Kagi is worth every penny. Been using it for 6 months as my primary search engine. I think I have used the Google !g 10 or so times in that period maybe?
The ability to block SEO garbage sites like GeeksForGeeks and not filling the first 3-5 results with ads is worth it alone. Not to mention the ability to boost certain sites results over others on a personalized level. Unfortunately for me, I end up regularly going over the "Pro" tier of searches a month (partially because I accidentally search all the time, but also I'm heavy search-engine user) is a bit of a letdown. At least they have an option to purchase additional searches instead of going up to the rather expensive unmetered tier.
> I end up regularly going over the "Pro" tier of searches a month (partially because I accidentally search all the time, but also I'm heavy search-engine user) is a bit of a letdown.
I hadn't considered this aspect of Kagi yet. I'm not a subscriber at this point, but I am strongly considering it. But I use search instead of typing domain names directly to avoid the typo phishing style attacks. I wonder how much "artificial" search that would generate based on my typical usage.
I don't understand the pricing. (Well, I do understand, I understand that it's the same anti-consumer gimmick as gym memberships.)
On the $5 tier it's 1.7 cents per search for the first 300, then 1.5 cents after that. As expected I blew past the 300 before the month was out and am currently sitting at a total of almost $9 for this month and there are still 3 more days to go, and this includes being away for labor day weekend and only using my phone (without kagi) for a couple days, and this is after populating and using a bunch of bookmarks specifically to cater to the fact that I now pay for searches. And this is only my laptop. I have not used kagi on my phone or anything else yet.
I haven't used bookmarks in 20 years and don't particularly want to. I normally don't even have the toolbar visible but now I had to un-hide it and add that clutter back to my browser.
So I'm both paying money and contorting my usage pattern.
I guess now that the first month is about done, I can say it looks like I should go up to the $10 plan, where the searches are only 1 cent, but only for the first 1000, and only if I actually use all 1000! If I pay $10 and only do 250 searches that month, then they weren't 1 cent were they?
As much as I like it, I don't know if I'm going to keep it.
I will not pay $10 or $25 just to have it sitting there available "in case", and I apparently will at least some times (who knows how often? every month? 3 out of 12?) will blow past the $5 an end up paying $10 anyway.
If I complicate my usage to cater to kagi so that my default is ddg and just invoke kagi sometimes when I feel like it would help, then I'll probably forget it exists most of the time and do about 10 per month and pay 50 cents each. Probably only one or two months of that and I'll just decide it's not worth $5 for a handful of searches and just cancel it.
The only way it will be useful for me is if it can just be the default search that I don't have to worry about.
They should just figure out whatever the fair per search price is and bill that.
The stupid tiers are probably going to drive me off.
> I end up regularly going over the "Pro" tier of searches a month
I'm now halfway through my billing period (22 aug - 21 sep) and I'm on 488 searches. Would be tight on the pro plan (1000 searches), but I'm still on the early adopter pro plan (1500 searches).
It is such a weird experience to do a Google search on someone else's computer after being used to Kagi. I recently requested a small usability enhancement, and it was implemented within a few weeks. Zero chance of that happening with any other search engine.
The search results are consistently better than anyone else's, including DuckDuckGo, so I am, and will remain, a happy paying customer.
...because I wasn't sure if this was just nostalgia or fake memories so I went down the rabbit hole of trying to refresh my memories about why I switched from AltaVista to Google
I had some memory of AltaVista being full of SEO (as I recall it was mostly a keyword search engine) spam.
1. AltaVista was slow and you needed to know your syntax to find things
2. AltaVista was cluttered. Google had very clean results.
I think on 1 google is still fast, but 2. not so much. Google's results are far from "clean", instead it feels like the main goal is showing you as much ads as possible and preferably getting you to accidentally click on one.
This in and the fact that Kagi results are as good or slightly better (and much more customisable) than Google is probably the main reason I'm so happy with Kagi.
Another very satisfied Kagi user here. It's totally worth the money, and a great example of the kinds of services that are possible if you're just willing to pay a little for 'em
To give a slightly less positive perspective: I trialed Kagi for a few weeks, and while I liked the features and their business model, its search results are no better than from my own Searx instance. Kagi essentially does the same thing as Searx: anonymized API calls to 3rd party search engines. It's just packaged in a friendlier UI, but the experience is not far off.
Plus, Searx supports many more search engines, and I can customize it exactly to my liking.
I wish them well, as they clearly have good intentions and a good product, but I prefer using an equivalent OSS and self-hosted solution over a proprietary SaaS I have to create an account for, even if it's not as polished or featureful.
EDIT: Actually, I'm wrong. Kagi apparently also has their own crawlers and indexes[1]. Still, I'm not finding Searx results to be deficient, so I'm not missing out on much.
One thing that does concern me with Searx, and partially with Kagi, is that those 3rd parties could decide to block these API requests at any point, leaving Searx unusable, and Kagi's results less relevant. I'm not sure this is a sustainable way to build a search engine, but I do appreciate both Kagi's and Searx's stance on ads. Using any mainstream search engine via their own frontends is a frustrating experience at best.
one nice feature I found recently: you can actually search special characters: R "%<>%" actually explains operator, rather than linking to random websites about R.
