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Personally, Kagi is worth it for me because I’ve grown to rely on its features (lenses, domain ranking, Wolfram Alpha integration, fast response times), and I’ve not been able to get the same quality of results from free alternatives (SearXNG included).
That said, if you’re not a heavy search user, or you’re happy with the results from free search providers, then it probably won’t be much use to you over something like DuckDuckGo.
Regarding the AI integrations, I’ve not found them intrusive personally. Admittedly, I like their (optional) translation tool and (also optional) quick answers even though they’re both LLM-based.
Kagi gave me weird hype vibes like Private Internet Access. Very cult-sounding/ hard to tell what’s a paid advert when everyone is so rabidly opinionated and it’s a bit of a niche to begin with.
I’ve tried it since then and it’s actually very good. I’ve used DuckDuckGo for years and 30% of my searches go to google for a second opinion. With Kagi, that number is more like 10-20%. It’s designed with users in mind and actually helps you find things not by actively subverting your will, but my giving you tools to build better queries and better results.
I’m still trying to reconcile my thoughts about FOSS and such but the results are the closest I’ve found to early Google. I don’t care much for AI, but I used it to accurately identify an unknown wire connector on a cable I found and the model of a keyboard someone was selling in classifieds and didn’t actually list in the description (this one took a few tries).
I’ve decided for now I’m going to put them in the same category as some of the stuff Louis Rossman is involved in which also isn’t the perfect FOSS licence though its in the direction of freedom.
DDG was great, but it absolutely has gotten worse and now gives tailored results. If I search a random name I will get doctors and business people with that name in my area even with location turned off. I moved to qwant.
Yes, the intensified focus on duckAI and the worsening of search results are concerning for DDG. With that in mind, I trust them over Google/MS/etc. It’s important to me that a search engine follows my instructions.
Been using Kagi for over a year and it’s gotten to the point where I forget I’m using it, which is peak search engine for me. Not sure I agree with their big new focus being AI and a browser, but as a $5/month search engine it’s perfect.
Yes. One of the few subscriptions I have no qualms about.
Just had a conversation about this. I’ll copypasta what I said there.
tl;dr: they’re all in on AI (their own model, FastGPT, which is terrible), they make some very questionable business decisions with limited funds, and have a poor understanding of what Personally Identifiable Information (PII) actually is.
I could compromise on some of these things, but if I’m going to pay for their service as a Google alternative, I need to compromise less than I do with Google already.
Thank you, very interesting post. I’ve interacted with Vlad before, he’s very unhinged. I’m just using Kagi for a good time, not a long time.
I’m ready to jump off at the first whiff of them using my data for something funny, but I do really really like the idea of having a search engine that works this good and doesn’t show me ads or sell my data, I’m allergic to both. Searxng results were complete garbage on all instances I’ve tried.
Thanks for sharing this, very informative read. I might have to go through that Cohost article when I have a spare hour haha
Also DDG is a perfectly viable option.
Appreciate you linking in your blog post. I’ve been on the fence about Kagi and you bring up a lot of good points informed by sources I’m unlikely to delve into.
To put you back on the fence, it had the best algorithm when I tested it some time ago. It showed me things I wanted by default. Google always needs some massaging and ddg needs a !g
Agreed. I pay for Kagi, and find their search better than any other, and struggle when I’m forced to use another search engine temporarily.
Dammit, my fence picket didn’t even get cold!
Yeah no im with the above user on this one. I have used kagi for over a year now and have never needed to use another search engine to find something
Same here.
Finding actual answers or at least able to point me in the right direction is way better than any of the other search engines I’ve tried.
DDG, Google, Bing, SearchNX, Ecosia, Brave, and probably some more, they just aren’t even in the same ball field for the things I look up personally.
I’ve been using Ecosia for a few months now and sadly I’m not having the best experience either. For mainstream stuff it gives good results, but once I search for obscure phrases or god forbid another language, it often just completely gives up and doesn’t show a single result. It pains me to say that I more reliably get usable results from Google’s Web search (so with the AI crap removed) than from Ecosia with Google set as its results provider.
I’ve been using Kagi for more than 2 years and I’m very happy with it. It gets me great results quickly and zero ads. Sometimes I use their AI to grab a bunch of data I’d have to collect myself.
My main complaint is grabbing images with them for specific resolutions they just give up or add AI slop at the end. To be very clear, it’s amazing at finding 4k images 3840x2160. But if I flip that aspect ratio it starts to suck. That’s like… Hella niche but still important to mention.
It’s the best alternative I’ve found to the majority of options, besides self-hosting and I’m not doing that yet so I can’t comment on if it’s worth it or not.
I stopped paying for Kagi a few years ago when they decided to introduce even more AI features than they had at the time. So I now run my own SearXNG instance. Fast, good and no AI in it. Just search results.
You know you could just disable all its LLM features? that’s the beauty of kagi
I don’t want my money to go into a company that praises LLMs.
That’s very fair, I’m split about this as I hate how pervasive LLMs have gotten. I don’t think the service I want exists, I want to pay for everything and never be served a single ad without feeling like I’m stealing from the service by using an ad blocker.
If you want the meta search functionality, you should try out SearXNG, which is basically self hosted poor man’s Kagi lol
It really isnt anywhere near Kagi in search quality or results. I think its important to be honest here. If you dont want to pay to search, fine, but you will get much worse results.
Could be fine for your usecase though. Maybe you only search for major sites.
I’d say def try searxng first. It turns out I mainly wanted a clean display of results instead of “better” results then Google. No ads, no ai shit. Kagi was nice but the difference didn’t justify a paid service for me, vs selfhosting.
I will say that I find searxng image search to be lacking, same with maps.
