What I also don't understand is: so how does the counter work? If I register, I can search 100 times and then it's done? Do I move into the 5$ tier to continue and have "Enough searches to get you going", whatever that means? Because certainly it's not "Unlimited Kagi Search" since you have to pay 10$ for that.
The business model is what made me turn away right now. I don't like those kind of "funny things" around money I have to spend.
I love the philosophy of just taking money from users and working on giving them what they want and having nobody else to answer to, and I think the results from that philosophy have been excellent. But my biggest (only) complaints are difficult to solve for a paid search engine that requires login.
First, sometimes I end up logged out. And maybe I've changed my password in the meantime and it's not saved on the machine I'm logged out on. It is supremely frustrating to search for something and be met with a login screen instead, and enraging if I can't immediately solve it by logging in.
I'm hopeful that I can actually just search logged out now if this happens, and log in after I'm done with what I was doing.
The second is the requirement to install a browser extension in order to search from the unified search/url bar. I really wish browser vendors -- or, well, Apple is the only one I care about -- would support it directly.
I think they don't want to support a search engine that requires an account. It would be cool if the 100 free searches is progress in this direction but I'm not sure if it will be.
I have a bookmark for `https://kagi.com/search?token=...&q=%s` (you can get the token from somewhere in the settings) and a keyword `k`. When I want to search, I type `k giant isopod` and hit enter -- that takes me to the search results. Note that that also works in private browsing windows, whether you want it to or not. :-P So you never have to worry about whether you're signed in.
Keyword searches are cool because you can use them for any site that exposes a query through any part of the URL.
May I recommend a password manager, e.g. KeePassXC[0], with a YubiKey[1] and some folder synchronization across machines?
Case 1: Kagi extension for Safari redirects from Ecosia to Kagi when on the good path. I rely on this mostly because it’s first-party so there’s a bit more trust with my queries.
Case 2: Safari Redirect Extension [1] redirects unauthenticated Kagi pages to Golink. Golink redirects back to the original page with a Kagi Token appended. Instantly authenticated.
Also, I highly recommend setting custom DNS records on Ecosia/DDG/whoever-you-redirect-from to prevent query leakage.
[0] https://github.com/tailscale/golink
[1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/redirectweb-smart-url-router/i...
That's definitely possible without installing an extension, you can add any search engine you want:
https://help.kagi.com/kagi/getting-started/setting-default/f...
(The instructions you linked are for Firefox)
The whole point of this comment chain is about not wanting to pay for access to something that they don't want. I've been subscribed to Kagi Ultimate for years now, but I totally get what they're saying. Having a "search only" subscription would be interesting, and probably boosted adoption a non-trivial amount.
FWIW I find Kagi's quick AI responses pretty handy, just chuck "?" at the end of your query to access them. I also appreciate that, unlike Google, Kagi lets you choose exactly when you want AI to answer and when you don't.
There are also real downsides, like needing to be logged in all the time. I can visit ddg.gg on a customer's laptop in 0.2s, but won't be logging into my Kagi to do a quick web search
I also don't need anything but search and image search: for maps I use OSM, for LLM inference there are various free and paid providers, for videos one sadly doesn't find much outside of youtube anyhow (save for specific genres like conference talks at media.ccc.de, in which case I already know where to go). All this stuff included in the ultra fancy plus version incurs costs for them so it makes sense that it's not in the base product, but I won't use it so I feel silly paying for it
I'm very cost conscious for services though. I wouldn't pay more than €3 a month or so. Being in a medium wage eu country I just don't want money flying or left right and center.
For comparison i pay €2 a month for my email, online storage and web office, EU based also.
I use the 2-person plan with my wife which is unlimited for $14/2.
There is also a family plan which is unlimited for $20/6.
I don't see the problem. Even for a single person $7 is worth it but $10 is just too much? Eh, maybe. If they hadn't come out with the duo option I'm not sure what I would have done myself.
