Glad they found a way to to walk back the limited search count (especially when so many things you wouldn&#x27;t think counted did). Might have to re-enable my account now.Previous discussion about the prior change: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=35078392">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=35078392</a> (226 Comments)

Now you&#x27;re priced to sell.Have you done a formal price optimization? There are no priced competitors to pressure you to stick to a price point so you have leeway to experiment.

you can try it out. They give you 100 free searches.

It’s not that Kagi is better at search, it’s that Kagi is cleaner and more efficient. It doesn’t do bullshit dark patterns, reward SEO, track the shit out of you, or hide valuable tools.I’m a huge fan of the lenses feature. Specifically for technical searches… I can filter for forums only or PDFs only or academic stuff only.

&gt; Can the search result quality be quantified somehow?Encourage you to try it. I&#x27;ve repeated Scott Galloway&#x27;s mantra that advertisement is a tax on America&#x27;s poor and stupid. But I never quite clocked the cost of search ads. It might be solely due to that lack of scrolling through crud that makes Kagi seem much, much faster than Google or DuckDuckGo.

I think I belong to the generation that grew up using just Google so I cannot comment on quantification.The biggest difference for me is that on Kagi, the first results are always relevant instead of clutter&#x2F;ads that you see on Google.

Yes, in many ways, such as the proportion of items on the first page of a query response that are relevant.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Evaluation_measures_(information_retrieval)" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Evaluation_measures_(informati...</a>

If you evaluate Kagi make sure to play around with the &quot;Personalized Results&quot; settings. I find as a programmer, I love the ability to push blogs and resources I like up to the top of the list. You can check out the leaderboard to see, globally what sites get blocked or raised: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;kagi.com&#x2F;stats?stat=leaderboard" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;kagi.com&#x2F;stats?stat=leaderboard</a>

I read some days back on HN that even Yandex is better than Google nowadays. And I apologoze for shilling a Russian company, but it is true! For some queries, Yandex is better than Google.I have replaced Google completely with DDG for most searches, ChatGPT for some things, GitHub Copilot for mundane code questions, phind or code.you.com for things requiring more search, and Kagi for things requiring much more searching.I use Google only now for nearby searches like &quot;gas stations near me&quot;, etc.I never really thought that this day would come. I love Kagi for being able to block Pinterest from everywhere, GeeksforGeeks, etc.

hotbot! now there&#x27;s a name I haven&#x27;t heard in a while! that was the first search engine I used regularly. it was the perfect place to find warcraft 2 cheats and magic the gathering deck ideas

In my experience it&#x27;s not that there&#x27;s better quality results found, but rather low quality results are skipped. There&#x27;s a lot filtered by default + it&#x27;s easy to click &quot;block this domain&quot; when you run into yet another stackoverflow copy. It means that when you&#x27;re searching for code related things, you often get small relevant blogs in position 3+ rather than SEO spam.For example searching for &quot;current time on JavaScript&quot; on Google, I get SO, MDN, and basically a lot of SEO spam sites. Same thing on Kagi <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;kagi.com&#x2F;search?q=current+time+in+JavaScript&amp;r=au&amp;sh=M69XtTvQiEqY0N-zAmYw_A" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;kagi.com&#x2F;search?q=current+time+in+JavaScript&amp;r=au&amp;sh...</a> ends with an actually interesting blog on position 5, link to moment.js on GH, further down posts about accuracy and about the Temporal API proposal, etc.

When I first signed up for Kagi, I found myself just searching for fun. I hadn’t had that feeling in forever (well apart from when Google was first launched)Very happy customer here.

Kagi is as good as google used to be. It doesn&#x27;t have that same &#x27;wow&#x27; effect because we&#x27;ve all experienced what good search is.It feels like turning on your ad blocker. It&#x27;s what web search was supposed to be all along. It isn&#x27;t that it&#x27;s better than Google, Google is just so much worse now.I&#x27;m extremely happy with it. Just the ability to block Pinterest from my results forever is worth the price.

I&#x27;m just a week into using it, but one of the things I&#x27;ve noticed is that for technical queries official docs are ranked a lot higher than random blogs and those sites that just repackage content they scraped from Stack Overflow.I don&#x27;t know if they&#x27;re putting a finger on the scale, or maybe they&#x27;re just doing the original Google thing of ranking sites that seem to be where the search terminates higher, but it&#x27;s good.

Maybe I&#x27;m simplifying, and I haven&#x27;t used it. But it looks like you are basically paying for an anonymized (maybe, since you need an account) proxy to google. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;help.kagi.com&#x2F;kagi&#x2F;search-details&#x2F;search-sources.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;help.kagi.com&#x2F;kagi&#x2F;search-details&#x2F;search-sources.htm...</a>. Getting 10 year old flickr images is great, I&#x27;m sure. But probably the most relevant search results still come from google.

Yes.In four ways for me:- it actually respects my search. If I search for &quot;&lt;some word or phrase that doesn&#x27;t exist&gt;&quot; I get no result. It doesn&#x27;t silently twist my search until it gets something it can show me a million utterly irrelevant results for. This is a huge time saver for me.- there are no ads. I usually didn&#x27;t notice ads in the search results anyway as they were always irrelevant, but recently there has been so many of them that it took away space from the search results. Going back now feels weird.- as others have already mentioned a lot of low quality pages just doesn&#x27;t show up, leaving room for other, more relevant and&#x2F;or high quality pages.- built in tooling to deal with pages I don&#x27;t care about and that Kagi hasn&#x27;t already dealt with.

When I was still on the early beta with limited searches, kagi felt like a secret weapon I pulled out when some bit of technical information was playing hard-to-get. Google&#x2F;DDG can&#x27;t find info on this ancient electrophoresis power supply? Oh look, kagi found a document describing these units that was written for some higher education institution that used them, and now I know they won&#x27;t work for my application. Had similar things happen several times before I just started using kagi by default for those searches.

From the ~5 search queries I have done so far, it&#x27;s not like &quot;wow&quot; but more like &quot;yes&quot;.

I would love to see more analysis on result quality. Probably a good deal of it is subjective. 
I do miss Google&#x27;s Bard AI results. Bard AI is fine, and it generally adds some value to the search results. I don&#x27;t know how I feel about the ethics of AI in search results, mainly AI summarizing results and people not visiting the actual content. Also, I don&#x27;t like how Bard is only available in Chrome, as Bing&#x27;s AI is only available in Edge. I really doubt there is a technical reason AI results can&#x27;t be in other browser search results. I&#x27;m sure it is just a ecosystem lockin play. I usually use Firefox so I don&#x27;t get AI in results anyway.

