> Basically our policy states that you can use AI models based on your plan’s value.
Although I likely won't use Assistant, stuff like this is why I love Kagi. My relationship with them as a customer feels refreshingly transparent; I can't think of any other consumer SaaS provider that automatically answers my reflexive "how does this make money?" question.
(Compare, say, Discord. It's best in class, but eternally unprofitable - which makes me wary that it might fold or go to hell at the drop of a hat.)
The thing still giving me pause is a lack of "bring your own model connection" between saas uh services.
If I already pay for Gemini Advanced (or OpenAI/ChagtGPT Pro), I then have to pay for it again at every service that offers a Pro 2.5 (or 4.1/4o) tier. I should be able to connect my Gemini Advanced access to any service that offers Flash and be able to upgrade. Signing up for a bunch of services is starting to feel like being triple, quadruple or more dipped. Similar to how I am annoyed seeing media content cross licensed to three streaming services and not getting a bill reduction when subscribed to multiple services with the same content.
Having a good ethos before significant funding rounds is one thing , it is lot harder once you raise a ton of external money.
It is not big bad VC either, VC funding while demanding is still lot more forgiving than Private equity or public markets . It is nature of a free economy to be as efficient as possible which in turn makes it affordable and accessible to class of users who would not have been do so before .
If the staff sees this - please stop preventing zoom. Not only is that bad for accessibility, it makes the article less useful for everyone - there's a screenshot included showing off the feature, but it's too small to read on the phone and I can't zoom in.
Firefox on Android has an accessibility setting called "Zoom on all web sites" that gets around this. Firefox's reader mode would help with this as well.
It's a shame we need these workarounds instead of all websites being accessible by default :/
Kagi are one of my favorite companies. In a world where buying a T-shirt requires me to hand over my phone number ("in case we need to contact you about your order" - yeah, right) I find it so refreshing that kagi barely require any info from me except some form of payment.
Kagi search is great, but I'm not willing to pay more than $5/mo for search and 300 searches isn't enough. I have no interest in Kagi AI. Adding more searches would've caused me to sign up again. A rate limit instead of a monthly limit would prevent the "search anxiety" that creeps in as your available searches dwindle. Make it so and you can have my money again.
I suspect that Kagi’s price point might be a close approximation of what these services actually cost to provide without being subsidized by ad services and data harvesting; free search can only really sustain itself under those conditions. Heavy users who block ads have been getting subsidized by other users for decades now, and this has led these users to expect these services to be provided at an unrealistically low price.
I’m usually cautious with subscriptions and regularly review what I’m paying for. That said, Kagi at $10/month has earned its place — been using it for 20 months now and it’s been worth every cent.
I'm curious about how you think about the "value" for a service like Kagi? What determines how much it is worth to you? I don't think that Kagi is for everyone, but, at least for my own internal model of value, Kagi comes out so far ahead, that I'm curious about alternate ways of thinking about value that don't see it that way (to be extra clear: I do not think that my view is the "correct" view or only view).
> I'm not willing to pay more than $5/mo for search and 300 searches isn't enough
Most of the population is well served with search funded with ads and tracking. Kagi is for the minority who don’t want that. I’m not sure there is enough if a market between 300 and some other number that would treat search anxiety just to satisfy those who won’t pay $60 a year more to relieve it.
I'm gonna guess you aren't their target audience, so you both win thanks to the filter of capitalism. $10 a month to avoid google and microsoft AND get a decent AI assistant is a bargain to me. Plus it's a small tech company trying to make a good product for a certain audience and I can dig that. I hope they succeed and become wealthy.
It simply isn't worth servicing people who aren't willing to pay $10 per month. They are problem customers and frequently churn. Much better for your sanity and your wallet to focus on improving your offer for the people who are happy to pay.
Okay - this is amazing. I’m a happy paying Kagi user. Getting to apply almost all of my payment towards for cross-platform tokens as a bonus - wow.
This will replace a chatGPT and Anthropic sub for most everyday users. Their assistant is better than bringing my own keys to a client for most use cases. Just wow.
I agree. I’m on the $10 professional plan and honestly if I’d received an email offering this for an extra $5 per month it would have been a no brainer for me.
Please Kagi, don’t take too much of a haircut or let paying for this eat into the core search budget.
The "fair use" part takes a lot of place in this article.
It talks a lot about what happens if you use more tokens than what you're allowed, but curiously doesn't pip a word about what happens if you use less - for example maybe with a partial rebate on your next billing cycle ?
