Try Switching to Kagi
492 comments
·April 29, 2025neogodless
Derbasti
I finished my 30 day trial the other week, and went back to DDG. After a few days, I realized I didn't miss anything, so I'll happily stay with DDG. Perhaps I'm not a very discerning searcher. Most of my searches are bang-searches of Wikipedia or CPP or Python anyway.
Still, I'd be fine with supporting a sustainable search engine. $10/more is a bit too steep for my liking, though, measured against the utility I get from it.
dhc02
As my income drops in slow periods, I pause subscriptions to many things. The very last two I would be willing to give up are (n-1): YouTube Premium and (n): Kagi.
Hikikomori
Switched to nebula when they removed YouTube lite and the price was double. Got no ads on my devices anyway.
zaneyard
Firefox (and probably others) allows you to set up custom search engines (like Wikipedia). So when I know I am trying to get to Wikipedia or npm or whatever I just do an @wikipedia and type my search.
mixmastamyk
I’ve used keyword search for many years, maybe since Netscape. Set it up and type “w thing”, no quotes. Can be a lot shorter.
xeonmc
Pro tip : there is a DuckDuckGo lite version
schrectacular
Feel the same. I liked it during the trial, but not THAT much.
idiotsecant
10 dollars is like, a sandwich. Access to your search engine for a month is less useful than a sandwich?
jzb
The thing is, subscriptions do add up. Lots of folks are carrying a bunch of $10 a month subscriptions that individually are no big but when added up start tacking on $100-$200 a month to their bills.
I'm a big proponent of paying for things instead of using ad-supported things, so I don't mind paying for Kagi -- but I also have subscriptions and other monthly payments that make me think hard before signing up for a new one. $10 a month for Kagi, $10 for a webcomic Patreon, $5 for a musician's Patreon, $10 a month to support Mastodon.social, $10 a month to Internet Archive, and an assortment of other monthly (or yearly) subs/payments... plus streaming, plus ... it adds up.
Ideally if more people were supporting these things the monthly charges could be less -- e.g., if Kagi had more users their monthly could be $5 instead -- but pricing and getting people to pony up is hard.
Fnoord
For a myriad of reasons I'm cutting back on American subscriptions (am European). Kagi has a soft spot near my heart, so it is likely one of those going out last.
If sandwiches are $10 for you and not worth much, might I ask you to support my subscription instead? Because when I make a sandwich myself, the costs are approx 0,50 EUR, and that is the type of food I can afford.
It is the same with this 'it is only a cup of coffee' or 'only a beer'. I don't drink beer, I do drink coffee, but when I did drink beer the special beers were lower than the prices of the ones you pay in pubs. As for coffee, it just shows you're from San Francisco or something, cause we got free coffee at work in our culture here.
Moreover, there's enough people in this world for whom $10 a month is a huge deal, and all your comment shows is that you're either unaware of such or simply don't care.
cmeacham98
Kagi isn't competing against no access to a search engine, it's competing against Google, DDG, etc etc which are free (or more specifically, you could say ads are the cost).
Kagi needs to not just be worth $10, but also worth ($10 - ads) more than the alternatives.
ewhanley
It always seems like there's no one less willing to pay for software than those who create it for a living
toxik
It's a sandwich _subscription_. If you keep thinking like that, it's death by a thousand cuts.
robertlagrant
$10 is many sandwiches.
freedomben
Did you miss the part about them using DDG? They do have access to their search engine.
If the choice were between no search engine or paid search engine, then your point is a good one, but that's not the choice here.
I'm a very happy Kagi subscriber btw. I think it's worth the money. I love the personal uprank/downrank feature and Quick Answers personally and get a lot of value from them. But if I didn't use those it might not be worth it to me either.
neogodless
"It's one banana, Michael. What could it cost, $10?"
HanClinto
YMMV, but because search is my gateway to the web, I think of my Kagi subscription less like a charge for an optional service (like Netflix / Hulu), and more like paying an ISP to be my access to the web.
jrmg
Watch out - I got the email offering a new 30 day free trial, and at the end of the month they did nothing to inform me and started charging the credit card they apparently still had on file from when I subscribed for a month or two a few years ago.
I guess with other companies I would’ve expected something like that and monitored the time more closely, but with Kagi I expected better - especially since the email offering the new free trial promised “A month on us”, and said “Click here to activate your trial, no strings attached”.
seth_at_kagi
Hey, Engineer from Kagi here.
This is not something we intentionally do here, and is a feature of Stripe to automatically renew at the end of a trial if there is a payment method present. It should have also sent you an email about 7 days before it was going to renew.
With that said, I do understand how this may be unexpected. I will look into adding a workaround for this auto-renewal so that we can prevent that in the future for other users. Either way, if you contact support@kagi.com we can give you a full refund.
realo
That comment from an actual human being, sir, more than anything else, would be by itself a reason for me to switch to Kagi everywhere.
Fortunately I already switched to Kagi everywhere...
jrmg
It’s plausible that I didn’t see the email because it got spam filtered away, so I totally believe that one was sent.
On contacting support: to your (Kagi’s) credit, Kagi did cancel the subscription and refund the fee after I contacted support. But if I hadn’t been scrutinising my credit card statements for other reasons, I suspect it may have been a few months before I noticed.
[edit: Thinking more: if their ‘no fee if you don’t use it’ policy actually works, I guess I wouldn’t be charged more than the one month. Although that makes it even less likely I’d’ve noticed.]