Can the search result quality be quantified somehow? I remember when Google was new, and I used to use Altavista and Hotbot and those older search engines, the difference in results were like night and day, and Google&#x27;s results were &quot;wow!&quot;Does Kagi give a similar impression as Google did then?

In my experience it&#x27;s far, far better than google search. The ability to boost some domains and block others is invaluable.But also, because you&#x27;re the customer not the product, you don&#x27;t have to contend with Google&#x27;s ad-driven search results and their privacy violating bs. Totally worth the money.(Kagi user since the beta, paying user since they started offering subscriptions.)

Not GP, but from my end- a big yes! Also better than DDG, which is better than Google nowadays. I also use phind and code.you.com.

google search is only good if you want to know &quot;what the corporate hive mind thinks what their idea of an average consumer should think about it&quot;

I think it is better most of the time because:- it combines the top 10 this or that list into listicles that are aggregated into their own section and I find to often be full of spam
- it lets you block or deprioritize any site you want like quora, medium, Forbes, that often give me useless or incorrect info or are just their to boost so
- it lets you prioritize sites you like in the search ranking
- it doesn’t have blocked or censored keywords
- it lets you specify by date or time quickly and easily which I find to be beneficial and google seems to hide it constantly move around in newsIt’s weaker for like looking up a phone number or hours for a local eatery, but in general I like it better.

Yes, its results are far better than Google’s. Google results are full of SEO spam, marketing pages, etc. Kagi tends to surface official documentation, blog posts, online discussion&#x2F;Q&amp;A. Overall, it does a very good job highlighting “real” content rather than “artificial” content. Plus, you can personalize it by boosting&#x2F;downranking&#x2F;blocking sites, creating regex rewrite rules on URLs, etc.

For me, it&#x27;s substantially better.The results are good by default. But you can change the ranking of sites in your results, so every search is custom to you.I pin documentation sites like MDN and pkg.go.dev and penalize SEO span sites.My results are custom to me and my workflows, it&#x27;s pretty hard to go back at this point.Kagi is one of the stickiest subscription services I have.

So would you say it&#x27;s on-par with google results or even better?

that&#x27;s funny as the fly-by-night companies in my experience are the ones spending all of their efforts to win the SEO to get those clicks where the established companies can be found by less sleazy methods

I&#x27;ve been using Kagi for about a year now as well and have been very happy. I find that I still go back to Google when I am ready to purchase a product or find a local service. In this case, I find that I&#x27;m generally happy with the people who are paying money for search placement (either directly to Google or for hardcore SEO) and find I can get less &quot;fly-by-night&quot; type companies that way.

I&#x27;ve generally found searching for symbols to work quite well. It&#x27;s a mixture of the two. You can check the results for &quot;what is %&quot; here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;kagi.com&#x2F;search?q=what+is+%25&amp;r=no_region&amp;sh=Qd1RlT2uU4VjwQbUD3JMGg" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;kagi.com&#x2F;search?q=what+is+%25&amp;r=no_region&amp;sh=Qd1RlT2...</a>

I&#x27;ve sometimes found that including quotes around the symbol gives me more relevant results since Google should interpret that as &quot;find results that contain this exact string&quot;. However I just tried it with your % example and the results were unchanged, I have found this to work myself in other instances so perhaps it&#x27;s a mixed bag

God trying to look up what some string of characters in a random programming language is feels like a Sisyphean task in Google. Try getting Google to understand what a typed hole in Haskell is without knowing it&#x27;s called a typed hole

That&#x27;s awesome that it&#x27;s so flexible. Can you search using symbols? Like if I&#x27;m trying to search &quot;what is %&quot; will it bring back results regarding the percentage sign, or results that start with the words &quot;what is&quot;?That&#x27;s my major problem with google. Sometimes I need to search info on a symbol, and I don&#x27;t know what it&#x27;s called yet, so I have to perform another search, just to perform the one I actually care about.

I’m still on the free Perplexity plan but it has already replaced my Google search by a lot. I’m a huge fan. Haven’t tried Kagi yet though.

Perplexity seems to be an AI chatbot tool, how is that a replacement for a search engine?

I also stopped using Google, but I have replaced it with Perplexity.ai...Have you ever used Perplexity? How does Kagi compare with it?

I search a lot for programming topics and when I get frustrated I switch to Google and get literally the same results. I’d say it’s pretty good for web search and keeps up to date.The downside is things like Sports and other knowledge items which shows a widget I’ve never understood in my life.

Mainly tech&#x2F;programming stuff for which Kagi is outstanding. Lately I&#x27;ve searched a lot about a city (restaurants, places to visit, events, ...) I moved in and it works for that too.

Weird question, but: what do you search for?I switched to DuckDuckGo a while back but I’m not a heavy searcher. I would be curious to know your typical use cases!

Some platforms actually do account for this by having special &quot;developing countries&quot; discounts, or some other euphemism like that. IIRC Gumroad is one that supports this.

&gt;This number really varies based on where you liveNo, it varies based on who you are. Even poor countries are full of rich people. They are usually part of the reason why their countries are poor.

There is a hard price floor. They have to pay the Bing&#x2F;Google search API costs.

&gt; 10 bucks a month for a tool that I use multiple times every single day is more than reasonable.This number really varies based on where you live, and there is no pricing model that accounts for this. I suppose it is mostly just aimed at Americans.

Ditto; also happy customer, been paying for a long time now, never looked back money wise, or to google.My experience trying switching with duckduckgo (repeatedly) always failed; checking google, unhappy with ddg results. Kagi, not so.

$9 now. Just signed up for the annual; 10% off

&gt; When I first started using Kagi a year ago or so, I compared results with Google every now and then.Same. I still do attempt a Google fallback if I don&#x27;t easily find what I want on Kagi, but every single time, the Google results aren&#x27;t what I&#x27;m looking for either.

There&#x27;s a dropdown at the top for the locale - you can select UK and you should get UK results.

I am giving it another shot. First thing I&#x27;ve noticed is the lack of localisation with results.If I search for &quot;Elac 6.2 speakers amazon&quot; it comes up with a .com link. I have to search for &quot;Elac 6.2 speakers amazon uk&quot; for it to go to .co.uk.This was an option with Google that I liked.*Weirdly now if I search for &quot;elac debut 6.2 amazon&quot; it comes up with a UK link :S

Happy customer here. Kagi is by far the best search engine there is.When I first started using Kagi a year ago or so, I compared results with Google every now and then.Now? Never.10 bucks a month for a tool that I use multiple times every single day is more than reasonable. The results hit home virtually every time.There are variety of features to customize your searches but truthfully, I never found the need for them. I&#x27;ve only blocked&#x2F;deprioritized some domains, that&#x27;s it. The results are just so good.