I actually agree about the AI. Pick almost any estimated value/cost you want for the AI and let me remove that and I would like to.
But $14/2 has been good enough to just ignore the AI and only be a little annoyed I'm helping pay for it.
I wish they would. The extension works well for me most of the time, but every once in a while I end up on Ecosia and I’m confused for 2 seconds.
Google of course does not have a search API - Kagi is paying (IMO sketchy) SERP scrapers for these results. One of the reasons I canceled my subscription
They have since removed all mentions of it and other names of the indexes that they use from their docs.
Basically you have no transparency and no clue how much of your money is going where. Could be that 80% of your results are Google index, 10% Bing, 5% Yandex and 5% independent indexes and you have no way of knowing.
That's why I switched to Uruky, where I have actual control over where my money goes. I mainly use EUSP, Mojeek, Linkup, Marginalia and if I can't find what i'm looking for only then go to a fallback search engine (that you can set inside) like DDG, Brave, Ecosia. There's a couple of other smaller open source indexes that they use (including their own).
I really liked the AI search, but it burns through credits too quickly. I have since switched to using Hermes, it's not quite as good yet, but it's a fraction of the cost.
I liked the idea of ad free, slop free search. There were some problems with that though, which were hard to push past. I really like being able to search for stores and local restaurants. Maps integrations were hit or miss, mostly miss. It was also weirdly slow for me, even to load the search page without a query.
Final point was their published and then unpublished support of Yandex. The CEO tried to argue some "search without borders" BS, but really they are taking your money that and sending some of it to a Russian company which is either directly or indirectly funding a pointless war. I took issue with that and remembered it every single time I opened the page. In particular it really didn't sit well with me that the response was flippant and then they took down their list of sources.
I've switched to DDG and have been happier, YMMV.
The ai credit thing is real too and I’ve written to them about it several time. My solution was just to sign up for the entire year in one go
You have to keep in mind it’s only like $25 of usage, though they could handle the experience better. In the past in the assistant it would even delete your prompt when you ran out and it was super annoying
As a product though I think it’s great - more than good enough to get off of google, I like the privacy aspect, and it’s ai features slot in nicely between search and my Claude subscription
If you follow the money, somewhere you’ll find something unsavory. This is me mostly coping, admittedly, but Kagi is good enough that a) I want to cope and b) hope continues to thrive as a full featured search engine that is a legitimate alternative to Google
DDG is good too, not quite on par with Kagi though. Kagi is super configurable and customizable- e.g. lenses, down ranking websites (e.g. for me Pinterest appears way low in search results) ai slop detection, etc
It’s also cool to be a paying customer - you email them, they respond, and sometimes even fix a bug right away for you
Happy overall with the service even though I agree it’s not perfect
If you're looking for something more typical of search + AI, DDG is probably the next best. If you're looking for a search assistant that will find you a direct link to the leaked gta 6 footage that people are talking about or to summarise a comparison of 2 oss libs, Hermes is probably the one you're after.
Afaik DDG sources from bing and their own indexing.
Remember their “early adopter” drama? Wasn’t their only drama.
How is funding america any better?
The Biden administration and western leaders chose monetary and logistical assistance with which Ukraine has fought Russia to a stalemate. That's not a terrible outcome if the alternative is Russia actually following through with their mad man nonsense.
Oh yeah, and winning isn't accomplished with overwhelming force. The West marching into Moscow was never a possibility, despite what Alex Dugin will have you believe. Winning is Putin backing down, being deposed, or doing the swan lake thing.
> Entering the war with troops would be escalatory, anyone who claims to know the result of that hypothetical escalation is a liar.
Anyone who claims there is an alternative path to victory is a liar.
I won't ever forgive the west for throwing ukraine under the bus to express their anxiety about russia, fully knowing that ukraine has no hope without full military commitment.
> Winning is Putin backing down, being deposed, or doing the swan lake thing.