FrinkleFrankle
Email is not the best notification method these days. I'd suggest having a notifications delivered directly in kagi's interface as well. Maybe a banner for an ending trial period.
I have been using Kagi since the start. You guys are doing an incredible job.
nottorp
> This is not something we intentionally do here, and is a feature of Stripe to automatically renew at the end of a trial if there is a payment method present.
Blaming Stripe?
discordance
Thank you for stepping up but here's a tip - don't blame Stripe. If you use a 3p in your service, it's now apart of your service and you're responsible for that.
megiddo
Hey, I've been a subscriber for a while. I love it. I wear the tshirt.
Thank you.
null
MartinGAugustin
[dead]
packetlost
That's weird because Kagi is one of the few subscriptions that gives me an email heads up days before they charge me during the normal monthly cycle.
kristofferR
I'm not sure if it's a Norwegian law or an EU law, but companies here are forced to regularly send reminders that you are subscribed to them, I've gotten them from all the major streaming services I've subscribed to.
Terretta
On the contrary, they are the rare SaaS that proactively avoids charging you any period you don't use it.
neogodless
I will keep an eye on it, but I am 99.9% sure I've never paid them anything or given them any payment information! (I don't trust my brain as much as I did when I was younger, so perhaps I'm forgetting something. But I don't think so!)
deng
Interesting, because I brought this exact thing up last time Kagi was mentioned here, and the founder and billing engineer assured me that it does NOT convert to a subscription:
seth_at_kagi
Hey,
As I mentioned in my previous comment, it does not convert IF you do not have a payment method set. In this instance they already had one set which Stripe takes as 'this user wants to renew' and instead decides to not cancel it.
I did mention a workaround we could do, and that's something that we will ensure gets done asap.
tombert
A friend of mine and I split the cost of a family plan ($20/month) and that way we have four extra accounts to use for our family and the like. The amortized cost is pretty reasonable then.
I'm ok paying a few bucks simply because it gives the site a means of making money that isn't selling my data or tunneling me into some kind of marketing ML model.
And the results really do feel better. I almost never do the !g like I did with DuckDuckGo, and being able to set my own weights for sites is genuinely great. Instead of some arbitrary machine learning model, I have my actual intelligence to assist with the rankings.
II2II
> I don't like the 300 search limit, because it scratches my brain - "do I need to search for this? can I find it some other way? should I just use duckduckgo for this search?"
I have been using the free 300 search trial for several months now, and have not found it limiting. In a way, it highlights the strength of the search engine since I devote more time to reading the sites it directs me to than sifting through search results or refining my query. In other words, I am spending less time searching and more time pursuing the fruits of those searches. I am also okay with the idea of using different search engines for different purposes. I have a general idea of which queries will produce good results on DDG or Google, and use those search engines in those cases. I also have a general idea of which queries will generate terrible results on DDG or Google, and reach for Kagi in those cases.
> I'm largely allergic to subscriptions. Still, if I can spend $360/year on Disney/Hulu/Max, I should be able to upgrade my search experience.
I am allergic to subscriptions, which is likely why I am working within the bounds of Kagi's free trial for as long as I can. Once I have used up those queries, there will be a decision to make. Thankfully they are advertising $5/month for 300 queries. It's something that I can live with, even if I do go hog-wild with queries using the model that I have settled upon. Still, I have to get over that allergy first.
Liquix
FWIW it's possible to replace the streaming services with something like Jellyfin+Radarr+Sonarr or Kodi+RealDebrid to cut the bill down to <$50/yr, and you also get access to media on all streaming services. leaves plenty of room in the budget for things that can't be self-hosted (like a proper search engine). some may cite ethical concerns but i don't think HBO execs making money hand over fist are concerned about ethics at all
thmoonbus
As someone who has several friends and family who work in the mid / lower tiers of the entertainment industry... if you want to pirate, fine, but don't act like you're performing a noble act. Are entertainment execs grossly overpaid and exploitative? Sure - not unlike many industries. But lower revenue and lower subscriber numbers do have an impact on the money that trickles down (yes, trickles, sadly) to employees.
I say this mostly because the tech set seems OK with content piracy in a way that they wouldn't be OK with say, shoplifting. I don't see people recommending walking out with a pair of Airpods from best buy because of Apple's ethical breaches.
alextingle
Shoplifting and copyright violation are not comparable.
Most of us on this site produce copyrighted works for money. Many of us are pretty knowledgable about how copyright works, as it's an integral part of our livelihood. So please don't try to promulgate that weird media industry propaganda here.
tumdum_
You should be more worried about Meta doing piracy than individuals: https://torrentfreak.com/meta-torrented-over-81-tb-of-data-t...
null
mac-attack
Why not just avoid their services instead of pirating their content and matching the ethics of their execs?
behringer
It's not piracy because they've made it clear that digital ownership is not actually ownership.
SSLy
because their services aren't fungible
NetOpWibby
Why not just do something else than watch shows your friends and family are watching?
Clearly, they enjoy the content. You don't just stop enjoying things like that.
carlosjobim
As long as your time is worth <$50/yr...
BeetleB
Just FYI, if you run out of your 300, you can simply renew on that date. So if 300 searches lasts you 21 days, you're effectively paying between $5 and $10 per month. If you run out halfway, though, it's cheaper to pay for unlimited.
mossTechnician
That's interesting. It makes you think about searching. It makes you think about the limits, it makes you think about the fact you already paying them for the privilege, it occupies just a little bit of your mind.