It&#x27;s not focused on coding; it&#x27;s general purpose.

The very first thing that comes to mind is their domain filter <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;kagi.com&#x2F;stats?stat=leaderboard" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;kagi.com&#x2F;stats?stat=leaderboard</a>

It is the first time I hear a out kagi. What for me, as a developer, would be the selling point for using kagi instead of say phind.com?

Ultimate will be worth it in the next couple of weeks, cool features are coming ;) i&#x27;m in the beta and it&#x27;s really great bank for buck

I just signed up for ultimate two days ago. Oh well, I suppose the extra $15 is going to a good cause.edit: You can switch pro-rated, nice.

Been a paying customer for a year now, it&#x27;s very much worth it.

I&#x27;ve been a paying customer for more than a year, in my experience DDG is not even in the same league as Kagi. DDG provides a noticeably worse search experience than Google for most queries, whereas Kagi is either just as good or often better than Google.

Been paying for a long while now, I expect I&#x27;ll keep paying a lot longer. It&#x27;s very, very good.Occasionally, I&#x27;m on someone else&#x27;s computer where I&#x27;m not signed in to Kagi, and I try DDG first, but I frequently resort to pulling out my phone and just searching there.

Echoing what others have said. When I used DuckDuckGo, I would have to resort to using Google all the time because Google&#x27;s results were often better. Since switching to Kagi, I never feel the need to use Google anymore.

Been paying for Kagi for about a year now. It’s great and worth it. As good as google for search, but with much better tools and basically zero ad spam.

I&#x27;ve heard about it, signed up the other day, didn&#x27;t use it. I tried it today on a medical condition that&#x27;s been hard to get good info on, and while it wasn&#x27;t the first hit, there was a great reference fairly high up that I didn&#x27;t find on Google. I&#x27;m working on budgeting for yet another subscription as I figure kagi will be my next go-to if AI doesn&#x27;t outstrip it first. And probably even then(sometimes you have to use the Dead Internet).

i really wanted to ditch google and gave my best shot to DDG and just couldn&#x27;t use it, had to go to !g all the time. 
been paying for Kagi close to a year and I only do !g when I am proactively seeking to look at SEO spam

Previously i used DDG and fell back to Startpage&#x2F;Google constantly. With Kagi, i can&#x27;t remember the last time i did that. I also get a lot of value out of FastGPT (a labs search thing from Kagi).Overall, i&#x27;m very happy with my starter subscription.

It sounds hyperbolic, but using Kagi reminds me of back in 98 or 99 when I first discovered Google. I can get results I want every single time without wading through garbage.I’m happy to pay for it.

In my experience.DDG 6&#x2F;10Brave Search 7&#x2F;10Google 8&#x2F;10Kagi 9&#x2F;10Basically all I want is a search engine that does what I tell it to do, and doesn&#x27;t try to be smarter than me, because it is not. My killer Kagi feature is the forum search. The only way to get real human opinions on things, rather than regurgitated blogspam that&#x27;s pervasive on Google and even more on DDG and other smaller engines.

anyone paying for kagi here ? how&#x27;s it comparing to duckduckgo results ?

Search needs to be paid for one way or another, the bill might as well go to someone with my best interests in mind.

&gt; maybe some people can live in the free plan limitsWhen the free plan was 50 searches, that lasted me less than a day.Now that the free plan is 300 searches, it&#x27;d last me a few days.It was enough for me to get hooked.

How much time do you waste wading through bad search results?Would you pay $10&#x2F;mo to fix that problem?For me, the answer has been yes. I don&#x27;t think that is true of everyone (but maybe some people can live in the free plan limits!)I started with the free plan, made it my default search engine and then tried to measure how often I felt like I had &quot;lost something&quot; once my free tier was up. And yeah, having to go back to Google or DuckDuckGo felt like I lost a really good tool and was using a mediocre replacement.

I just ditched search altogether for questions like that and use ChatGPT. Has improved my workflow so much.

Yep, I think I’m going to try Kagi. I am so, so tired and exhausted of  every search result on Google being “the top X in ${this_month_of_this_year}” with a list of Amazon affiliate links. I append Reddit to the searches for products now, but notice on higher margin items you can click into Reddit user history of people giving their “opinion” and see that every post they make is about that particular product.

Just tried that same query without the quote marks on Kagi.The first result is an info box from Stack Overflow showing use of the + operator to join two lists (with a link to source).Then 4 more relevant SO posts (which are more nuanced and specific than the generic query, like concatenating into a single string, or concatenating without creating a copy.Then a small inset box as a &quot;blast from the past&quot; with 4 older blog posts, at least 2 of which look pretty relevant here just from the title.Then 5 more SO posts (again more nuanced and specific variants of the underlying question), and a digital ocean post on 6 ways to concatenate a list in Python.

That&#x27;s a very common example, but python official docs are bad, so it&#x27;s not a sign of anything bad if they&#x27;re not at the topAnd on free duckduckgo I get &quot;instant answer&quot; example from SO <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;stackoverflow.com&#x2F;questions&#x2F;1720421" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;stackoverflow.com&#x2F;questions&#x2F;1720421</a>
Though the official docs are also not on the first few pages(Btw, you could also use an extension to 1-click filter garbage out from search if it has a high impact on life)

&gt; How does search quality really change my life?Ask this to someone who remembers when Google first appeared.I am not a Kagi user, but am seriously considering it after a number of months having to dig through at least 8 results of paywalled or possibly AI-generated pages for almost every Google query; seriously, I just did a search for &#x27;python concatenate list&#x27; on google and it was worse than I expected - the official docs weren&#x27;t even on the first two pages and even the helpful Stack Overflow answers were the 5th result down - give it a go, the results are trash.I google things at least 20 times a day, and probably so do you. I would pay for something that can cut out the bollocks - if Kagi can follow through, they&#x27;ll have a customer.

Vlad here from Kagi. We are building one, would you like to chat? Would love to understand your needs. Please reach out to vlad@kagi.com

Your Google Workspace has ads...?Oh, do you mean if you do a Google Search even though your company pays for Workspace?

&gt; the business model is a tough one outside of niche HN typesThere are lucrative bundling opportunities.I am waiting fora corporate product; it&#x27;s notable that Google Workspace still subjects you to ads in search. That&#x27;s not only a data leak. It&#x27;s also a constant attention tax on your knowledge workers.

