Kagi is worth every penny. Been using it for 6 months as my primary search engine. I think I have used the Google !g 10 or so times in that period maybe?
The ability to block SEO garbage sites like GeeksForGeeks and not filling the first 3-5 results with ads is worth it alone. Not to mention the ability to boost certain sites results over others on a personalized level. Unfortunately for me, I end up regularly going over the "Pro" tier of searches a month (partially because I accidentally search all the time, but also I'm heavy search-engine user) is a bit of a letdown. At least they have an option to purchase additional searches instead of going up to the rather expensive unmetered tier.
> I end up regularly going over the "Pro" tier of searches a month (partially because I accidentally search all the time, but also I'm heavy search-engine user) is a bit of a letdown.
I hadn't considered this aspect of Kagi yet. I'm not a subscriber at this point, but I am strongly considering it. But I use search instead of typing domain names directly to avoid the typo phishing style attacks. I wonder how much "artificial" search that would generate based on my typical usage.
Bookmarks were my obvious answer as well, but bookmarks are annoying to me. I don't like managing them and I don't like having the bar visible and I don't like having to remember to use the bookmark for things that have a bookmark, and the addressbar for things that don't have a bookmark.
It's a work-around, not an actual resolution, unless you already happen to like using bookmarks.
This is my approach: address-bar autocomplete only uses bookmarks as suggestions (well, and open tabs). I almost never open my bookmarks, nor feel the need to organize them. I'm really pleased with the way Firefox has implemented that autocomplete: by default, Firefox autocompletes the domain names (with typeahead) while you're typing, while full bookmarked url's are just a down-arrow away, sorted by most recently used. It means I never have to bookmark bare domain names: as soon as I have a page bookmarked on a domain, Firefox will also allow me to quickly navigate to the bare domain site. And for individual pages, I can just type two or three letters (not necessarily the first few) to directly identify the page that I want to go to.
Obviously that means I'm using split url/search fields in the address bar, or that wouldn't work as easily. I also heavily use Firefox' keyword search to avoid doing a round-trip through a search engine if I already know which site I want to search; mostly using the same prefixes that DDG uses, so I don't need to adjust too much if I find myself using a different computer.
I have actually already split my address and search fields too, for a different reason. I got aggrevated with having the local machine names on my lan perform a public search, even though my local dns is configured to use only my opnsense router, which does resolve the local names correctly. Splitting off the search box makes the local names always do only what DNS says, and so I get my 3d printer instead of search results for it's name.
For that particular problem, going to "truenas" or "unifi" etc on my lan, the bookmarks are actually more convenient in nmost cases I have to admit! Especially with half of the services needing some special port number like unifi and jellyfin etc.
I use Kagi all the time for this kind of thing, and always wondered if it might be an issue. But in reality I don't actually end up using as many searches as I thought I would, like at most it's 30 a day (according to Kagi's stats), and even that only adds up to ~900 searches in a month. Always assumed it would be higher since I'm constantly searching stuff for my job, but I guess 30 is kind of a lot when you think about it.
So this may not be as big of an issue as you think. Should also keep in mind that higher search quality means you don't have to search as much in the first place, which leaves a larger buffer.
Alternatively you could just use "hashbangs" to search domains via google (!g), since I don't believe those cost you anything.
I haven't used bookmarks or even had the toolbar visible in 20 years, but only because of kagi I now had to add a bookmarks toolbar back, populate it, and consciously remember to use it for anything that it has, and only use the address bar for things it doesn't have.
This is not the worst thing in the world, but it is annoying to me and not a life upgrade.
Maybe the search results are better enough to make it worth it (on top of also paying money), or maybe not. I'm still determining that, but it's question and not a slam dunk.
I don't understand the pricing. (Well, I do understand, I understand that it's the same anti-consumer gimmick as gym memberships.)
On the $5 tier it's 1.7 cents per search for the first 300, then 1.5 cents after that. As expected I blew past the 300 before the month was out and am currently sitting at a total of almost $9 for this month and there are still 3 more days to go, and this includes being away for labor day weekend and only using my phone (without kagi) for a couple days, and this is after populating and using a bunch of bookmarks specifically to cater to the fact that I now pay for searches. And this is only my laptop. I have not used kagi on my phone or anything else yet.
I haven't used bookmarks in 20 years and don't particularly want to. I normally don't even have the toolbar visible but now I had to un-hide it and add that clutter back to my browser.
So I'm both paying money and contorting my usage pattern.
I guess now that the first month is about done, I can say it looks like I should go up to the $10 plan, where the searches are only 1 cent, but only for the first 1000, and only if I actually use all 1000! If I pay $10 and only do 250 searches that month, then they weren't 1 cent were they?
As much as I like it, I don't know if I'm going to keep it.
I will not pay $10 or $25 just to have it sitting there available "in case", and I apparently will at least some times (who knows how often? every month? 3 out of 12?) will blow past the $5 an end up paying $10 anyway.
If I complicate my usage to cater to kagi so that my default is ddg and just invoke kagi sometimes when I feel like it would help, then I'll probably forget it exists most of the time and do about 10 per month and pay 50 cents each. Probably only one or two months of that and I'll just decide it's not worth $5 for a handful of searches and just cancel it.
The only way it will be useful for me is if it can just be the default search that I don't have to worry about.
They should just figure out whatever the fair per search price is and bill that.
