I’ve been using this search engine and I have to say I’m absolutely in love with it.
Search results are great, Google level even. Can’t tell you how happy I am after trying multiple privacy oriented engines and always feeling underwhelmed with them.
Have you tried it? What are your thoughts on it?
Bit too expensive
I stumbled onto some comments about Kagi angling to become an AI-first search engine that actually brags about putting you in a filter bubble. From Kagi’s manifesto:
In the future, instead of everyone sharing the same search engine, you’ll have your completely individual, personalized Mike or Julia or Jarvis - the AI. Instead of being scared to share information with it, you will volunteer your data, knowing its incentives align with yours.
One YouTube video suggests a grim future: “Everybody has a feed uniquely tailored to them. Nobody talks about their favorite YouTubers anymore, because everybody watches different content farms. All the real creators quit a long time ago.”
Food for thought. I don’t like the idea of these filter bubbles.
ETA: I didn’t realize it at the time but they also promise data collection for
- Political echo chambers: “But there will also be search companions with different abilities… You could customize an AI to be conservative or liberal”
- Corporate brand loyalty: “Ask it for a good coffee maker, and it’ll recommend choices within your budget from your favorite brands”
If you’re looking for an open source search engine that’s building its own data set, one exists (and it’s totally open source and free).
If you’re looking for something that collates other engines’ contents, SearXNG is also open source and free.
Kagi isn’t really unique in any way here; their most unique quality appears to be linking your searches to an account, requesting money, and promising not to sell your data at a later date.
… Okay, I just tried Stract, and its results are… Mostly not helpful.
My understanding is that Kagi makes an effort to tell you how they anonymize your search so they can’t tie it back to your account afterwards, whereas Searx is more dependent solely on the goodwill of whoever is hosting the instance. Both are good faith dependent in the end, but one has a profit motive for keeping that faith.
Edit: I hope Stract gets there and takes off one day, but today doesn’t seem to be that day for me.
The privacy policy is also a legally binding document, not just a promise that the company does. If they are found violating it, the GDPR fines are going to hurt and they would lose the customer base in a blink. Their privacy policy right now is exemplary, I am one of those who read policies before using a product and kagi’s is literally the best I have seen: clear, detailed, specific and most importantly, good from the privacy perspective.
There’s some tradeoff here, keep garbage out and relevant results in. Definitely want to stay connected with others and share knowledge (such as websites that provide quality info)
I’m not a fan of them doing business with Brave and how they handled criticism from the community.
For context: They edited their anwser and said the old one was bad. https://kagifeedback.org/d/2808-reconsider-your-partnership-with-brave
IMO the previous link provides better context, as it provides a look into what the leadership said within that thread before trying to clean up their optics, as well as showing other examples of what the company was up to.
The original behavior, and the censorship on Kagi-run discussion platforms is quite telling.
ETA: somebody catalogued the CEO’s damage control across the thread last month. Some of the observations were really interesting.
I’ve had better results than on Google in many cases. Also leaves DDG and other privacy relevant alternatives in the dust.
But, unless you are a power user it’s hard to justify the cost. Very pricey.
I use the family plan with my wife. So we end up at $7 per month per user. Which IMO is ok. Given how important search is for our every day internet usage, I can accept this price.
I rarely have to jump to the second page of the search results to get what I want, so I am really happy with Kagi.
The starter tier is only $5/month for 300 searches, which is more than enough for your average user.
I can get not wanting to pay for search, but I wouldn’t call $5 “very pricey”. In fact, I’d be so bold as to call it reasonable.
Maybe I am not average but I blow past 300 pretty easily. I also think you may underestimating how much people search on their phones.
Same here. I tried on the starter plan but had to upgrade. According to my account I have made 802 searches since January 4th. So 17.4 searches a day on average. This means that for a 31 day month I am looking at 620 searches.
I am also a heavy user of bookmarks and browser history. So I don’t rely on search to open specific sites (like searching for “facebook” which is one of Google’s most popular queries). So someone who is in the habit of using search for direct navigation is probably going to be a good chunk higher.
That being said I work on the computer and do a fair number of searches for my job. So I can believe that a light user is pretty comfortable at 300 searches a month. But moderate searches or people who use the search engine for navigation will need the unlimited plan.
I just checked and performed more than 300 search queries in the past 4 days.
I just checked my history and performed 611 searches this week on this device alone. 300 is not even close to enough for a week. $5 is way too expensive for that.