I pay $5&#x2F;mo. for 30GB at FastMail, and $10&#x2F;mo. for Kagi Search.I switched away from Gmail years ago; the risk of getting locked out of my digital identity with no recourse is worth more than $5&#x2F;mo. Not having my electronics receipts, plane tickets and newsletters datamined for an improved ad experience is just a perk.

You can get unlimited email domains&#x2F;accounts for $19&#x2F;year. Assuming you don&#x27;t receive more than 200 emails a day.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;migadu.com&#x2F;pricing&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;migadu.com&#x2F;pricing&#x2F;</a>

Icloud is $0.99&#x2F;mo to bring your own domain if you’re already on ios.

I’m waiting to pay $10&#x2F;month for search+email. That I will do as I also keep meaning to switch off gmail to a pay service.

Right, but then it doesn’t make sense for me as one of those information workers to pay for it. It’s not clear that I can get $120&#x2F;year of value out of it.

&gt; How does search quality really change my life?There are tons of information workers who are dependent on search in their work – or if they&#x27;re not, could work much better with good quality search.The examples are really too many to list, but it really depends on the person. When it comes to not spending a dollar, people will create the most incredible and reality-defying reasons. So I&#x27;d expect 99% of Google users to keep using Google, or maybe even stop using web search when Google becomes completely unusable. Then they&#x27;ll say &quot;I have no need to search for things anyway&quot;.

&gt; How does search quality really change my life?A lot. I make dozens and dozens of searches on an average day.I&#x27;m also somewhat cheap when it comes to subscriptions.Throwing $10&#x2F;mo. for something I can get &quot;for free&quot; is not a light choice. But...<pre><code> 1) I don&#x27;t like Google&#x27;s philosophy, I don&#x27;t like being the product, I like being a customer
 2) Google Search results have gradually gotten worse, mostly because of SEO spam
 3) I don&#x27;t really trust DuckDuckGo or Startpage, their model is essentially also advertising
</code></pre>
I still use Google Search &#x2F; Maps when I want to buy something, i.e., when I want ads.I prefer to not go to the mall for recreation or work either.

Search quality improves my life. Like actually I&#x27;m a happier searcher since Kagi and I search more frequently because I have increased confidence that I&#x27;ll get meaningful results. I don&#x27;t grumble like I used to every time I had to wade through a pool of SEO shit spam. But that&#x27;s just me.

I think Kagi sounds interesting but the business model is a tough one outside of niche HN types. E.g. I am interested but can&#x27;t be bothered to pursue it as it seems like an unnecessary additional SAS model cost to my monthly budget.How does search quality really change my life?Entrenched behavior is tough to overcome especially ostensibly free products.

Not the op but I use chatblade[0] on the cli, chatgpt-next-web[1] as webgui and quivr[2] for multimodal stuff files&#x2F;images&#x2F;audio&#x2F;video. atm everything goes over a azure openai endpoint but would love to infere an llm locally.[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;npiv&#x2F;chatblade">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;npiv&#x2F;chatblade</a>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;Yidadaa&#x2F;ChatGPT-Next-Web&#x2F;">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;Yidadaa&#x2F;ChatGPT-Next-Web&#x2F;</a>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;StanGirard&#x2F;quivr">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;StanGirard&#x2F;quivr</a>

I use the ChatGPT bot for matrix mainly. I&#x27;ve tried some other frontends that are more like ChatGPT web but I keep going back to matrix because it&#x27;s just so handy. I have all my other chats in there too, through bridges.

I use the OpenAI playground because I&#x27;m paranoid that third party frontends will steal my API keys and I don&#x27;t have enough time to audit the code or set up firewall rules.

Simon Willison’s `llm` is an excellent command line client, and now has `llm chat` as well as `-c` for ongoing conversations.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;llm.datasette.io&#x2F;en&#x2F;stable&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;llm.datasette.io&#x2F;en&#x2F;stable&#x2F;</a>

If it&#x27;s useful, I recently open-sourced a simple GPT-4 TUI [1], which I use many times a day. And since this is a Kagi post, I might as well plug my (extremely simple) Kagi CLI [2], which uses their FastGPT API under the hood.[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;git.sr.ht&#x2F;~bsprague&#x2F;gpt4-tui" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;git.sr.ht&#x2F;~bsprague&#x2F;gpt4-tui</a>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;bcspragu&#x2F;kagi">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;bcspragu&#x2F;kagi</a>

what do you use to hit the api? is there a good CLI tool for linux?

Much better imo and much cheaper unless you do 200 chats per day or something :PWhy is it better? More integration capabilities. You&#x27;re not limited to the webpage and app, you can use it anywhere you want. Not constantly kicking me out to log in again every few days (their web does this). The ability to select the model and temperature (a measure of how creative the LLM is). Also the default model seems to be much more recent.And the price. If you use it sparingly you might be paying as little as 20 cents a month instead of 20 dollars. Not exaggerating but it depends on the size of questions and responses. But really to make it cost as much as that 20$ per month with the API you really have to go hell for leather with it.

so is that better than using the chatgpt subscription?

Hmm most of the things I used search for are now covered by ChatGPT (for which I use the api which costs cents).I don&#x27;t think web search is still important enough for me to pay for. A year ago it would have been. I originally signed up with kagi but I wasn&#x27;t too impressed and then they came with the limited plans and that was it. Not sure if I&#x27;ll go back now.And yeah like the article says it was priced for &quot;silicon valley bros&quot;. Even $10 is a lot on a Spanish salary still. But it&#x27;s doable and 300 for $5 is a decent deal IMO. I wouldn&#x27;t do that many.

&gt; I’m sure it’s a lot higher than google will let you do before they start rate limiting youDo you have any basis for this assumption?

I&#x27;ve been getting captchaed by Google just for using `intitle:` or `inurl:` modifiers.

It drives me bonkers when I am searching a very deep topic (like looking for specific legal decisions), and Google throws up a Captcha at me.I am fast and good at searching, but I ain’t that good. I’m going to give Kagi a try for this reason, plus ability to prefer or ban specific sites.

When trying out Kagi (prior to unlimited searches) my monthly Google searches were significantly higher than the cap. While some definitely do get CAPTCHAs, I wasn&#x27;t. Adjusting this to the new unlimited price and it would still seem to be negative profit for them, hence the question.

Whatever the cap is, I’m sure it’s a lot higher than google will let you do before they start rate limiting you or making you do a captcha for every search. Pretty much all search services have some cap, after which they will put up roadblocks to slow you down

For $10 their cost for someone constantly typing new searches is significantly negative. It&#x27;s surprisingly expensive for them to do a search and doing 1 search every 30 seconds for 8 hours is ~3x more than the cap of their $5 tier. I&#x27;m not saying that&#x27;s a reasonable usage case for me I&#x27;m just saying the limit on profitability occurs SIGNFICANTLY sooner than &quot;as fast as you can type for a month&quot;.

