[zamadatix]

You do need to pay but I would stay away from any provider still charging more based on how much bandwidth or transfer you're using, they are likely just extremely outdated or plain overpriced not actually better. Frugal Usenet for $50/y is where I'd point anyone but there are tons of good alternatives too so that's not the only place people should check out by any means. I've pulled about 50 TB in the last 2 months (NAS upgrade) and most files come in around 4 gbps out of 5.

[avidiax]

Is there a modern guide to UseNet that you'd recommend?

[zamadatix]

I followed the guide here https://www.reddit.com/r/usenet/wiki/index/. I ended up doing Frugal for the provider, nzbgeek for the indexer, and nzbget for the client. Mapping to torrent terms the indexer is the torrent search site, the client is the client, and the provider is (effectively, in this mapping) who you pay to leech from. Depending how deep you get into it it may be worthwhile to look at a second provider on a different backbone (for greater availability) and/or another indexer but I'd start with just that and see how it works for you then add if needed.

Config wise signing up a provider is like buying anything else online. Setting up the client isn't much more difficult than setting up a torrent client (select default folders, set limits, etc) beyond you need to manually enter the info to connect to the providers.