It's a clever trick, kind of like how Amazon knows that if you subscribe to their Prime service, you might think about Amazon when you're about to buy something online.
Ezhik
Kagi is so nice. Amazing that it's the first search engine I've seen that lets me do something as obvious as customizing ranking for certain websites. And, of course, the ability to block websites from search results entirely.
It even passes my personal search test - it shows reasonable results and not pages and pages of junkware when I search for "avi to mp4".
I think my only annoyance with it is that it shows me shopping websites for irrelevant countries when in "International" search mode - but that's honestly something I'm not sure should be fixed, especially given how it's impossible to get Google to show English results in a non-English-speaking country.
rafram
On a search for "avi to mp4":
- Google shows CloudConvert, then some helpful Reddit threads, then Ask Ubuntu, then some spammy SEO-optimized converter websites.
- Kagi shows CloudConvert, then pages and pages of spammy SEO-optimized converter websites.
Google clearly wins there.
28304283409234
Happy paying customer of Kagi here. because to me intention counts.
Kagi has the explicit intention to serve me their best results.
Google has the explicit intention to get me to click on their customers results.
Happy to pay kagi.
tim333
I think Google has the intention to get you to click on their ads. Which they can achieve by providing ok search results.
rafram
Use an ad blocker.
prophesi
Opposite here, but I also don't have a personalized Google search experience, and an exhaustive list of sites in Kagi that I raise/lower/block from the results.
amelius
Avi to mp4 is best done with an ffmpeg command written by an llm. But OK, I get that that was not the point.
rafram
If you already have ffmpeg, you shouldn't need an LLM to write `ffmpeg -i video.avi video.mp4`.
mvieira38
Did the same here on my Android phone.
Google:First result, occupying half my screen, was a sponsored Google Play junk app, then CloudConvert, FreeConvert, Convertio, Adobe Express, Restream (this one seems like garbage), then a second Play widget and then SEO slop.
Kagi: FreeConvert, CloudConvert, a youtube tutorial, a Quick Peek widget with unhelpful topics, Restream, Adobe Express, SEO slop at the end.
Not that much better by Kagi, but it's pretty good not having any ads. I'm curious why you'd think leading you to Reddit when you searched for a converter is a desirable result, though, and I think you got that because you search for "[term] reddit" so much it defaulted to it via algorithm
rafram
It's not just me getting Reddit discussion results - Google has an exclusive deal with Reddit to list it in search results [1], and it tends to be ranked highly now for more subjective/recommendation-based queries. (And I did this test after clicking the "Try without personalization" link in the Google footer.)
I didn't list the ads in the Google results because I didn't see them. There's no reason not to be using an ad blocker, and unlike Kagi, it's free.
[1]: https://www.404media.co/google-is-the-only-search-engine-tha...
dhc02
The best part about Kagi is that if the default results don't seem helpful, one click restricts results to only discussions and forums, which is usually exactly what I want to do next.
mubou
> how it's impossible to get Google to show English results in a non-English-speaking country
It's ridiculous because there's even a language option in the search settings, but it does nothing. I had to change my country to United States just to get it to stop giving me non-English technical documentation and wiki articles. But that means in order to get local results for stores etc I have to use Bing/DDG instead.
Does Kagi solve this problem somehow? Like, can I make it give me non-English results for local things and English results for everything else?
Thimothy
In Kagi you can search with a specific country selected or the default "international".
I find it a superior alternative to Googles "wherever you are", but I do a lot of multilingual searches. For example, when I'm searching for french recipes, I don't want crappy American SEO optimized recipe agregators. Selecting the country I live in brings up local laws instead of stuff from other (bigger) countries where the same language is spoken. International works very well for code and general queries.
kristofferR
Kagi has the opposite problem though, there's no way to search for results only in a specific language.
99% of the time I like that English results are included in country specific searches (I keep "Norway" as default) so I don't have to switch back and forth all the time, but when I only want Norwegian results I am forced to switch back to Google.
mhitza
One thing Google does which I like is that I don't have to fiddle with region dropdowns. I just drop in a keyword in my local language and it knows to switch the results sources.
Kagi should be able to do that nicely, though I'm not gonna suggest anything on their feedback forum, that's already backlogged to the brim.
nicbou
I'm travelling, and it's weird to get results in a different language with every border I cross. Just because I'm in Spain does not mean that I suddenly speak Spanish. My browser and my Google account already transmit my language preferences!
homebrewer
Use https://google.com/ncr (which stands for "no country redirect" IIRC). Has been working for me in a non-English speaking country for a very long time.
Ezhik
The best incantation I've got to force English Google results is https://www.google.com/search?q=hedgehog&lr=lang_en&hl=en&ud...
For Kagi, I've got it set to give me international results, so technical documentation is in English, but I have to manually change the region to my country for local results - thankfully that's just a dropdown on the same page that remembers your recent country choices.
stevekemp
Sadly your incantation fails for me - I've been fighting this issue for years.
If I copy and paste your search-link but change the word from "hedgehog" to äiti I get back a page of Finnish results.
This drives me mad when I'm searching for a Finnish street-name, or store-brand. My account is setup in English, my browser accept-language headers are English and yet it will constantly decide to switch to Finnish for me. (Except for google maps which will universally show street-names in Swedish. Scream.)
Sometimes I get a "switch to English" link, sometimes I do not. Half the time that takes me to a settings page with a progress of "Saving" which does nothing, and half the time it redirects me back to English search results.
