Which is the best provider for first time user: Frugal ($40) or Eweka (€47.88) or Newshosting ($71.88)?

I agree. Although Usenet.farm is not as useful as it seems at first glance. They say 3000+ retention but that's only for text. Actual files they apparently only save for up to 70 days and only heavily accessed files for longer. That said, their Eweka still mainly fetches almost as much as if going with Eweka directly. The 2600 max retention can be a bit of a disadvantage if looking for very old niche stuff, but you might be able to find that stuff with the blocknews account if paid for a year.