I think "fair" should mean "fair for all parties involved", currently it's rather a "we don't want to incur any risk" policy, since I don't see how it's fair for my end of the contract.
I'd rather pay for my actual usage at any other provider than pay for min(actual usage, 25$) at Kagi.
That's why I moved to a paid mail service myself. I used to have a free one, but it was always lurking in the back of my mind that they'd be selling me to advertisers. (Plus, the service sucked)
As a user myself, I'm not sure. Assistant is a separate view so it's easy to never interact with it but yeah, I can see why that might be a work policy issue. You could try requesting that as a feature in https://kagifeedback.org. The team are quite responsive there and historically Vlad the CEO reads every post.
Curious is it no AI or no LLMs policy? Search has used some form of AI since inception.
Are you imagining one switch toggle that would disable it at the team account level (or individual account level - in which case it would theoratically still be opt-in and 'available' like it is now).
Genuinly trying to understand the UX of it that would comply with the policy.
I've been wanting to try and see whether I can consolidate my phind.com and my kagi.com subs by upgrading my Kagi plan. They are kinda forcing me to try now :-)
I wonder why the rollout is specifically over the weekend. I'd personally do something like that Monday to Wednesday rather than Friday to Sunday. It seems like the kind of thing that needs monitoring and quick reactions - can easily get expensive if something goes wrong.
I don't like how this was rolled out. I'm currently paying for "Unlimited Kagi Assistant" and the Kagi website STILL advertises "Unlimited Kagi Assistant". And they stealthily rolled in limits? I pay the same amount, but it's no longer unlimited, and I only know about this because I happened to notice it on HN. Otherwise I would only know after hitting a limit.
This is a great deal. Switching to Kagi was like getting OG Google search back. I'm also blown away by how good it is. I used DDG but was never really happy (always had to go back to Google for certain things).
Love that for $25/mo, you can get access to GPT 4o, Sonnet, and other models along with high-quality search.
I was given a free month of Kagi to test, and it had so many rough edges that during the last days of of the trial I was already using Google again.
Notable issues for me:
- maps (from Mapbox) are really bad. Sluggish performance and lack of information
- barely any info boxes
- no translation feature ("gründonnerstag englisch") gives me links to leo.org (which was a cool site in the 00s) and to other sites, but Google gives me a translation box with the result
- no timezone calculations: "10 am PT" in Kagi: "= 10 Pt am (metric petaton attometers)" in Google: "10:00 Freitag Pacific Time (PT) entspricht 19:00 Freitag in ..."
- no search history, which is sometimes really useful to have
Other than that, the search results are really good.
How is the different from 3.7 sonnet connected to the web search? Or Gemini 2.5 with search capabilities? Am I to rely on Kagi being better and capable of continuing to be better than frontier models at search?
For most very simple use cases -- like, I don't know, if you want to know how to sort a list in Kotlin -- just using the Kagi in-search assistant is more than enough, you can search with: "sort list kotlin, code example?" (with the question mark) and you'll get brief explanations with code examples based on search results (or whatever. I don't know, it works).
The model they're using for these must not be a very good one, but for most things it's enough, and very fast.
[+] [-] colonial|10 months ago|reply
> Basically our policy states that you can use AI models based on your plan’s value.
Although I likely won't use Assistant, stuff like this is why I love Kagi. My relationship with them as a customer feels refreshingly transparent; I can't think of any other consumer SaaS provider that automatically answers my reflexive "how does this make money?" question.
(Compare, say, Discord. It's best in class, but eternally unprofitable - which makes me wary that it might fold or go to hell at the drop of a hat.)
[+] [-] basch|10 months ago|reply
If I already pay for Gemini Advanced (or OpenAI/ChagtGPT Pro), I then have to pay for it again at every service that offers a Pro 2.5 (or 4.1/4o) tier. I should be able to connect my Gemini Advanced access to any service that offers Flash and be able to upgrade. Signing up for a bunch of services is starting to feel like being triple, quadruple or more dipped. Similar to how I am annoyed seeing media content cross licensed to three streaming services and not getting a bill reduction when subscribed to multiple services with the same content.
[+] [-] weird-eye-issue|10 months ago|reply
They also have ads in the app and they have other monetization features...
[+] [-] unknown|10 months ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] manquer|10 months ago|reply
It is not big bad VC either, VC funding while demanding is still lot more forgiving than Private equity or public markets . It is nature of a free economy to be as efficient as possible which in turn makes it affordable and accessible to class of users who would not have been do so before .