I have 2000 searches in the past 7 days… 300 searches a month seems so miniscule
Personally I love it. Being able to boost results from some sites while depriotizing or even banning others has been real helpful. Not having unrelated “sponsored” content cluttering up the results is certainly nice as well. The results themselves feel like Google from ten years ago, relevant and on point.
I don’t need my search history linked to my payment data for future enshittification. At least Google (and DDG or whatever) is guessing and I can make that harder with a proper browser.
What would i be searching for that’s so difficult to find that I would pay for Kagi? Especially when there are multiple options for good free search engines.
From the looks of their own promotional material, the opportunity to build your own tailor-made filter bubble…
Search experience tailored to you and your needs.
We encourage you to evaluate and change results.
I find DDG not great at finding what I need, where Kagi returns less results but they are more relevant.
There’s also AI features that can be integrated with the search results which helps.
Been using is for several months. Definitely VERY overpriced (I’d say $3-4/mo for a search engine would be fine, not $10), but the results are great, and I love the quick answer feature. It quickly summarizes info from top results, helped me a lot in college, where sometimes your brain is melting and you want the answer NOW.
I am currently subscribed and it is definitely a step up from other engines I have tried. The main feature is just that it seems to somewhat cut back the general blogspam and SEO fluff. It isn’t perfect but whenever I do compare it to Google, Brave or Duck Duck Go it seems to be ahead, or in rare cases similar.
The ability to lower/block sites is also quite nice. I also have a few raised sites, but that is really a minor improvement compared to blocking crap like Quora and Pintrest.
That being said the small plan is a pretty small number of searches so I need to pay for the unlimited plan which is quite expensive. I currently think it is worth it but it is definitely borderline value, not a slam-dunk decision.
I also have concerns about them focusing on things I don’t care about. Lots of AI features and a browser. I don’t want any of that, just focus on search, there is still lots of room for improvement, even if they are currently leading the pack.
Not saying you’re wrong, want to share my perspective: I agree with the AI, the quick answer saves me a ton of time by adding source links where I always click on to verify the answer (quicker than going through search results when I don’t know the terminology).
As to the browser - not really sure why they’re pushing for their own, isn’t FF good enough?
Yeah, the AI I am lukewarm on. I’m fine having them experiment, and it does seem that they are using it tastefully. It is something that I can see improving the experience in the future even if I feel it has little to no benefit to me now.
But yes, the browser just seems like a distraction.
I’m currently a Kagi user. When I first used it I thought it was an excellent alternative to Google, and well worth the price. However ever since they integrated Brave results, I’ve noticed a significant decline in the quality of results. The only reason I’m still subscribed is because I haven’t found a suitable alternative.
Yandex
I just started paying the unlimited plan. I like the search results and the URL replacement setting. I can redirect YouTube videos to piped and Reddit to the old one so my VPN doesn’t get blocked. The lenses are also top notch.
Removed by mod
However, Yandex works under Russian jurisdictions. Brave search is ok
I was introduced to it by an IRL friend of mine very early on and was very sceptical. I then tried it many months later and what actually convinced me most are its “advanced” features. They’re features that should obviously be in any search engine but since there’s been practically 0 innovation in this space in the past decade or so, this is very refreshing.
The results being on par with Google at the worst also helps.
Pretty much everything about it is really great. The only thing that’s not great is that you’re required to identify yourself with every search. I’m not aware of any alternative for a paid search engine though. They claim to not log or otherwise abuse your PII and it’s believable but there’s still a risk.
I guess the price is also kinda high but it’s justified AFAICT.Btw: [email protected].
I think it’s great. It’s the only search engine where I don’t find myself going back the Google every now and then. I’d say the results are actually a lot better than what Google offers. Being able to rank websites higher or lower (or even pin them or block them entirely) is great, and as it’s saved to your account, it’s basically synced across devices.
It’s $10/month for unlimited searches. I tried their limited $5 plan first, but found myself thinking “do I really need to search this?” way too often to try and stay under the 200 (back then I think, now it’s 300) search limit.
Their privacy model is mostly based on you trusting them that they don’t keep your search history for longer or any other purposes than stated (if turned on), but their business model is clearly based on subscriptions, so it should be fine unless they get greedy.
It’s great using their Fastgpt which gives accurate results from various forums and websites, where other gpt based search engines lack. And got to try their Summarizer.
I recommend to use it as Secondary source (with tempmails) and Primary remains SearX for sure.
