Hey sorry if this has been asked before. I checked and didn’t see any posts, but basically is the kagi search engine worth it? I’m gearing up to cancel Hulu/spotify so I’ll have a little more money in the monthly budget and Kagi is one of the things I’m considering
Currently I use DuckDuckGo and it’s pretty good for me, but the main thing that makes me interested in Kagi is the ability to rank websites so they appear more or less often and the filter by type like academic sources or Reddit only.
I don’t really like ai stuff (not inherently, it’s just shoved into everything so I’ve come to hate it) but it seems pretty unobtrusive in Kagi?
I want to hear from people who actually pay for and use Kagi. Is the 300 searches a month enough for you or do most of you need the unlimited search plan? I know about the free trial but I want to know about the long term user experience
Edit: Thank you to everyone who responded!! I learned a lot about Kagi and I think I’m gonna end up getting the 300/mo plan and see if it’s enough for me. Thanks again! <3
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I wish they had an AI-free plan that was a touch cheaper. Really don’t want AI anything.
Yeah I just don’t want part of my money going to chatbot training through tokens or such.
I love Kagi. It’s worth the cost to me, but I didn’t really love DuckDuckGo personally so maybe you would have a different experience?
I love kagi and I’m questioning if my level of commitment is to renew for another year and year after that. I find pricey but worth it. The Internet is better without ads being pushed down your throat. The only thing that’d make it perfect is having map service to Google level. Open street maps is not there yet but is a fun time mapping my surroundings, however the level of usefulness of Google maps is still unmatched for me. Otherwise, Kagi has been amazing and I recommend them, I hope they trigger true competition in the search markets because when the search engines work for ads instead of people the Internet is so much worse
I blow through 300 in less than a week.
Yes I’m happy with it. Kagi has AI features but I haven’t seen them, everything is opt-in. pushing that on me would be a deal breaker.
I’m a subscriber for just the AI, and it’s worth it for that alone
it’s nice that they manage to have that for users like you without impacting users like me :)
As someone who is highly skeptical of LLMs (and particularly the way the big AI companies are using, training, and marketing them) but not outright anti-AI as a rule, I find this interaction both wholesome and refreshing!
For me, yes.
yes!!!
It made me enjoy the internet again. Back in the peak years, 2010 babayy!!
Pay the unlimited. Youll love it. My friends using hallucinating idiot chat bots are like woah how are you finding this (really cool, accurate , documented) information? And I’m like, the fucking internet we’ve had for 20 years that THEY are trying to destroy and take away from us.
I absolutely love kagi. At some point I moved to their $25 tier as I use more than just their search now.
I can’t tell you if the search limit is large enough for your use but I can say that they are very generous with what they consider an individual search so you’ll get much more than the stated limit.
Honestly I liked it when I used it. But for privacy (and since I prefer european based providers) I choose a free provider and went with Qwant in the end. I think you should go for it and try it. I don’t think they necessarily track their users, but I prefer not having my searches attached to an account
That makes sense. I like privacy but I don’t mind having an account if it means I have a genuinely better experience on the internet. Thank you!
They do seem to have options to mitigate these privacy concerns, I just checked. I personally have chosen to try to limit my usage of american services and even if they align with me this is also a reason I don’t use it. I’m european so they’re like building a new european search index. This was also pretty important since from a political perspective european tech sovereignity is important to me. If I was american myself I would’ve maybe kept using it tho.
I use 30–40 searches per day, and I almost never need to bang to google. When I do bang to google, I consistently find worse result.
It is indeed expensive compare to most of the other donations/subscription I have, but there is really no alternative to this experience.
I use nebula, lemmy, mastodon, kagi, jellyfin, signal, thunderbird, fedora, and so on. Oh boy, let me tell you, my digital world is quite, there is nothing in my face pushing anything, and I get every update I need and gets things done. All of them cost money/donation, but I would rather spend money to save time and my mental health now…
Quite what?
Sorry, quiet. Fixed in the original comment.
Thank you for the response! I use nebula and have been getting into the fediverse little by little since I discovered lemmy. I even got Linux on a laptop a few months ago. Every time I switch to a more open source or consumer focused service I just find it so much better, which has led me here to trying out new browsers and search engines
I’ve been using Kagi for the last 2 years.
I use SearXNG for “easy” searches (eg: I know what I’m looking for or simply don’t know a URL by heart)
I use Kagi’s 300 search / month plan because for “harder” searches (eg: I have a problem I want to solve). I used to have the unlimited plan but it was not that worth for me and I dislike paying for AI features that I won’t use.
Thank you! SearXNG is like a self hosted thing right? I’ve only vaguely heard about it.
There’s a bunch of frontends out there you can play with, too
Have a read of this for an idea (it covers more than just SearXNG / search, however)
Whoops - forgot this little detail: https://github.com/benbusby/farside
Thanks I’ll check it out!
I use it, I like it, though there is something in the back of my mind about the company that sets off alarm bells that I can’t quite put my finger on so I’m cautious. But I don’t mind the model of paying for online services in principle. I would say it’s about as good as DuckDuckGo was 10 years ago when it was still good (DDG has gone downhill like a lot of things in my opinion), and Kagi is the best search I can find now. I do research for work so I need the unlimited (middle) tier since I use a lot of search, I consider it reasonable value for money. I suggest doing the free trial and see how long it takes to run out before deciding which tier to choose.
Quite a few people have suggested that so I think I’ll end up doing the free trial then a month on the lowest tier and see how things go. Thank you!
My partner loves it; I have not been willing to change my habits to use it.
One thing that I appreciate about them as a business is that if you don’t use it for a month, they don’t charge you. The subscription stays active, but doesn’t cost you anything until you start using it again. Makes it a low-risk subscription to get! (Please confirm they still do this, but it is how it worked when he signed up!)
I did see something about that but I thought I misunderstood bc it sounded too good to be true! Thank you for the reply!
100%
Been using it well over a year, maybe two?
It’s in my top5 of subscriptions I’ll cancel last if money is tight.
It’s what Google used to be - at least for the stuff I look for. YMMV, get the cheapest version and try it out.
i got 3 free months in november and i grew very fond of it. now i have a family with 3 other people and they all really enjoy it.
idk how to describe it, using other search engines like ddg just feels wrong and like a lesser, more corporate internet experience.
i turned off the ai features and it’s not bothering me anymore.
just try the free trial or just get the lowest plan for a month and decide from there.
in my opinion it’s a really good product and even my non-tech-savvy friends prefer to pay for it than use other search engines.
the orion browser by kagi on ios is also great in combination.
I looked into the Orion browser a bit but it looked like it had a lot of ai stuff. Currently I use Firefox on mobile but I’m open to changing it. Thank you for the response!
Yes.
Short and sweet lol. Thank you!