I’m mostly happy with ddg but I wish they had a feature allowing me to disable certain sites by default like kagi, even if that information was stored in local storage only and I’d have to add the exclude list manually.
My only worry is random searches, where I default to a "free" bang (!g, !b, etc.) to not burn through one of my paid searches. I know it's a mental thing, but it's still a thing.
I like it but a month after paying for it the subscription model was changed significantly to be way more expensive. I just can’t let myself become depending on something with such capricious business practices. Maybe it is a positive indication that they are better at product than they are business and customer relations.
I love it, though my only complaint is that I usually want sites in English from the US, but if I want to switch to finding sites in French in France, I have to switch regions. Google is much better at localizing me, and so I'll use !g for those.
packetlost|2 years ago
tstrimple|2 years ago
I hadn't considered this aspect of Kagi yet. I'm not a subscriber at this point, but I am strongly considering it. But I use search instead of typing domain names directly to avoid the typo phishing style attacks. I wonder how much "artificial" search that would generate based on my typical usage.
Brian_K_White|2 years ago
On the $5 tier it's 1.7 cents per search for the first 300, then 1.5 cents after that. As expected I blew past the 300 before the month was out and am currently sitting at a total of almost $9 for this month and there are still 3 more days to go, and this includes being away for labor day weekend and only using my phone (without kagi) for a couple days, and this is after populating and using a bunch of bookmarks specifically to cater to the fact that I now pay for searches. And this is only my laptop. I have not used kagi on my phone or anything else yet.
I haven't used bookmarks in 20 years and don't particularly want to. I normally don't even have the toolbar visible but now I had to un-hide it and add that clutter back to my browser.
So I'm both paying money and contorting my usage pattern.
I guess now that the first month is about done, I can say it looks like I should go up to the $10 plan, where the searches are only 1 cent, but only for the first 1000, and only if I actually use all 1000! If I pay $10 and only do 250 searches that month, then they weren't 1 cent were they?
As much as I like it, I don't know if I'm going to keep it.
I will not pay $10 or $25 just to have it sitting there available "in case", and I apparently will at least some times (who knows how often? every month? 3 out of 12?) will blow past the $5 an end up paying $10 anyway.
If I complicate my usage to cater to kagi so that my default is ddg and just invoke kagi sometimes when I feel like it would help, then I'll probably forget it exists most of the time and do about 10 per month and pay 50 cents each. Probably only one or two months of that and I'll just decide it's not worth $5 for a handful of searches and just cancel it.
The only way it will be useful for me is if it can just be the default search that I don't have to worry about.
They should just figure out whatever the fair per search price is and bill that. The stupid tiers are probably going to drive me off.
iruoy|2 years ago
I'm now halfway through my billing period (22 aug - 21 sep) and I'm on 488 searches. Would be tight on the pro plan (1000 searches), but I'm still on the early adopter pro plan (1500 searches).
deepspace|2 years ago
The search results are consistently better than anyone else's, including DuckDuckGo, so I am, and will remain, a happy paying customer.
leokennis|2 years ago
I tried Kagi for about a week, and it felt more or less identical in quality to DDG, just infinitely more expensive as DDG costs nothing.
gnyman|2 years ago
It feels a bit like how it felt discovering Google back when AltaVista was still a thing.
gnyman|2 years ago
I had some memory of AltaVista being full of SEO (as I recall it was mostly a keyword search engine) spam.
And that was probably true, but I also came across this Quora page https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Altavista-search-engine-lose-g... and it reminded me about two other things stand out to me as true
1. AltaVista was slow and you needed to know your syntax to find things 2. AltaVista was cluttered. Google had very clean results.
I think on 1 google is still fast, but 2. not so much. Google's results are far from "clean", instead it feels like the main goal is showing you as much ads as possible and preferably getting you to accidentally click on one.
This in and the fact that Kagi results are as good or slightly better (and much more customisable) than Google is probably the main reason I'm so happy with Kagi.
After all, Kagi sources results from Google so it's no surprise the quality is similar https://help.kagi.com/kagi/search-details/search-sources.htm...
scroot|2 years ago
imiric|2 years ago
Plus, Searx supports many more search engines, and I can customize it exactly to my liking.
I wish them well, as they clearly have good intentions and a good product, but I prefer using an equivalent OSS and self-hosted solution over a proprietary SaaS I have to create an account for, even if it's not as polished or featureful.
EDIT: Actually, I'm wrong. Kagi apparently also has their own crawlers and indexes[1]. Still, I'm not finding Searx results to be deficient, so I'm not missing out on much.
One thing that does concern me with Searx, and partially with Kagi, is that those 3rd parties could decide to block these API requests at any point, leaving Searx unusable, and Kagi's results less relevant. I'm not sure this is a sustainable way to build a search engine, but I do appreciate both Kagi's and Searx's stance on ads. Using any mainstream search engine via their own frontends is a frustrating experience at best.
[1]: https://help.kagi.com/kagi/search-details/search-sources.htm...
judas44|2 years ago
waveBidder|2 years ago
rpastuszak|2 years ago
DavideNL|2 years ago
https://github.com/iorate/ublacklist
slipperlobster|2 years ago
mberning|2 years ago
dustincoates|2 years ago
civilitty|2 years ago
Yiin|2 years ago