It's ridiculously expensive. It's not private if you have to link your searches to a paid account and none of those payment providers are private. They don't seem to have open sourced any of their key functionality, meaning you have to trust them to not be collecting your activity data.

I spent a long time getting rid of software and using services that I either no longer trusted or was unable to make an informed choice due to their lack of open source code and I'm not going to take a retrograde step now. And that's without the issue with their choice (a continued choice I believe) to use Brave results, a company I'm personally not prepared to support.

Bit too expensive

I stumbled onto some comments about Kagi angling to become an AI-first search engine that actually brags about putting you in a filter bubble. From Kagi's manifesto:

In the future, instead of everyone sharing the same search engine, you’ll have your completely individual, personalized Mike or Julia or Jarvis - the AI. Instead of being scared to share information with it, you will volunteer your data, knowing its incentives align with yours.

One YouTube video suggests a grim future: "Everybody has a feed uniquely tailored to them. Nobody talks about their favorite YouTubers anymore, because everybody watches different content farms. All the real creators quit a long time ago."

Food for thought. I don't like the idea of these filter bubbles.

ETA: I didn't realize it at the time but they also promise data collection for

• Political echo chambers: "But there will also be search companions with different abilities... You could customize an AI to be conservative or liberal"
• Corporate brand loyalty: "Ask it for a good coffee maker, and it’ll recommend choices within your budget from your favorite brands"

If you're looking for an open source search engine that's building its own data set, one exists (and it's totally open source and free).

https://stract.com/

If you're looking for something that collates other engines' contents, SearXNG is also open source and free.

https://searx.space

Kagi isn't really unique in any way here; their most unique quality appears to be linking your searches to an account, requesting money, and promising not to sell your data at a later date.

I'm not a fan of them doing business with Brave and how they handled criticism from the community.

I've had better results than on Google in many cases. Also leaves DDG and other privacy relevant alternatives in the dust.

But, unless you are a power user it's hard to justify the cost. Very pricey.

Personally I love it. Being able to boost results from some sites while depriotizing or even banning others has been real helpful. Not having unrelated "sponsored" content cluttering up the results is certainly nice as well. The results themselves feel like Google from ten years ago, relevant and on point.

I don't need my search history linked to my payment data for future enshittification. At least Google (and DDG or whatever) is guessing and I can make that harder with a proper browser.

It is a privacy nightmare as they have your payment information on file.

I’ve been using it as my primary for quite a while, it’s pretty awesome and the development pace is pretty good.

I’m not really a fan of the lead guy, some of the comments he’s made on the forums are less than great, but the product is top notch.

I am currently subscribed and it is definitely a step up from other engines I have tried. The main feature is just that it seems to somewhat cut back the general blogspam and SEO fluff. It isn't perfect but whenever I do compare it to Google, Brave or Duck Duck Go it seems to be ahead, or in rare cases similar.

The ability to lower/block sites is also quite nice. I also have a few raised sites, but that is really a minor improvement compared to blocking crap like Quora and Pintrest.

That being said the small plan is a pretty small number of searches so I need to pay for the unlimited plan which is quite expensive. I currently think it is worth it but it is definitely borderline value, not a slam-dunk decision.

I also have concerns about them focusing on things I don't care about. Lots of AI features and a browser. I don't want any of that, just focus on search, there is still lots of room for improvement, even if they are currently leading the pack.

What would i be searching for that's so difficult to find that I would pay for Kagi? Especially when there are multiple options for good free search engines.

I created an account a few months ago but I've barely used it. DDG provides pretty much everything I search for. This might be because I don't typically do very "esoteric" searches, but for now I don't see the need for a paid service. Most of the times, tweaking the query so that it looks for a specific source is good enough.

I'd love if DDG had a system to remove entire domains entirely from the results, though.

I just started paying the unlimited plan. I like the search results and the URL replacement setting. I can redirect YouTube videos to piped and Reddit to the old one so my VPN doesn't get blocked. The lenses are also top notch.

I was introduced to it by an IRL friend of mine very early on and was very sceptical. I then tried it many months later and what actually convinced me most are its "advanced" features. They're features that should obviously be in any search engine but since there's been practically 0 innovation in this space in the past decade or so, this is very refreshing.

The results being on par with Google at the worst also helps.

Pretty much everything about it is really great. The only thing that's not great is that you're required to identify yourself with every search. I'm not aware of any alternative for a paid search engine though. They claim to not log or otherwise abuse your PII and it's believable but there's still a risk.
I guess the price is also kinda high but it's justified AFAICT.

Btw: !kagi@lemmy.ml.

I'm currently a Kagi user. When I first used it I thought it was an excellent alternative to Google, and well worth the price. However ever since they integrated Brave results, I've noticed a significant decline in the quality of results. The only reason I'm still subscribed is because I haven't found a suitable alternative.

I love it. Personally I don't think it is too expensive, though I am probably a power user of search engines, as I need it a lot while programming all sorts of stuff... So maybe it is just me saying its worth the money, because I use it a lot

Been using is for several months. Definitely VERY overpriced (I'd say $3-4/mo for a search engine would be fine, not $10), but the results are great, and I love the quick answer feature. It quickly summarizes info from top results, helped me a lot in college, where sometimes your brain is melting and you want the answer NOW.

I think it's great. It's the only search engine where I don't find myself going back the Google every now and then. I'd say the results are actually a lot better than what Google offers. Being able to rank websites higher or lower (or even pin them or block them entirely) is great, and as it's saved to your account, it's basically synced across devices.

It's $10/month for unlimited searches. I tried their limited $5 plan first, but found myself thinking "do I really need to search this?" way too often to try and stay under the 200 (back then I think, now it's 300) search limit.

Their privacy model is mostly based on you trusting them that they don't keep your search history for longer or any other purposes than stated (if turned on), but their business model is clearly based on subscriptions, so it should be fine unless they get greedy.