Google's approach to language has literally no rhyme or reason, and breaks on a daily basis for me. But I guess it is what it is, and I continue to put up with it for the times I use it.
jq-r
You can use https://google.com/ncr which doesn't redirect to a country.
1oooqooq
duck duck go have a drop down where you select any county anywhere you are.
want to search in spain while in the UK? so easy. all other searches are completely broken without this.
areyourllySorry
try searching for an english word in incognito, there should be a yellow box on the right that lets you change to english. dunno about logged in searches
MartinGAugustin
[dead]
sundarurfriend
> Amazing that it's the first search engine I've seen that lets me do something as obvious as customizing ranking for certain websites. And, of course, the ability to block websites from search results entirely.
Brave goggles also allow you to customize the rankings to your preference. You can boost sites to varying levels (1-10 I believe), downrank them, or discard (block) them entirely.
emacdona
> customizing ranking for certain websites [...] the ability to block websites from search results entirely.
These were the killer features for me and why I'm happy to continue paying for Kagi.
That being said, I've (anecdotally, at least) noticed the quality of their search results declining (still better than Google).
I search for a lot of error messages (for example, errors that I encounter while compiling Java code) -- with very unique strings -- only to have the entire first page of results not contain these strings. Even if I quote them. I really want the ability to say "The page MUST HAVE THESE STRINGS". Google used to have "allintext:" -- but even that doesn't guarantee a page will contain a certain string anymore.
Now, when I'm trying to get more insight on an error message, I'll use AI first. And while I get much better results that way, I find it incredibly frustrating because search engines USED TO BE JUST FINE for this use case. Now they no longer are.
demaga
I live in a non-English-speaking country, and Google works fine for searches in English. I would say it only works poorly for single-word searches.
Of course, I have my system and browser language set to English, so maybe that's why.
stevekemp
I have everything possible set to English, yet when searching for street-names or other random things I get shown Finnish about fifty percent of the time.
A "change to English" popup sometimes appears with the results, and it sometimes works. Other times it does nothing.
Searching in English for things which feel like they should be okay (e.g. a recent search was "Tag (2018)" to lookup details of the film) sometimes results in Finnish too.
drabbiticus
Just curious if you have a screenshot or a list of the top n results for "avi to mp4" when using Kagi so that there is a bit of a data point for comparison captured in thread?
JumpCrisscross
"Paying for Kagi today feels a lot like paying for HBO back in the cable TV heyday. Part of the deal is that you are paying for ad-free service, yes. But you’re also paying for noticeably higher quality."
This sums up my experience tidily. Kagi is a delight to use.
It doesn't make sense ex ante why one would pay for something that's colloquially free. But then you experience it and it feels luxurious. (Before you notice the productivity and curiosity boost.)
snorremd
I love that Kagi puts the "monetization" icon right next to results so I can avoid navigating to them. This means I'm much less likely to click on Medium.com links and other monetized blogs and sites. Often times the good content is on some personal website where the creator doesn't really care about earning money off it.
Another neat feature is the possibility to rank results or block them manually so you can lower visibility of certain sites. Really help push the scammy sites down.
Compare this to Google Search where the first half page is paid results (ads) and the rest of the results are of dubious quality. And you don't really have much of a way to influence your search results.
JumpCrisscross
> love that Kagi puts the "monetization" icon right next to results so I can avoid navigating to them
One of the things I love about Kagi is it isn't overly opinionated. I'm not particularly sensitive to this issue. You are. Yet until this comment, I didn't notice that Kagi was doing this. It informed you. It didn't get it in my way. That's good design.
> Another neat feature is the possibility to rank results or block them manually so you can lower visibility of certain sites. Really help push the scammy sites down.
The ad-driven search engines refusing to implement this really drives home their conflicts of interest.
jay_kyburz
I would be very interested to know if Kagi starts to down rank a site for everybody if lots of its users manually down rank it.
Semaphor
I don’t mind Medium being monetized, but I have the domain downranked, because posting on medium is a very strong signal that the content is worthless.
carlosjobim
Use reader mode on your browser, and you can read most of the paywalled sites.
coldpie
Could you give some examples of specific queries (like, tell me exactly what to type into the search bar) where you find Kagi returns better results than Google or DDG? I tried Kagi a couple times and didn't notice a significant difference in result quality, so I'd like to see what people find so nice about it.
_aavaa_
You can blacklist whole domains (or subdomains) as well as upranking or downranking specific sites.
This lets you avoid the seo spam (particularly bad for programming sites).
For example. Say I want to know more about python’s built in sum() functions. A google search for “Python sum function” produces results on the first page from:
- w3school
- GeeksforGeeks
- real python
- programiz
- code academy
And only after do I get the official python docs.
On Kagi I have blacklisted all of those garbage sites and the official docs at the top result.
stenius
Here's some stats that kagi publishes on how people are using their blocking and a great place to great started with it as well.
Ferret7446
Is it worth $10 so you don't have to search the Python docs directly? That seems terribly wasteful (monetarily, computationally), when you could use something like devdocs, among dozens of other options.
SaberTail
You can search the official python docs on DDG with !python. So if you search for "!python sum", it takes you right there. They have a lot of other "bangs" that work really well, too: https://duckduckgo.com/bangs
coldpie
Thank you. Sounds like the search results are not actually much better on Kagi, but the features around search such as blocking domains is where you find the value. That would explain why I didn't see much of a difference when I tried it out without doing any customization.
einarfd
I haven't set up blacklist for my kagi account. Searched for "python sum", got a link to the python doc as the first result. So imo. you dont need a blacklist.