I use Kagi because the truth is all other corporate alternatives at this point are unusable swill.
That said, I do not like the company and disagree with their choices in many aspects.
For one, while they don’t force you to use AI features, there isn’t a way to explicitly turn them off for your account, there always the opportunity to rack up token costs if you accidently hit one of the AI buttons.
They still don’t run their own index, instead complacent to just pay the other search providers. Additionally, if you’re trying to escape Google… Kagi runs on Google Cloud Services.
There’s more complaints, and I’m sure others will chime in, but that’s my take.
Hey, Good job not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.
What specifically do you think is hard to avoid? I’ve never accidentally triggered a quick answer, personally
As far as I can tell, you have to completely disable all keyboard shortcuts or else when you press
Aanywhere that isn’t the search box you get dumped immediately into their AI assistant prompted with whatever you already had in the search bar.It didn’t track me more than a few pennies, but on principle the several times that happened made me angry.
Apparently some of the news views in search are also easy to dump you into AI land. There’s community CSS add on that hides all that stuff now, but I wish the company would let me just disable the AI traps.
It depends on what you want. I use Kagi but I have not sold it on my friends and family because for most of them, it doesn’t really make sense.
I’ve found it to be the best search engine, but I also think DuckDuckGo is generally fine. The $5/month plan with 300 searches per month is too limiting, IMO. I feel like anyone who searches that lightly will struggle to justify paying for Kagi over using DDG. For unlimited searches you need to step up to the $10/month plan.
When I started using Kagi, I did the free trial and every time I did a search, I’d do it in both Kagi and Google or DDG. It quickly became clear to me that Kagi was better, but I suspect this will vary a lot by your field, your tastes, and your personal search style. I mean, maybe there’s someone out there who actually wants to look at Pinterest results. I guess?!
If you ever considered paying for ChatGPT Pro or Claude Pro ($20/month), then Kagi’s Ultimate plan ($25/month) is probably a better value. It includes unlimited search, plus access to all the major premium models. On the other hand, ChatGPT Pro gives you access to image generation too, if you care about that.
Kagi’s research agent is legitimately great. It is nothing like the bullshit generator Google has. It will take a prompt, then run multiple web searches to get relevant info, recursively if needed, and then give a meaningful response with citations. It shows you the exact search queries it uses, along with the results it pulls from. I’ve used it to find accurate answers to problems that I realistically could not have found with traditional search engines; in one case the actual answer was something like 18 results deep in the 5th search it performed. I think most people would give up before digging that deep in search results.
This is what AI is good for: automating gruntwork. Not doing things I couldn’t do myself, but doing things I don’t fucking want to do myself because they are tedious and frustrating. 99% of AI applications are pure garbage. Kagi’s is part of the other 1%.
I tried it, paid for it, cancelled it. I tested it with the same queries with ddg, startpage, brave, and qwant via 4get. The results were essentially the same. Kagi did provide more context in the description of the results but it wasn’t anything I would pay a premium for. the majority of features I just didn’t use, the assistant and fastgpt were a waste, lenses were fine and having fediverse on by default is neat but nothing I’d call home about.
If it were cheaper sure, I might stick with it but I can’t justify the price to anyone wanting to use a search engine. $5 for 300 searches a month is a joke. I also don’t like the fact that if you want to pay with something other than a credit card (paypal, venmo, etc) you get charged extra cause Kagi doesn’t want to eat the fees. Also there’s zero option to opt out of paying for the “AI” features, you can turn them off sure…but you’re still going to pay for them.
If your internet usage consists of constant searching and LLM use for searching then sure, you’re going to be paying $10+ a month and be happy with it. But there was nothing Kagi offered that knocked my socks off. if anything, felt like I was getting scammed.
… How did you mispell the name of the service in the thread title?
Aside from that: I think so, but you need to make that decision for yourself. There are a few demos that various influencers have made (I was sold by the one by Remap Radio… Fuck Capitalism, Go Home, and Pay For Google?) but what sold me is:
- I do a LOT of searching in any given month. I’ll use an LLM based “engine” for quick factoids (we’ll get back to that) but I really need the ability to search from my browser’s address bar or the steam browser without having to wade through all the bullshit.
- I REALLY like that I can prioritize, deprioritize, and outright block sites. No need for a sketchy anti-fandom extension that tracks everything I do when I can just click the dots and say to never show me warframe.fandom ever again. Also it is useful for blocking the REALLY chuddy news sites and misinformation blogs
- Speaking of Steam. I can just grab/assemble my login-less search string and use that with Steam so that all my in-game searches use kagi with my token rather than dealing with raw dogging google.
- And as for that LLM? While I wouldn’t pay for it on its own, I do like the kagi assistant. Mostly because it shows me what search strings it is running/emulating and gives me citations. So when it tells me that smallpox tastes savory, I can see how it came to that conclusion and even check if that is contradicted by the website it linked to
I have a lot of concerns with the techbro libertarian attitude of the company itself and am not really huge with where my money goes (in terms of API calls) but… I have a lot more concerns with google shoving and obfuscating gemini more every single day.
Do I like that I am paying for what should be a basic fundamental element of the internet? Of course not. But also… kagi’s approach kinda feels like what searching always should have been since it lets me cut through the SEO bullshit so effectively. I doubt I would be paying for this if google et al hadn’t all decided it was better to emphasize advertisements and LLMs over all else but… I also could see myself doing so with the right demo?
Highly recommend giving this blog post that takes a little bit of a deep dive into Kagi.
https://マリウス.com/doubting-your-favorite-web-search-engine/
(Not scary url, just punycode) 👍
They added AI which I thought was one of the main points of using an alternative search engine so you could get away from that nonsense?
It’s one of those organic produce items among the Internet things which happens to be in vogue these days.