I&#x27;m assuming they disallow bot use in their TOS. So they can probably offer unlimited searches that you run yourself by typing in the terms.

I tried Kagi and ended up hitting limits. Unlimited sounds nice, especially since I don&#x27;t need to worry about how I&#x27;m &quot;running out of searchers&quot; so to say, but only once I know how much it actually is instead of just assuming &quot;well, most people don&#x27;t search much&quot;.

While I think your questions are definitely relevant, in practice, you search less than you think.I consider myself as a heavy search engine user but, based on Kagi stats, I was surprised how much less I actually searched compared to my estimate. My actual range is about 500-800 queries a month when I originally estimated upwards 1500 queries a month.Same thing with my friends.

How many is unlimited? Presumably they don&#x27;t get unlimited searches for $10 and, inevitably, someone will use more than they planned for. How much more than they expected is considered &quot;fair use&quot; or however they want to term it and why can&#x27;t I know that before I sign up instead of guess I&#x27;m within what they are thinking?

You can block domains you don&#x27;t want to see results from. With that feature I&#x27;m not sure it even needs to deliver better results than Google to be compelling.

This is great news. I&#x27;ve been paying for a couple months now and I&#x27;ve been happy with the results and the previous limits weren&#x27;t something I even needed to worry about in the end (I did worry at the start but only because I had no idea how many searches I do to gauge which plan I needed).

I was skeptical about this as well but I caved and did it.  It’s amazing how hard different browsers have made it to add a search engine

if you don&#x27;t want to install a browser extension then safari having customizable search engines wouldn&#x27;t help you anyways. you would need to login to the account which is additionally functionality that wouldn&#x27;t be provided without the extensioj

If you&#x27;re on Mac or iOS (which you will be if you use Safari), the team from Kagi also develop Orion. It&#x27;s a browser, heavily focused on keeping to WebKit principles, and obviously supports custom Search engines by default.It&#x27;s not a 100% clone of Safari, but it&#x27;s now matured far beyond a &quot;scratching their own itch&quot; project to enable custom search engines - it gives you the performance and power efficiency of safari, with the option to run most Firefox or Chrome extensions (by implementing the extension APIs in WebKit).The iOS version isn&#x27;t quite as mature as the Mac version (which is definitely usable as your main browser), but it&#x27;s getting there.

This is great - I have been a happy subscriber for almost a year I think.My biggest complaint with Kagi is not their fault - it&#x27;s the inability to set custom search engines on Safari (and no, I&#x27;m not interested in installing a custom browser extension).

It&#x27;s far less profitable than the advertising model. Unfortunately, most tech companies are VC-backed and optimize for profits.It also introduces adoption friction for users who are used to things being &quot;free&quot; on the internet, which hurts the hypergrowth shareholders want to see.

I don&#x27;t understand what&#x27;s wrong with charging money for a service that to the best of my knowledge doesn&#x27;t serve you ads?

Ah, when not logged in, it defaults to light mode.When I logged in with my Google account, it detected the system setting.

&gt; Is there a dark mode?Here is Kagi&#x27;s quick answer [0], where its AI &quot;extracts and summarizes the important content from the search results including links to the source material&quot;:&quot;Kagi supports dark mode functionality to reduce eye strain.[1][2] Users can select between the Royal Blue or Moon Dark default themes in their appearance settings. Additionally, the Orion browser powered by Kagi includes dark mode that can be toggled on websites.[3]&quot;[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;help.kagi.com&#x2F;kagi&#x2F;getting-started&#x2F;#summarize-results" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;help.kagi.com&#x2F;kagi&#x2F;getting-started&#x2F;#summarize-result...</a>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;help.kagi.com&#x2F;kagi&#x2F;settings&#x2F;appearance.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;help.kagi.com&#x2F;kagi&#x2F;settings&#x2F;appearance.html</a>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;help.kagi.com&#x2F;kagi&#x2F;support-and-community&#x2F;open-source.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;help.kagi.com&#x2F;kagi&#x2F;support-and-community&#x2F;open-source...</a>[3] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.kagi.com&#x2F;orion-new-features" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.kagi.com&#x2F;orion-new-features</a>

Yes, even multiple themes. You can choose between detection of the system preference, light and dark mode. The setting is bound to your account, which I like, but I don&#x27;t search much on my phone outdoors.

TIL that there was a light mode. I&#x27;ve been in dark mode since I started using it

We’ve chosen imperfect examples for a reason. That is what Kagi looks like on average so you know what to expect.

Interesting example for a search. I found a few things that seem like bit like basic misses:* the regular wikipedia as the first result, and the mobile version of the same page as fourth one* Links to <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;steveblank.com&#x2F;2009&#x2F;06&#x2F;18&#x2F;epitaph-for-an-entrepreneur&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;steveblank.com&#x2F;2009&#x2F;06&#x2F;18&#x2F;epitaph-for-an-entrepreneu...</a>, which never mentions Steve Jobs* the above link also has the wrong date attached (Kagi thinks it was published Jul 17, 2023)

Is there a dark mode?The example (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;kagi.com&#x2F;search?q=steve+jobs" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;kagi.com&#x2F;search?q=steve+jobs</a>) doesn&#x27;t seem to respect my system theme on macOS.

Also happy Kagi customer.  It is my default search and I get much less fluff in the results than I did with big G.  So happy it respects search modifiers!

They offer crypto payments, and you can cycle accounts through throwaway emails.Vlad has addressed this several times; it’s a planned use case. They offer it because though they don’t keep logs they don’t expect everyone to trust that.I can’t find the comment but he just addressed it a couple days ago here on HN.

Neither do I, which is why I don&#x27;t use Google.

They don’t keep logs and if you don’t trust that, they accept crypto.Also, do you really think google doesn’t know who you are?One would have to go to extraordinary lengths to hide your real name nowadays from even a talented curious searcher never mind google itself.Even Ross Ulnricht couldn’t do it. And that boy had a LOT to lose.

I definitely wouldn&#x27;t want to associate my entire search history with my real identity

&gt;user trackingYou can use Google anonymously but you have to log in and leave your payment data with Kagi.EDIT: apparently they accept crypto

Yeah, I&#x27;m strictly talking about search results. That&#x27;s the main thing I care about. No ads is nice, but if I can&#x27;t find information I need then that&#x27;s not very useful to me.

personally I run Firefox + uBlock Origin + uBlacklist. This mean:- no ads- one click to permablock SEO spam sites from appearing in searches- minimal user tracking (not logged into a google account)Kagi would likely have a better value proposition if I did more searching on mobile though.