Russia will just replace him with someone on the right wing of russian politics. That's actually a worse scenario in every way.
> That's not a terrible outcome if the alternative is Russia actually following through with their mad man nonsense.
They're following through regardless.
The only victory path is to collapse russia. We have no way to do that and there are no domestic pressures indicating this will happen any time soon. And in every way Russia is hurting, Ukraine is suffering harder.
The liar is named Afghanistan.
> I won't ever forgive the west for throwing ukraine under the bus to express their anxiety about russia
What does this even mean?
> Russia will just replace him with someone on the right wing of russian politics. That's actually a worse scenario in every way.
Amazing. Russian voters will look at their economy, their dead, their global image, and choose someone even more inclined to continue the five+ year SMO.
I'm not so sure the succession will be smooth though. If anyone was equipped to seamlessly take the reins they'd be a threat to the current guy. Any internal struggle means less commitment to the war.
> The only victory path is to collapse russia. We have no way to do that and there are no domestic pressures indicating this will happen any time soon. And in every way Russia is hurting, Ukraine is suffering harder.
Don't need Russia to collapse, just need it to decide there are more important uses of their fighting-age men and money. Putin is committed, others need not be. Economically, things will continue to decline for Russians and while it's possible to fake it by printing money, reality eventually catches up.
> What does this even mean?
The morons running the west want to do something about russia, because they swallowed their own cold war bullshit for decades and never learned to play nice with others. Ukraine was just the nearest opportunity to do so, even if it meant fucking over 25 million people for no clear benefit.
Look I love for you that you have hope. If I could pay to get your hope, I would! It would be better sleep at night. However, I will be right in the end, and the history books will reflect that europe chose to watch ukraine die in front of their eyes, and in fact paid to prolong the pain and violence.
> they swallowed their own cold war bullshit
You're thinking of the actual cold warrior. The one who worked in the soviet intelligence services and became a dictator. The one who initiated the invasion.
> Ukraine was just the nearest opportunity to do so, even if it meant fucking over 25 million people for no clear benefit.
When the US... rolled tanks into Ukraine? You're approaching self-parody my man.
And besides the small win this week things are still looking really bleak internationally.
I still use US services too much tbh but slowly things are improving.
I won't bore you with the details, but I fully believe he only ran for president in '24 because it was his only way to avoid prison. He was staring at two slam dunk convictions and his only outs were fleeing the country or taking over the department prosecuting him.
And even if he were to somehow circumvent the Constitution and fool the electorate that has, just this week, overwhelmingly told him he sucks, he's still not the dictator/mob boss that Putin has been for 30 years. He aspires to be that but Americans just aren't Russians.
> things are still looking really bleak internationally.
Yeah, it kind of sucks when the hegemon becomes this dumb hydra of isolationism, extortion, and military adventurism. Europe is doing a solid job of insulating itself from its mercurial western ally, I hope things will return to normal before too long.
There are options. Uruky is a great European search engine where you can use an European search index (EUSP) alongside other smaller ones. Their entire stack is USA free.
Wait til you realize the search engines you use now are funding directly AND indirectly even more pointless wars than that one...
Also, news.pravda.com publishes only the Truth in the English language. It's the Russian equivalent of Truth.social, which of course exclusively publishes the Truth. It's in the name, don't you see.
Ps. I just found out there is website called Pravda.social.
EDIT: Also technically Russia is in Europe ;)
I generally do less than 30 web-searches per month on not-topic-specific search engines (I have bookmarks for information sources on most topics I care about).
With this new no-account-needed free search option, I could probably get away with doing all my general web searching on Kagi, without ever being a paying customer. (Maybe requiring some occasional shenanigans such as clearing my cookies or changing my IP address or something)
But in the interest of being a "customer" (and/or a "supporter") rather than just a "user", I'd be willing/interested in buying a bucket of searches that don't expire. Or even with a long expiration date, like a year after purchase.