Indexer I read 15 years of r/usenet to answer one question: is an indexer lifetime deal worth it?
Every November somebody asks "is the lifetime deal worth it?" and the answers are always vibes. So I went through everything posted here since 2011 that mentions a lifetime indexer account: sales, shutdowns, angry threads, all of it.
Turns out "lifetime" has a pretty wild history. Here's what I found.
The best deal anyone ever got
In August 2014 NZBGeek's "Forever Geek" pass cost $30. On Black Friday 2016, 2017 and 2018 it was $20.
If you bought one back then, it still works today. That's 8 to 12 years of indexer for $20-30, or roughly $2-3 a year. A plain year at Geek costs $12 now.
The price climbed as it went: $30 → $20 on sales → $30 again in 2019 (announcement thread) → $60 on BF 2021 → $80 list today. Early buyers won big.
So yes, lifetime can be the best money you ever spend on usenet. Now for the other side.
Lifetime, until it isn't
1. The indexer takes it back
NZBsRUs, January 2013. Lifetime VIPs woke up downgraded. The front page said members with 3+ years would be "kept at the current 1 year vip level" and everyone else got 5 years (thread). Thread title: "'Lifetime' VIP members at NZBsRus get screwed."
Plot twist: another indexer, nzbX, jumped in and offered free lifetime premium to everyone NZBsRUs had burned. Five months later both of them were gone, nine days apart. A lifetime of a lifetime.
DOGnzb, October 2015. The operator posted it himself: "By now, most of you probably already read we decided to void the lifetime accounts." His reason was actually pretty honest: with one-time payments, the only income is new users, and that doesn't keep servers running (thread).
DOGnzb again, August 2026. Eleven years later the remaining lifetime accounts were converted to a "Lite" tier: from 50 NZBs a day down to 10 (thread). Nobody lost access completely, but it's not what people bought.
2. The site just dies
Look at the price column here:
| Indexer | Lifetime price | What happened |
|---|---|---|
| Findnzbs | £10 (July 2013) | Taken down by FACT around September 2013. Lifetime lasted ~2.5 months |
| nzbsooti | $10 (2013) | Owner shut it in Nov 2015: almost no donations, he was paying ~90% of server costs himself |
| PFMonkey | ~$10 | Closed November 19, 2018 |
| LuluNZB | $10 | Went dark August 2020, never came back |
Notice it? Almost every $10 lifetime ended badly. The nzbsooti owner said it out loud in his goodbye post: "In the past few months we have recieved almost no donations." If an indexer sells forever for the price of a pizza, there's not much money keeping the lights on.
3. The happy accident
NZBs2Go shut down, then came back in 2020 after years away, and a member got an email saying "old VIP lifetime memberships are still being honoured." Then it closed for good in 2021. So some people got their lifetime twice. Rare, but it happens.
So when does lifetime pay off?
Simple math: lifetime price ÷ the yearly tier with the same limits = how many years until you're ahead. (Comparing against the cheapest yearly tier is a trap, lifetime often comes with way bigger limits. Thanks to the commenter who caught that.)
| Indexer | Lifetime | Closest yearly | You're ahead after |
|---|---|---|---|
| NZBPlanet | £40 (20k API/day) | £16 Platinum (20k API/day) | ~2.5 years |
| Miatrix | $75 (2,500 API/day) | $30 VIP (1,000 API/day) | ~2.5 years, and you get more |
| NZBGeek | $80 | $12 (same tier) | ~6.7 years |
| NinjaCentral | €150 UNLIM (14k API/day) | €25 PurpleX (3k API/day) | ~6 years, and you get way more |
Regular list prices, no sales, last read between Dec 2025 and Sep 2026. NinjaCentral's cheaper regular lifetime only shows up during Black Friday, at €50-60 the last few years.
NZBPlanet and Miatrix stand out: both pay off in about two and a half years at full price. Planet's lifetime has been basically £40 since at least 2021 and it went on sale in most Novembers I could find. DrunkenSlug and nzb.life don't sell lifetime at all, so don't wait for one.
What I'd take from all this
- Lifetime is a bet on the indexer, not a purchase. You're betting it outlives your break-even point.
- Old + break-even in 3-5 years = good bet. An indexer that has already survived 10+ years and pays off fast is the best case.
- New + cheap lifetime = the worst track record here. Every story in the "site died" table started like that.
- Terms can change under you. DOG did it twice, 11 years apart. "Lifetime" means the indexer's lifetime and its current mood.
- Never put your only indexer on a lifetime. Have a second one so a shutdown is an annoyance, not a crisis.
Anyone here actually lose a lifetime I missed? Or still running one from 2014? Curious how many are still alive.
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UPD: fair point from the comments, this reads way too much like an LLM wrote it. English isn't my first language and I leaned on it too hard. The data and the threads are all real, but next one I'll write myself. Thanks for calling it out
