this post was submitted on 27 May 2026
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I am trying to capture costs for starting into homelab/selfhosting.

VPNs, search engines, absolutely everything and anything.

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[–] SuspiciousCarrot78@aussie.zone 7 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (24 children)

I was tempted to say $0, but then I thought harder about the problem.

Technically I do have ongoing costs

  • PAYG costs for Usenet-news (iirc, $22USD for 500GB block)

https://usenet-news.net/index1.php?url=home

  • News indexer (I think...$60 every 5 years?)

https://www.nzbgeek.info/

Electricity (whatever tiny amount raspberry pi sips). At a guess, maybe $50/yr.

So, amortised over time - very low but not zero. In theory, if I dropped Usenet, it would even lower. And theoretically, I could run the pi off a single solar panel and a diy solar kit but I'm not busy pretending to be Robinson Crusoe just yet. Though... It might be a cool project.

[–] Zetta@mander.xyz 1 points 5 days ago (6 children)

This is why torrents are better! I torrent the highest quality files I can find so I'd blow through that 500gb quickly.

[–] ITGuyLevi@programming.dev 2 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

Unlimited Usenet plans are pretty cheap to depending on sales.

Edit to add: I'm not a quality snob, but I'd probably blow through 500GB way too quickly.

[–] SuspiciousCarrot78@aussie.zone 3 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Use to last me 2-3 months... but my media library is more or less complete now, with little churn. Also, I don't ever go above 1080p.

I need to check if Radarr / Sonarr works with straight torrents (it must do; I haven't used them for ages / have been using 1337 manually, but I seem to recall torrents being a source).

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