&gt; 2% betterNot in my experience, and what about user tracking and pervasive advertising? You don&#x27;t seem to include that in your comparison.

Being able to block domains (without an extension) makes Kagi at least 30% better on its own. Maybe more. It&#x27;s absolutely a killer feature and one that Google themselves used to have.

I&#x27;m currently paying for Kagi. It&#x27;s nice. But, so far I feel like it may only be like 2% better than Google, probably not enough to keep me long term.A lot of times the results are better on Kagi than Google, but not by much. It makes sense they&#x27;re similar since Kagi uses Google&#x27;s index (among others).

Love Kagi. First search engine I’ve been willing to ditch google for.

Adult searches work for me, I disabled safe search on 
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;kagi.com&#x2F;settings?p=privacy" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;kagi.com&#x2F;settings?p=privacy</a>and it seems to be working fine?

Is it truly worth it? Nothing appears when I search for adult content. The safe search function has been disabled.

Be sure to look into the results customization options. You may not need them, but they can also make the engine feel so much more tuned to your needs.

&gt; over a thousand times in a weekThat&#x27;s a lot!I perform 500-900 searches a month.I really enjoy Kagi&#x27;s caching image search; it often lets me avoid visiting websites when I&#x27;m just looking for graphics. Going on Kagi and reading summaries and viewing cached material gives me the &quot;I don&#x27;t feel like going out&quot; vibe, but on the Internet. One step closer to offline.

This is going to get me to try Kagi.I&#x27;ve thought about it several times, enough that I did track my searches for a week. Between work, hobbies, and just life I searched (overwhelmingly DDG and Bing) over a thousand times in a week. (A evening of prep for my tabletop RPG racked up over a hundred all by itself.)I&#x27;ve bailed on Google - wading though the flood of SEO&#x27;d garbage just stopped being worth it. Bing and DDG have been mostly working, but I definitely feel like they&#x27;re missing something. $10 a month is definitely worth it to try it out, and if it works for me, worth it to keep paying. I&#x27;d been hesitating because worrying about my search count seemed like a substantial negative for me.

Excited to see this. Thinking about using this on mobile and all PCs I use now that there is no worry about hitting a quota.

Can only speak for German searches, but the results are good there.

For me, Japanese search quality is on par with Google most of the time.

For Danish searches, simple queries get confused with Norwegian&#x2F;Swedish results.Admittedly, I haven&#x27;t said anywhere that I prefer Danish results when the query is the same in two languages. My operating system and browser are not configured to reveal my nationality. The only way Kagi would know is if they factored in my IP address. Which I can deduce that they don&#x27;t. I prefer it that way.

Kagi in Dutch has been very good.The last thing I&#x27;ve still been using Google for was looking up which Dutch retailers sold the product I was looking for. But now I see that was unnecessary.

Results are good, but the problem is working in multiple languages or in region with multiple languages.There is a discussion[1] on this topic on the forum.[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;kagifeedback.org&#x2F;d&#x2F;89-language-vs-region" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;kagifeedback.org&#x2F;d&#x2F;89-language-vs-region</a>

I&#x27;m currently running the free trial for Kagi and the few non-English searches I&#x27;ve tried have been fine. That being said, I would say they&#x27;ve mostly been pretty simple things to look up since I&#x27;m trying to get a feel for how well the engine suits me. If you&#x27;re interested you could also try the free trial, you don&#x27;t need a credit card or anything for the trial.

I mostly use Duckduckgo these days but fall back on Google for non-English searches because DDG is lacking in that area.Kagi users, how good is Kagi for non-English searches?

I think $5-$10 is a good price point for just the privacy aspect. As far as search, it&#x27;s about 90% kagi and 10% Google if I don&#x27;t like the kagi results. Maps could use some work and I&#x27;m always jumping back into Google maps.I don&#x27;t use any of the other features.

Ah wonderful! Looks fairly inexpensive as well, and they have a summarisation option that seems great, I&#x27;ll need to play a bit with it.

Any of the DDG search libraries on GiHub + ChatGPT-turbo-3.5 is cheaper than this, especially if you need to do a lot of searches and then apply a heuristic to narrow them down. Doesn’t seem very competitive.

They do have exactly such a thing: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;help.kagi.com&#x2F;kagi&#x2F;api&#x2F;overview.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;help.kagi.com&#x2F;kagi&#x2F;api&#x2F;overview.html</a>

I would really love to see an API, possibly with a pay per request pricing.

That frontend team statement alone makes it almost worth switching and thereby supporting their work. It is rare these days to hear such wise words.

It should work without JS. It even works in eww (in Emacs). Looking at the source of the page, there&#x27;s a redirect (meta http-equiv=&quot;refresh&quot;) wrapped in a &lt;noscript&gt;-tag to the same URL but with &quot;&#x2F;html&quot; before the path.[1]. It seems the browser you tried doesn&#x27;t handle that.[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;kagi.com&#x2F;html&#x2F;search?q=what+is+%25&amp;r=no_region&amp;sh=Qd1RlT2uU4VjwQbUD3JMGg" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;kagi.com&#x2F;html&#x2F;search?q=what+is+%25&amp;r=no_region&amp;sh=Qd...</a>

I like the sound of it, but I do notice that the link <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;kagi.com&#x2F;search?q=what+is+%25&amp;r=no_region&amp;sh=Qd1RlT2uU4VjwQbUD3JMGg" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;kagi.com&#x2F;search?q=what+is+%25&amp;r=no_region&amp;sh=Qd1RlT2...</a> which someone posted elsewhere in this discussion as an example doesn&#x27;t work with JS disabled.

Nice DX at the cost of UX.The current state of web development has been ruined by putting developer experience over user experience. A great example that was shared on HN a few days ago: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ericwbailey.website&#x2F;published&#x2F;modern-health-frameworks-performance-and-harm&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ericwbailey.website&#x2F;published&#x2F;modern-health-framewor...</a>This person couldn&#x27;t use the site. But at least the developer got to see red squiggles when they didn&#x27;t format their object properly!If you see &quot;not using JS as much&quot; as knee-capping your hiring, then you are putting your personal preferences ahead of what is good for the users.

Server side rendering in no way guarantees a bad DX. Such a statement is narrow-minded.

&quot;Highly optimised&quot; depends what you&#x27;re optimising for.

I have yet to see a website that felt better to use after switching to React or similar. To me it always feels like a straight downgrade in UX. A site that felt nice and snappy suddenly becomes heavy and sluggish.

