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 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.
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 tame away from us.
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…
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.
I have been using Kagi for over two years and I love it. Worth it IMHO.
Thank you for the response! Is there anything you’ve been dissatisfied with or wish they would change/add?
I second it, i will.get the family plan once the kids go online. No need for them to ever have shitty search.
I get really annoyed if i have to use standard google now, its crazy
Not really. The platform is easily extendible/customizable, so even if there was something I wanted that it didn’t do, odds are some user has created an agent to do it.
That’s awesome! Thank you!
The search engine integration in Safari is a bit janky, but otherwise everything is peachy
That’s because you are using a toy.
I can never go back to google. The noise reduction is insane
People using google (and amazon for that matter) severely anger and depress me. Please make it stop.
Thank you
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.
I’m on the bottom plan. It works fine for me.
AI stuff is available, but you can also just turn it off and never see it.
The search results seem to have less garbage in them than DDG. I’m not sure if Kagi is putting more effort into their index or if they’re just not being targeted as much by junk websites. Likely both.
Letting users promote and demote domains helps individuals search results and gives them a lot of information for which sites are garbage too
DDG uses Bing’s index I believe, so they’re just reranking results for you + proxying queries. The big indexes are generally low quality and DDG can show you only results from them. Kagi seems to train theirs on small web and uses user rankings to adjust, which helps a lot.
They are not without issues, they’ve been pushing for open indexing as indexing is getting harder due to AI scrapers. Cloudflare and Reddit for example make it much harder now (Reddit has an exclusivity deal with Google), but I do get results from both.
That’s good to hear bc $5 is way easier for me to justify than $10. Thank you!
Kagi is definitely worth it.
Being able to down/up rank results to curate better sources is awesome.
I didn’t know they rank the privacy policies. That’s pretty nice. Thank you!
It’s totally worth it. And you hit the major reason for me also. “Ranking” results is fantastic. And lenses, narrowing down results to academic sources is too useful anytime you want real info.
I started with the 300mo. I was able to keep under the limit without too much effort. But eventually I upgraded and it’s nice to not think about it anymore.
Thank you!
It’s great! I do need the unlimited search plan but that’s because I search so much. The AI stuff is pretty unobstructive too, and can pretty much be disabled if you want to. I like the way you can search lemmy with it especially.
Oh for real? Is there a shortcut like r!
You can make shortcuts/bangs, and you can create “lenses”, which allow you to create filter presets on your queries.
There’s a default fediverse one available.
No, but you can go into settings and disable Auto Quick Answer
Thank you!
Just adding my two cents as a happy user of several years: I vastly prefer its results to ddg/google, I kinda forgot the AI stuff existed since I turned it off and it’s stayed off, and I never hit the quota when I was on the limited plan.
The real killer feature is the ability to downrank spammy sites IME (pinterest, fandom, etc.).
Yeah I have a browser add on that lets me block sites but being able to say “I want to see more of this” instead of just “never show me this again” sounds very nice. Thank you for the response!
You search and there’s no ad based front loading. No AI bot at the top getting it wrong 51% of the time.
Honestly this is the best way to advertise it to me. Thank you!
The bot is so bad. I correct the bot and it always responds with. “You are so right, and now I’m going to repeat back what you just said to me.”
What is horrific is I know there are people, far too many people, who glance at it and accept it as the answer.
I had to do the unlimited plan tbh.
It offers AI search, but you have to click it or ask a question - I think it’s similar to DDG in terms of including it.
It really works as a complete search solution with maps, images, video, translation (actually the best translation site out there).
I find that I get good results, without much AI slop, SEO garbage, etc. When I use Google, DDG, or Quant on devices that are not logged in, I definitely notice it takes more effort to get to get to the results I want.
For me, it’s worth it.
Thank you for the response! I think the first time I heard of Kagi was actually about their LinkedIn translations lol