28304283409234
To me, it is not the results that are the kicker. It is that I no longer have to waste my time filtering out Google customers paying for my attention.
Every result in Kagi is there to try to help ME. Not Google. Not their customers.
And even though DDG is fine privacy-wise, in this regard they are no better than Google.
coldpie
> It is that I no longer have to waste my time filtering out Google customers paying for my attention.
Can you explain what this means in more detail? (To be clear, I'm not trying to be adversarial, I'm asking for a sales pitch :) )
dingnuts
one I like to use to demonstrate is "how to fix a leaking faucet"
Google gives you a full page of ads for plumbers
Kagi gives you instructional videos from This Old House. It's night and day.
gcau
I just tried this, and google returned a variety of videos (guides for fixing), and various text/website tutorials (home depot, reddit etc), I had to scroll to the absolute bottom to see an ad for a plumber.
Zambyte
> @dh nats !
This brings me directly to https://hub.docker.com/_/nats/. Like it doesn't even show Kagi.
> @hn !
This brings me directly to the front page of HN.
> @gh jj !
This brings me to https://github.com/jj-vcs/jj
> !guixc how do I install nginx?
This brings me to https://kagi.com/assistant/071a7584-d0a3-49fe-abe1-635223085..., which includes an answer relevant to my distro from a generic question.
> !p nginx
Brings me to https://packages.guix.gnu.org/search/?query=nginx.
The customization is extremely powerful as you can see. Snaps are also often significantly better than bangs, because sites often have bad built in search (!dh particularly sucks. !gh isn't great either imo).
bigyabai
Something tells me that Gruber has been betrayed by supposedly "premium" subscription services in the past.
harshitaneja
My experience with Kagi was not as positive as everyone else's here. I didn't find the search results to be better and perhaps that's because I am used to google foo to extract decent results there. So I made Kagi my default engine everywhere and used it exclusively for more than a month before giving up. The response time for search results isn't too long but that difference from google's response time, which I had come to rely on subconsciously for all my queries through a day, was too jarring and even after a month I couldn't get used to it. Having had an adblocker and Youtube Premium I don't really ever see any advertisements anywhere anyway so I couldn't find the value there too.
I would love to pay for search again and not be the product but as of my last experiment(Nov 2024) Kagi wasn't that for me. Curious to know if anyone else had such an experience or perhaps something I need to re-evaluate.
coldpie
This has also been my experience. The search quality is no better. When I ask people directly what they like about Kagi, it's all about the customization stuff (custom search operators; denylisting domains; etc). I do see the appeal of that, but I don't personally care enough about those features to pay for it.
qudat
You also get Kagi assistant which is nice
int_19h
Part of the problem is that Google has been actively sabotaging google-fu for quite some time now. E.g. ignoring quoting in queries.
harshitaneja
Agreed. It is a major annoyance and the primary reason I was exploring other options. However, even though it is infuriating when google refuses to not respect my query, the number of such queries for me are limited and thus I can use Kagi(and lately exploring search in ChatGPT). The amount of such searches I have needed haven't exceeded 100 on Kagi so I haven't had the need to resubscribe yet but if they do I guess I will maintain the subscription. However with the response time issue I doubt I would ever want it to be my primary search provider.
cromka
This is so infuriating that it single-handedly made me start looking for alternatives.
There is a noticeable friction now in using Google for searching. A pretty good example of how a decent product gets ruined by accountants and shareholder demand.
abtinf
What is the value of low latency when the first page results are garbage?
p_j_w
GP literally said in their first sentence that results quality wasn't improved with Kagi.
chipsrafferty
I tend to agree. I would pay money solely for the features that let you block sites, uprank and downrank sites, but use Google instead. Bonus points if they block the Gemini stuff.
zelphirkalt
User scripts and browser extensions to the rescue, at no cost but time invested in setting them up.
vinnymac
I have had a similar experience. After using Kagi, I don't really get why someone would pay for what they are offering today.
jetbalsa
Daily user for a few years now, the response times have not gotten that much better, but I do like the assistant feature of their higher tiers so I've stayed on for now.
harshitaneja
Assistant was surprisingly useful. In a couple of occasions I had it find me research papers I didn't know existed for a problem I had been working on for long. However the realization for me was that I shouldn't neglect search abilities of the LLMs I was already paying for. I tried to replace my Claude and ChatGPT subscriptions with Assistant but the usage limits were too low for me. And for the cases where I wanted to use long context of Gemini models, the assistant had an arbitrary limit of only 32k I think.
However for those where it can work, I think Kagi Ultimate is a great deal.
Zambyte
The assistant recently was made available to all tiers, with only the more expensive models being limited to the higher tier.
bl4kers
Same
ctvo
As a long time Kagi user, the thing I miss the most is Google Maps integration for search results. It's nice to search for a restaurant or an address, see results for it, and with one click open up Google Maps to see how to get there and nearby attractions. Google Maps is such a large moat for Google, especially in locations that Apple Maps (the only real alternative) has poor coverage.
Outside of that use case, I enjoy using Kagi and recommend it to most people.
KoolKat23
Absolutely agree.
Although Google's kneecapped their own Google maps integration in the EU.
If it's of any help, on the top right there's a more shortcut to Google maps when searching an address in Kagi.