[+] [-] viraptor|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] Hasnep|10 months ago|reply
It's a shame we need these workarounds instead of all websites being accessible by default :/
[+] [-] seth_at_kagi|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] freediver|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] jeffhuys|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] catlikesshrimp|10 months ago|reply
Android 14 Firefox 136.0.1 (Build #2016078447), hg-e7956a4db6c5+ GV: 136.0.1-20250310180126 AS: 136.0
ublock origin enable zoom in all websites
Edit: I know this is not what you are asking for, but try opening the image in a new tab. Can you zoom in there?
https://kagifeedback.org/assets/files/2025-04-17/1744906741-...
[+] [-] dean2432|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] GrayShade|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] scary-size|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] jacobwinters|10 months ago|reply
Our site's been fixed, and I opened a PR upstream.
[+] [-] i_love_retros|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] 34679|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] lurk2|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] ndaiger|10 months ago|reply
For me it's just happened a few times towards the end of the month and I was happy with how they handled the situation.
[+] [-] packetlost|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] skrtks|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] MostlyStable|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] JumpCrisscross|10 months ago|reply
Most of the population is well served with search funded with ads and tracking. Kagi is for the minority who don’t want that. I’m not sure there is enough if a market between 300 and some other number that would treat search anxiety just to satisfy those who won’t pay $60 a year more to relieve it.
[+] [-] fiatjaf|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] EasyMark|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] carlosjobim|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] scosman|10 months ago|reply
This will replace a chatGPT and Anthropic sub for most everyday users. Their assistant is better than bringing my own keys to a client for most use cases. Just wow.
[+] [-] snackernews|10 months ago|reply
Please Kagi, don’t take too much of a haircut or let paying for this eat into the core search budget.
[+] [-] haroldship|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] C4stor|10 months ago|reply
It talks a lot about what happens if you use more tokens than what you're allowed, but curiously doesn't pip a word about what happens if you use less - for example maybe with a partial rebate on your next billing cycle ?
I think "fair" should mean "fair for all parties involved", currently it's rather a "we don't want to incur any risk" policy, since I don't see how it's fair for my end of the contract. I'd rather pay for my actual usage at any other provider than pay for min(actual usage, 25$) at Kagi.
[+] [-] casenmgreen|10 months ago|reply
It's great.
I'd love for BlueSky takes a subscription model, too, so we don't have to think about advertising or sustainability or all that jazz.
Also means the company's interests much more closely aligned with users interests, rather than advertisers interests.
[+] [-] Night_Thastus|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] CubsFan1060|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] spondyl|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] freediver|10 months ago|reply
Are you imagining one switch toggle that would disable it at the team account level (or individual account level - in which case it would theoratically still be opt-in and 'available' like it is now).
Genuinly trying to understand the UX of it that would comply with the policy.
[+] [-] doublerabbit|10 months ago|reply
Has the option to turn off Auto AI feature.
It might be an good idea to post on their support forum.
[+] [-] Game_Ender|10 months ago|reply
I am also curious if you have other restrictions on information sharing, API usage, and what reference documentation to use.
[+] [-] ac29|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|10 months ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] lolc|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] m1keil|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] fhd2|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] gaiagraphia|10 months ago|reply
A lot of AI providers operate in black box territory when it comes to limits, which is quite annoying.
[+] [-] baobabKoodaa|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] rglover|10 months ago|reply
Love that for $25/mo, you can get access to GPT 4o, Sonnet, and other models along with high-quality search.
[+] [-] shaunpud|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] qwertox|10 months ago|reply
Notable issues for me:
- maps (from Mapbox) are really bad. Sluggish performance and lack of information
- barely any info boxes
- no translation feature ("gründonnerstag englisch") gives me links to leo.org (which was a cool site in the 00s) and to other sites, but Google gives me a translation box with the result
- no timezone calculations: "10 am PT" in Kagi: "= 10 Pt am (metric petaton attometers)" in Google: "10:00 Freitag Pacific Time (PT) entspricht 19:00 Freitag in ..."
- no search history, which is sometimes really useful to have
Other than that, the search results are really good.
[+] [-] lawn|10 months ago|reply
I even use an Ultimate plan to try out the different models but I use it so rarely that it's probably better to downgrade.
I wonder, what's the upside for the Ultimate plan now? Just better models?
[+] [-] g42gregory|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] fiatjaf|10 months ago|reply
The model they're using for these must not be a very good one, but for most things it's enough, and very fast.