In my opinion, in not using JavaScript they are missing out on a really nice DX. This is the kind of app that could be highly optimized _despite_ using React or something similar. Knee-capping your hiring to Make A Point (tm) is silly.

I already liked the domain name from the Mac shareware days of yore and I had sympathy for the business model.But this… they might be winning my heart.

Where in that quote does it say that &quot;Javascript should die&quot;?They&#x27;re just talking about using progressive enhancement, which is a common recommendation for making web applications faster, more reliable, more accessible and less fragile.If you think not making the entire UI and replicating browser functionality with custom JS code is &quot;holding the web back&quot;, sorry to inform you but you might be holding the web back.

It doesn&#x27;t really matter whether a site uses JavaScript or not, but empirically, sites that insist on being almost all HTML and CSS work infinitely better — faster, smoother, adhering to standard idioms — than sites that rely heavily on JS. There are some exceptions to this, of course, but by and large it&#x27;s a pretty good heuristic.

If the future of the web is a trend towards more and more overcomplicated, buggy JS garbage, I’m quite happy to hold it back.If you think my opinion wasn’t born out of experience with the supposed future of the web, but rather some unjustified bias against the language or something, I dunno what to tell you.

Hyperbole much? Nowhere does it say JavaScript should “die”.Today’s web is overflowing with unnecessary complication from trying to fit absolutely every type of content through a React shaped hole. It leads to a worse experience for everyone except the developer making the site, who gets to marvel at how fast they’re shipping new features.

I&#x27;m not sure what other impositions you&#x27;ve had to deal with that made this a hot button issue, but Kagi said nothing about getting rid of JS here. They even call out two use cases where they depend on JS for core features, what makes you think they want to remove JS support all together?

&gt; Fun fact: At Kagi, we prioritize speed, to the point where all functionalities of Kagi Search (except Stripe checkout and Maps) work perfectly without JavaScript. We see JavaScript as a tool to enhance the UX, not create it.This doesn’t matter to me at all. When will people quit trying to hold the web back for their own self served interests?If supporting Kagi means supporting this idea that javascript should die, I doubt I’ll sign up.

I like the statement they made on their jobs page:Core Front-end TeamPassion for creating delightful and swift user interfaces.Proficiency in HTML, CSS, and _an understanding that JavaScript can be used sparingly to enhance, not create, product experiences._Ability to prototype rapidly.Fun fact: At Kagi, we prioritize speed, to the point where *all functionalities of Kagi Search (except Stripe checkout and Maps) work perfectly without JavaScript*. We see JavaScript as a tool to enhance the UX, not create it.

I have other ways to search anonymously. For 95% of my searches I&#x27;m happy to have my search history tracked, used to drive better results for me in the future and available for me to browse if I want to. As long as Kagi isn&#x27;t selling my search history to another company, I actually prefer that they track my search history.Note: currently Kagi doesn&#x27;t track search history; I hope they find a way to enable it in the future.

Kagi doesn’t currently retain search history. It’s set for future opt-in, but can’t be enabled as yet.

It&#x27;s not tracked, that&#x27;s (part of) the whole point

Interesting the HN crowd is into this for the simple fact that you must be logged in (and presumably tracked?) to use it.

I&#x27;m already a paying customer but all I can say is wow. It is rare to see companies offer more for less price, especially in this economy.Good job Kagi, seriously!

Right and this is the reason I don’t like subscriptions.Id rather buy things.I don’t want a car subscription. I want to buy a car.I don’t want a book subscription. I want to buy a car.I don’t a compute subscription. I want to buy compute hours.Etc etc

Fair enough. Sell in bulk but have some minimum credits per month requirement. More or less, use&#x27;em or lose&#x27;em. Not super painful, they are paying customers :) But enough to keep it fair to the vendor. This way there&#x27;s a path to paying for those who don&#x27;t want or need a monthly unlimited subscription.

True, but there&#x27;s also the reality that maintenance costs increase over time for software projects as upstream vendors change their pricing models and codebases grow in size and complexity. I can see why a product like Kagi wants to keep their traffic tied to recurring revenue instead of selling a bunch of credits upfront.

I think the point is having stable recurring revenue. Giving you unlimited usage means on average you&#x27;ll be paying more than you use, but, unless you&#x27;re seriously abusing it, you can technically cost them more than you pay.Just like you can go to the gym every day - if everyone with the membership did that they would not be able to function. But it doesn&#x27;t mean you can&#x27;t.

&gt;This seems like the buffet or gym model where they want people just mindlessly paying and then not using it that much.I see this as the point to any subscription model. Of course they want you paying for more than you use&#x2F;consume.

Yeah, exactly. I looked at Kagi last week (first time I had heard of it), when the $10&#x2F;month plan was &quot;only&quot; 1,000 searches a month and &quot;unlimited&quot; was $25. While I think that I&#x27;ll probably stay well within 1,000 searches, I&#x27;m also not sure, and it&#x27;s just not something I want to have to worry about (it&#x27;s ~33&#x2F;day on average and I doubt I&#x27;ll ever hit it, but still...)One of the reasons I decided to skip Kagi for now.

I get that it’s hard, but figure it out.Amazon doesn’t make me subscribe and I can buy 100 hours and use them over 10 years for all they care. I’ve had monthly bills that are a penny from glacier.I don’t think this pricing is because it’s hard on Kagi. I think it’s a dark pattern that once people subscribe they just autopay forever. My dad subscribed to dial up aol until last year. He hasn’t had a phone line for 15 years.You think kagi is going to not charge people if they do zero searches?They’ve already made it a finite resource by charging $5&#x2F;month for 300 searches. I’m already rationing. They’re just saying it’s $5 if you do 1 or 300. There’s already friction. But friction to dark pattern you into paying more.I mean it’s their prerogative and they can charge whatever they want.I just don’t want another monthly fee. I’d rather just pay once and be done. Sell search tokens or something.

&gt;By making it feel a finite resource, some percentage of the users will start to ration their use of your service and&#x2F;or do some deliberation before using itExactly to a T how I feel about Khanmigo. I pay for it because I love the idea of a maths tutor in my pocket that wont make me feel stupid, even if by accident, for forgetting something simple.But there&#x27;s a &quot;battery&quot; that resets every day and it just makes me anxious. I&#x27;d easily pay 50-100$&#x2F;m instead of 10&#x2F;m I already pay if I could get unlimited access but there&#x27;s just no option for that.If anyone has any recommendations for something like Khanmigo with unlimited access please please let me know. I&#x27;d pay so much for a good personal private tutor in my pocket. For maths if that helps.