Although that's two clicks, would be to Kagi's advantage if they make this process one click or better, especially in the EU.
SietrixDev
This. I didn’t know it was EU only thing, but sometimes you have a map displayed in Google search results and there’s no way to actually go to Google Maps beside clicking “directions” button (and I think even this button isn’t always there).
Just recently I’ve created a bang in Kagi which redirects me to Google Maps roughly around my home with a query that I typed.
idiotsecant
Yes, kagi has a Google maps link built in but it doesn't integrate very smoothly. It ends up linking to strange results in Google maps. I would almost prefer that kagi just integrated Google maps until the kagi maps product is mature. It's my only stumbling block using kagi
toomuchtodo
Would an OpenStreetMap integration be sufficient to replace this functionality?
mimischi
Not OP, but I heavily rely on Google Maps reviews. Haven’t found another platform that replaces them.
Marsymars
I assume it’s region specific. There used to be alternatives in my area, but they’ve all died, and even with all the fake Google reviews, it’s the only way to get an idea about restaurants.
carlosjobim
No, Google Maps is miles ahead of all competitors.
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precommunicator
In what ways when compared to OSM?
poincaredisk
Just to add a different voice: I prefer OSM and for me it would be great.
KoolKat23
In my opinion, no it's too shit compared to Google Maps, Apple Maps is also not great. Kagi have their own maps, which it seems is based on Apple Maps. Apple has no information outside the US (heard its better in the US but I just know it's not great in Europe or Africa). Things like operating hours.
Marsymars
FWIW I found Google Maps to be terrible on that front in Japan. Posted operating hours seemed to have no particular relation to whether a restaurant would actually be open or not.
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pjm331
Yeah that’s the only type of search that I always append the !g to
frereubu
You can shorten that to !gm if you want to go straight to Google Maps.
kevincox
Or just set up a browser search keyword/engine to go straight to Google Maps if that is what you want. I have Kagi as my default but have a small handful of keyword bookmarks set up for when I am making something that isn't a general web search. "m <location>" for Google Maps, "i <title>" for IMDB, "p <query>" for Kagi image search, "d <query>" for D&D Rules Search, you get the idea.
This way Kagi doesn't even see my query, I don't need to wait for the redirect, I get to set up the shortcuts myself and I can switch any of my search providers (even the default) without affecting my "bangs".
rkangel
I've been using Kagi for almost 18 months. In that time we've had a baby, and I have done many many searches about baby related things. It took months after he was born before I started getting any baby related targeted advertising (I'm pretty sure it was a result of a Facebook post). Whereas for the other parents, every advert they've seen has been baby stuff since well before the baby was born.
I like Kagi, I like the principle of aligned priorities over my privacy and I like the search quality. But that really cemented why it's worth it to me.
axegon_
No, thanks, I'll stick to qwant: https://old.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/1gvcqua/psa_the_ka...
jwe
Same for me. I don't understand why they are not able to cleanly separate themselves from Yandex. Their explanations don't help me understand it but only serve as "we hear you and consciously decide to still fund a Russian company".
If anybody reading this is willing to disabuse me of this I'll try to be open for a different perspective.
cosmicgadget
It's the same as when Russians are asked about the invasion, "I'm not political."
cuu508
It's worse. Random Russians interviewed on a Moscow street would risk going to jail if they spoke their mind.
Kagi on the other hand is "apolitical" because it is good for business.
philwelch
Did you type this comment on a device made in China?
rchaud
You did the meme: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/we-should-improve-society-som...
jwe
After a quick internet search apparently Google produces Pixel phones mainly in Taiwan with additional processes happening in China and India. What is the point you are trying to make?
d12bb
When I tried Qwant a few weeks ago, its search results were even worse than Google. So, Kagi it still is.
flymaipie
Is there any sensible explanation why Kagi does funding Yandex? It seems weird to me.
jeroenhd
Yandex isn't on any sanctions list as far as I know, so Kagi is free to do business with Yandex. Yandex did need to reorganize (as their Dutch tax avoidance parent company was obviously causing them issues) but looking at https://ir.yandex/press-releases?year=2024&id=05-02-2024 it seems like all of Yandex has been sold to a generic Russian investment fund.
Legally, Kagi can buy access to Yandex' API. Whether they should is a matter of opinion. It's the main reason I haven't tried Kagi yet, and probably never will, as the owners don't seem to have a problem with any of it.
omgitspavel
Legally they can. But we all know that Yandex had always had very strong ties with the Russian government. I used to work for Yandex for more than 6 years in early 2010s and even then there were signs of the state trying to influence it through censoring Yandex.News and various other means. And these days you have to be very naive to assume that it is not controlled by the state and people close to it.
JumpCrisscross
> Is there any sensible explanation why Kagi does funding Yandex?
They want access to Yandex's index. Given the quality of Kagi's results, I trust them with that call. Despite the Ukraine war being of deep personal interest to me.
kenanfyi
They use their image search results, and according to CEO it sums up to 2% of their costs. I saw an explanation post in their forum about this issue, but can‘t find it right now.
troupo
They pay for search results to search providers because Kagi doesn't have an index of their own.
In the link above they say they added Yandex Image search as a provider.
xigoi
It’s not funding, it’s paying for a service.
SOLAR_FIELDS
Funding does not imply a lack of receiving something in return, only a flow of money. It can be both
agentk9
Being "apolitical" is no excuse for funding a russian company (yandex). If they did not do this I would probably be a paying customer. There is nothing else in this space that has the trust or features that kagi has.