The stupid tiers are probably going to drive me off.
You shouldn't need to be counting them. It was a necesseity to make sure we stay in business. We figured out ways to reduce costs in the meantime and we will be going back to $10/mo for unmetered searches this month.
I appreciate that. As long as you're still hashing things out I'm willing to give it more time. I really like the small web concept. What I would like most is not even $10 unmetered, or even $2 unmetered, but simply $n per transaction, as long as you are obviously doing the work of counting them anyway.
$10 unmetered must always be a fallacy anyway. Surely I can't start up "bkwsearch" and sell searches for 3 cents each, and pay you only $10 for my million$ skin.
So I say don't even pretend.
Except really there probably needs to be both options, because some people value predictability more than any specific amount. So $10 or $20 or any number that never changes is better (for them) than paying only $2 on average but unpredictable each month.
I neither want to pay $10 for $2 worth of usage, nor soak you for $30 worth of usage while only paying $10. Even more than that I don't want to have to think about it to make sure if I choose the N tier that I'm making more or less full use of the N tier.
I appreciate that you took the time to read an individual users complaint, whatever you end up doing. Thanks.
> I end up regularly going over the "Pro" tier of searches a month
I'm now halfway through my billing period (22 aug - 21 sep) and I'm on 488 searches. Would be tight on the pro plan (1000 searches), but I'm still on the early adopter pro plan (1500 searches).
It is such a weird experience to do a Google search on someone else's computer after being used to Kagi. I recently requested a small usability enhancement, and it was implemented within a few weeks. Zero chance of that happening with any other search engine.
The search results are consistently better than anyone else's, including DuckDuckGo, so I am, and will remain, a happy paying customer.
It’s hard to get specific examples, but I was happier with the results back when I tried it in beta (after several years of using DDG exclusively and only very rarely needing the !g escape). It’s not always (pure default, things change with personalization like lowering/blocking/raising/pinning) a giant difference, but simply the result you want being further up, and fewer useless filler results between hits.
...because I wasn't sure if this was just nostalgia or fake memories so I went down the rabbit hole of trying to refresh my memories about why I switched from AltaVista to Google
I had some memory of AltaVista being full of SEO (as I recall it was mostly a keyword search engine) spam.
1. AltaVista was slow and you needed to know your syntax to find things
2. AltaVista was cluttered. Google had very clean results.
I think on 1 google is still fast, but 2. not so much. Google's results are far from "clean", instead it feels like the main goal is showing you as much ads as possible and preferably getting you to accidentally click on one.
This in and the fact that Kagi results are as good or slightly better (and much more customisable) than Google is probably the main reason I'm so happy with Kagi.
> instead it feels like the main goal is showing you as much ads as possible and preferably getting you to accidentally click on one.
This is an interesting observation given Google's roots. Although it is a different era, where we have ad blockers now, it would be really weird and neat if Google were displaced by a new search engine that did literally the exact same thing Google did in 1998: clean, no-bullshit page that just gives you search results + page-rank.
Unfortunately that's pretty improbable due to Google's dominance and the changes in the tech landscape. When non-computer-literate people are making Google searches every day on their phones because it's pre-installed as the default, that's a difficult fight to win.
They will stop using Google because of the disastrous quality. The question is if they'll pay for another search engine or just search within Instagram, or install an AI agent.
Another very satisfied Kagi user here. It's totally worth the money, and a great example of the kinds of services that are possible if you're just willing to pay a little for 'em
To give a slightly less positive perspective: I trialed Kagi for a few weeks, and while I liked the features and their business model, its search results are no better than from my own Searx instance. Kagi essentially does the same thing as Searx: anonymized API calls to 3rd party search engines. It's just packaged in a friendlier UI, but the experience is not far off.
Plus, Searx supports many more search engines, and I can customize it exactly to my liking.
I wish them well, as they clearly have good intentions and a good product, but I prefer using an equivalent OSS and self-hosted solution over a proprietary SaaS I have to create an account for, even if it's not as polished or featureful.
EDIT: Actually, I'm wrong. Kagi apparently also has their own crawlers and indexes[1]. Still, I'm not finding Searx results to be deficient, so I'm not missing out on much.
One thing that does concern me with Searx, and partially with Kagi, is that those 3rd parties could decide to block these API requests at any point, leaving Searx unusable, and Kagi's results less relevant. I'm not sure this is a sustainable way to build a search engine, but I do appreciate both Kagi's and Searx's stance on ads. Using any mainstream search engine via their own frontends is a frustrating experience at best.
one nice feature I found recently: you can actually search special characters: R "%<>%" actually explains operator, rather than linking to random websites about R.
I’m mostly happy with ddg but I wish they had a feature allowing me to disable certain sites by default like kagi, even if that information was stored in local storage only and I’d have to add the exclude list manually.
My only worry is random searches, where I default to a "free" bang (!g, !b, etc.) to not burn through one of my paid searches. I know it's a mental thing, but it's still a thing.
I like it but a month after paying for it the subscription model was changed significantly to be way more expensive. I just can’t let myself become depending on something with such capricious business practices. Maybe it is a positive indication that they are better at product than they are business and customer relations.
I love it, though my only complaint is that I usually want sites in English from the US, but if I want to switch to finding sites in French in France, I have to switch regions. Google is much better at localizing me, and so I'll use !g for those.