This is exactly what I did and I am so happy they switched to unlimited. I have historically done things like using my search as a calculator or searching for websites are commonly visit instead of using them as a bookmark. When I would forget to add g! at the end, I feel a pang of anxiety because I knew that I just wasted another one of my kagai searches.

I hear you, but it&#x27;s also really hard from the service provider&#x27;s perspective because - for many people at least - the allotment of searches starts to become a hinderance on using it.By making it feel a finite resource, some percentage of the users will start to ration their use of your service and&#x2F;or do some deliberation before using it (&quot;I kinda want to look that up, but I don&#x27;t know if I want to spend one of my searches&quot;), and introducing that kind of usage friction can even lead to a subtle resentment of your service.

Thanks. I was looking at this and it might be worth it as seems pretty straightforward.

Their api is slightly different.  That is an api into their own index, but their search results are a combination of those results as well as a bunch of outside search results from places like google etc.

You might want to look at rigging something up with their API.  To use their API, you pre-pay for credits – 25$ for 1000 searches via the API.

There&#x27;s a reason most non-ad-supported, profitable SaaS businesses have switched to a subscription.

GP already said $5 per 300 searches. 10,000 would be $166.67 at that rate.Given that they allow unlimited for $10 per month, that would mean it&#x27;s the equivalent revenue of 16.67 months, which seems pretty comparable to your numbers.I think you&#x27;re being unreasonable toward GP.

I don’t even make 10,000 searches in a year. I just did a search of my browser history: 8881 visits to DDG in the past 12 months, including many duplicates where I hit the back button to click a different link on the same SERP.How much do you think it would be reasonable for them to charge for 10,000 searches? I assume this fee is supposed to sustain the company and fund all development and growth with a 100% ad-free business model, forever!

I suggest that it might be different: a lot of kagi users - of which I am one - complain about feeling internal pressure to optimize their number of searches, which leads to higher mental cost. The unlimited model is nicely brainless, which I mean in a good way: you just use it however you want, and as long as you&#x27;re getting&gt;= $10 of value from it, you keep doing so, instead of having this per-operation mental calculus of &quot;should I preface this with !g to save a search?&quot;I have this same unavoidable urge to optimize with other limited plans, such as cell phone plans (for voice , before everyone went unlimited anyway) and have found I&#x27;m much happier with an unlimited plan. It costs more and I value the saved mental energy more than the trivial amount of money.

That was basically their previous model. As a software developer I blew threw several hundred queries per day ... $10 for unlimited searches is the point I was waiting for to make the change.

You probably just killed this &quot;feature&quot; since kagi employees are monitoring this forum :)

It&#x27;s not what you&#x27;re asking for, but FYI, you can sign up for a month or a year and immediately cancel your subscription very easily on the Kagi site. You&#x27;ll still have access until the end of the subscription period.

I understand not wanting another subscription to pay for, but I just can&#x27;t agree this is something they should do.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.kagi.com&#x2F;status-update-first-three-months#financials" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.kagi.com&#x2F;status-update-first-three-months#finan...</a>This was a comment about their financials last year. This isn&#x27;t a high profit business making hand over fist and exploiting users.I&#x27;m happy to pay monthly to get a service I see as valuable, especially if it ensures that this service is sustainable long-term and doesn&#x27;t disappear because of money.

What is a good way to charge for an ongoing service without a subscription?

Depends on the nature of the service - for dns, vpn and so on - thing you only really need one of - once chosen it makes sense - nextdns is 1$&#x2F;month, backblaze 10 and i feel fine for subscribing. And not locked in in any way. I don&#x27;t really need second one of any of those.It doesn&#x27;t make sense when your consumption is spread between many vendors - like news sites or streaming services or substacks. There should be option - done one time to someone on substack. There are authors I would like to send some money, but they just don&#x27;t create enough value.search engines and gpt chat bots are something in the middle - you usually have 1 + 1&#x2F;2 backup. Goodle, then bing (google filter way too much some stuff), then yandex (since there torrents are not nuked). In this spot subscribing for each is too much money, but just limiting for one has real quality of life costs. Kagi seems to be somewhere here. I wish them luck - search space begs for disruption, but my hunch is that 10$&#x2F;month is on the high side. On the other hand having those kind of people is valuable. A search engine for the rich will have easier time pitching value adding service.

Subscription based services are horrible user experience and it&#x27;s a show of bad faith from the vendor, IMHO. You want me to be locked into your service, wen lwell, then I don&#x27;t trust you or your product.This whole post feels dirty, how it&#x27;s a direct link to a blog post that just reads like a press release, and there&#x27;s a ton of sus responses promoting it in this thread.Tin foil hat, are we having a reddit bot moment on HN?

I wish there was a way to just buy 10,000 searches as a block and charge down against it.I don’t search that much. I don’t want another monthly service fee. But I love the idea of paying for search.Id happily pay $5 for 300 searches, but don’t want to do that every month.This seems like the buffet or gym model where they want people just mindlessly paying and then not using it that much.

Yes. Quoting Wikipedia[1]:&gt; Kagi.com was an e-commerce micropayment platform often used for shareware and e-book purchases, operating from Sept 1994 to July 2016.[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Kagi" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Kagi</a>

From [0]&gt; Are you affiliated with the legendary Kagi shareware platform?&gt; No. That Kagi went bankrupt in an unfortunate turn of events. We liked the name and acquired it when we got the chance.[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;help.kagi.com&#x2F;kagi&#x2F;company&#x2F;faqs.html#are-you-affiliated-with-the-legendary-kagi-shareware-platform" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;help.kagi.com&#x2F;kagi&#x2F;company&#x2F;faqs.html#are-you-affilia...</a>

Aside, possibly, but didn&#x27;t Kagi used to be a company that collected money for shareware authors or am I hallucinating?

I dropped of Kagi after price change, mostly because I don’t think search hit should be something I need to keep in mind when using search engine.This is a change in good direction, and I’ll happily check it once again.

This is great I just signed up! Been wanting to bail on free search for a while now, hoping paid search will prioritize users needs above all else. Crossing fingers they can go the distance, scale, and stick around a while.

&gt; I&#x27;m sad to say it just gets in my wayCare to elaborate on how it gets in your way? And what, in your opinion, Google does better?
I use Kagi myself and I am very happy with it.

I&#x27;ve been a paying subscriber to Kagi for over a year and I&#x27;m sad to say it just gets in my way and I often find myself just wishing I was using Google.I&#x27;ve kept it thus far because I believe in the mission but man... I get why other promising search engines have fallen to Google.

Unlimited Kagi searches for $10 per month