The other point I have heard them say about using yandex is that there isn't another index that they could use that would be as good. This is a sound argument, but I would rather have worse image search than pay (even indirectly) russia. I wish they would "do the hard thing" and make their own (which I am sure is easier said than done).
Spivak
I would consider reading Vlad's response to this which is extremely measured and not at all "throwing his hands up" at the issue.
jwe
As somebody who is also not a Kagi customer because of this the statement of Vlad is exactly "throwing his hands up".
Two quotes from his response: "Any good search engine remains unimpressed by world politics." "We set out to fix search, not the world."
All the technical explanations between these two quotes could have also been used to justify why they are not contributing to Russias economy. But he didn't do that. That is a conscious choice while clearly being aware of the issue.
Spivak
They are contributing to Russia's economy so I'm not sure what you hoped he'd say contrary to that. I don't consider someone buying from US businesses to be any kind of implicit support of my government, while at the same time choosing to avoid businesses from a country in the manner desired here is taking a pretty strong political stance.
switch007
Neither of you wish to link to what you're referencing?
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eloisius
> The results were all about obtaining an ETA and I picked a link that looked like the official UK government site. It was not; the official site was lower, below an AI summary
This is both insane and common. Last year I was in Athens with a friend. The line to buy tickets at the acropolis was huge but staff were telling everyone if you buy it online you don’t have to wait at the kiosk. My friend googled “acropolis tickets” and bought a ticket from what looked like the official site. Turns out they were not official. They priced the tickets such that you’d think they were the real Thing too. The real ticket is like $20 for only the acropolis, $35 for the entire site. She got the $35 one, and only later found out that this scam reseller was selling the limited ticket at the full ticket price.
glenjamin
I find it a little surprising that the famous apple blogger neglects to mention that Apple makes it hard to use a search engine like Kagi on iOS!
croisillon
I find it a little surprising that the blog famously censored by HN is still able to land on the first page of HN
SOLAR_FIELDS
I see Gruber on here fairly frequently. Enough to say that articles from his blog are not a rarity
baggachipz
The countdown has begun. Get your comments in now!
sylens
Curious, I just tried it for the first time. Install Kagi Extension for Safari from the App Store, open up Safari, go to Manage Extensions, turn it on. Then tap it in the extensions menu and accept permissions. Then it works.
Not one click but by no means a byzantine process
watusername
This extension is a big ugly hack: It redirects result pages of built-in search pages to Kagi, sometimes _after_ the original page has fully loaded. This doesn't occur on my M4 MacBook Pro, but happens all the time on my much slower 12-inch MacBook [0].
If this doesn't scare you already, I'll rephrase: Your queries may be sent to the built-in search engines even if you think you're only using Kagi! It does not actually replace the need for real custom search engine support in Safari. The official Kagi docs coyly acknowledge this [1]:
> For a better experience, we recommend selecting a single search engine to redirect (DuckDuckGo or Ecosia are recommended options as they have better privacy policies than other alternatives).
[0]: It's an amazingly portable device made ahead of its time - Apple really should revive this form factor and stick an M1 chip in it. [1]: https://help.kagi.com/kagi/getting-started/setting-default.h...
carlosjobim
The extension is a big ugly hack, but you don't have to use it. You can simply set kagi.com as your start page and/or your new tab page.
Terretta
Yes, use ecosia.
billbrown
Orion (made by Kagi) is a WebKit-based browser that eliminates the need for an extension.
null
JumpCrisscross
> Apple makes it hard to use a search engine like Kagi on iOS
Unobvious. Not hard. To the chasm that is getting someone to pay for search, getting them to install an app and follow tedious but simple configuration instructions is a gap in the sidewalk.
glenjamin
No, it's "hard", because it requires an extension to monitor all requests to a different search enging and hijack those to perform a redirect.
This is a clever workaround by Kagi, but a glaring hole in the Safari extension API surface area.
nkurz
I think there might be more to it. While it might just be me, I think Kagi could use some improvement here. I've been using Kagi with Safari on Mac for about a year, and never got the search extension to work consistently. It would sometimes give me Google, and sometimes Kagi. And sometimes it would give me one site then switch to the other after a several second delay.
Eventually I gave up and uninstalled their extension. I switched to using StopTheMadness to do the redirects instead, and am having much better luck. I did switch from redirecting Google to redirecting Ecosia at the same time, and this might be the difference, and while I'd fully agree that Safari doesn't make it easy, but I think the base problem is that their browser extension just doesn't work that well.
(If you are familiar with both, you will understand that switching _to_ StopTheMadness for a better interface is pretty high in irony!)
JumpCrisscross
Hmm, fair enough. Do you think there is something Kagi could do to make this easier?
sph
I have been a software engineer for almost two decades and it's taken me three tries at reading and rereading the instruction on how to set Kagi as default search on iOS, because I missed the fact that I had to allow permission to use the extension WHILE browsing google.com for it to work, as it has to intercept the query to rewrite the URL.
When all it should've been is a "custom search engine" option like Firefox does.
Calling it "unobvious" is PR newspeak for jumping through the hoops to set up a Rube Goldberg machine to do a basic search.
JumpCrisscross
> I missed the fact that I had to allow permission to use the extension WHILE browsing google.com for it to work
There was a period of time when they had two apps, and I agree the old one was stupidly complicated. The new one, Kagi for Search, doesn't require this.
