go $11.99/month Unlimited + Newsreader 30

That's what I use. I haven't had any problems with it.