Like, should Apple have an open API for routing searches? Maybe. Would that get abused? Probably. Do I think Kagi should be on Apple's list? Yes. Does prioritising a 50,000-user engine into iOS's defaults create other issues? Yes as well.
KoolKat23
How Apple haven't already lost a massive anti-trust case is beyond me.
nroach
I've also found that the extension configuration isn't very durable. I wound up having to re-do the arcane setup process semi-annually on each device or my searches would 403. Eventually just gave up. Brave search seems to work just as well.
kasey_junk
If I were setting up Kagi just for my self that’s probably true. But the thing preventing me from paying for Kagi is I’d want it for my household. Setting it up and supporting it on all the devices was enough for me to take a pass.
criddell
It’s not surprising. This is an article about Kagi. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had something about iOS’ search engine management in an early draft and then edited that part out because it’s off-topic.
troupo
In comments on Mastodon he also finds a way to twist this into an anti-EU rant: https://mastodon.social/@gruber/114418346006131728
badgersnake
Yeah, this is tedious.
sshine
How so?
I have Kagi set as the default search engine in the Orion browser.
The main problem I experience on iOS is that apps that open websites will pick Safari, and not my default browser. I'm sure they have some legitimate excuse, like "the app developer made that choice", or "that other browser doesn't support the right API" or whatever bullshit that makes the default browser not the default.
billbrown
For me (a multi-year paying subscriber), one of the many indications of Kagi's difference is a) that it has a changelog and b) that the changelog shows so much granular work.
kristofferR
Not only that, but they also have an issue tracker/FR page [1] and a Discord server [2]. It feels way more human and less corporate than Google.
MostlyStable
While this is true, it's one part of Kagi that I wouldn't expect to remain true if they every actually got mainstream success. That human/less corporate feel is less an effect of their mission goals than it is their very small size.
They may never become huge (they are explicitly building their business model such that it doesn't require growth to succeed), but if they ever do, they will be able to maintain their mission and goals, but they almost certainly won't be able to maintain that small, human feel.
catapart
Posting for the unaware, without commentary on the content - just an FYI because it's something that matters to me, at least:
omgitspavel
I also want to add that Kagi recently partnered with a Russian state-owned search engine Yandex: https://kagi.com/changelog#5340. This means they are paying money to the Russian state through taxes and sharing my search queries with it. This was a critical issue for me, and it led me to stop using it and request a refund earlier this year.
poincaredisk
Sad to hear that. I seriously considered registering, but knowing this I can't in good faith pay money to Kagi. I know it sounds petty, but to people in my country this issue is very important.
And for many businesses in the EU it's illegal to transfer money directly or indirectly to Russia. I don't know how this applies exactly, but I know my company cannot legally pay for this
parasti
This is a critical issue to pretty much every EU citizen.
switch007
And according to the link below, the Kagi founder/CEO claims Yandex is a private company headquartered in Kazakhstan, unrelated to the Russian government.
wfn
Yes and (for posterity / those lazy to read the linked Mastodon thread), if you read through the linked thread, you see that is nonsense and Yandex is very much a Russian business continually adjusting results based on Russian government input (to cross-check, see Wikipedia on Yandex).
369548684892826
Exactly, glad I'm not the only one!
mm263
This makes Vlad look much better than the poster thinks. It's ridiculous that the poster is dishing out, but when Vlad offers discussion (not even criticism!) they are like "oh no, I'm just a little nobody getting HARASSED by a powerful and might CEO". They can't take even the mildest disagreement, let alone criticism.
People need to stop posting this blog post as if it's something incriminating, or even negative. I'm sure if GDPR is violated, Kagi will sort it out with their lawyers, but as of now I don't see what exactly are we worrying about. For me it's neither GDPR nor Vlad's "appalling" behaviour and if it's neither, this whole blog is utterly useless
wfn
Well, re: GDPR, for one Vlad is abjectly clearly wrong on email addresses not being PII. They are.
The mere fact of him relying on his rationalisation (of burner email addresses) over established GDPR definitions of PII is troubling. To me it rings immature and unprofessional. As a software engineer I shall treat PII with care and account for it. If a CEO is this defensive about their clearly wrong opinion, it's a red flag to me.
mvieira38
I was also worried about their naïve "trust the market incentives bro" stance about privacy, but they actually did implement Privacy Pass eventually, and I'm now a happy user. What I like about Kagi is that they are a real company (not a corporation) that actually might listen to the demands of their users, and have a real presence on HN, Reddit and Discord, so the bad stuff can change over time
yesfitz
I read through the whole opinion piece.
Which part matters to you? Because it's not obvious.
About a year ago, I tried the free 300 search trial. I liked it, but wasn't ready to commit to the expense.
This year, they offered me a free 30 day unlimited trial, so I'm about 10 days into that. I've only used 128 searches so far.
What I seem to find is that I use it, get to what I'm looking for, and move on. So it's not really on my mind. But it's subtly refreshing to spend less time fighting search to get what I want.
But I have not objectively done comparisons to try to figure out if it's better or not. It does just seem to work for search, and I use it and move on.
I don't like the 300 search limit, because it scratches my brain - "do I need to search for this? can I find it some other way? should I just use duckduckgo for this search?" But I also don't want to spend $120/year, because I'm largely allergic to subscriptions. Still, if I can spend $360/year on Disney/Hulu/Max, I should be able to upgrade my search experience.