Yingwu
PrivacyKagi is a subscription-based search engine that argues that paying for search is a reasonable thing to do in order to avoid ads and companies selling your information. They also have lenses, e.g. for searching the fediverse specifically. Anyone that wants to share their experience of using Kagi?
Been using kagi for 4 months and just renewed as a paid subscriber. Just want to mention things I haven't seen mentioned yet but this is not an exhaustive list:
-- you can get a discount through kagi specials. I think I paid for a year of Ente ($40 bucks or so) and got three months of Kagi free. Maybe the other way around through Ente but they have other partners as well
-- the AI is a problem for many which is understandable. I have found its implementation sane and opt-in only. The addition of AI did not affect the cost of the subscription (they get their cut from a 20% increase over the API cost apparently). A recent Kagi Feedback thread suggests they will be restructuring subscriptions into pure search and pure AI at some point along with a combined plan in the future though TBD. They've kind of backed themselves in a corner as it seems like half the userbase wants nothing to do with AI and the other half sees its removal as a feature previously added at no extra cost being removed and thus a value loss to their sub. They've said in the past their search is FAR more expensive than AI (which is why it was added for free) but that seems to contradict some of their recent statements about the restructuring.
-- Kagi Translate is great, obviously LLM based but machine translation is kind of what LLMs are for and it is an easy replacement for google translate
-- Kagi Maps is rolling out slowly and should have apps at some point which would be a huge win for leaving gmaps
-- I have actually found their universal summarizer pretty nice for getting a preview of articles or YouTube videos, seems like it can also crawl behind pay walls
-- I will sometimes mindlessly scroll the Small Web index which is a very cool little project offered for free
-- they have a no log policy on search but allow you to take it a step farther via privacy pass which allows you to log in via an anonymous token if you want to ensure your account it not tied to a specific search (I am no cyber security expert but I've read its a legit implementation)
In summary, Kagi sometimes gets a chronic case of startup brain and I get the uneasiness around some of their incorporation of AI. At the same time I have found basically all of their tools useful to some degree and I easily get 10 dollars of value out of the sub a month.
Great write-up.
Despite my concerns, if I could purchase a subscription that was free of AI investment, I think I might.
Thanks, you are definitely not alone there. I hope they make an offering like this soon as there is clearly demand for it.
Despite how pro-AI their ownership is, imo they have the least intrusive AI options of any search I've used, free or not
I'm paying for it and will keep on paying.
I don't use any extra feature, I only care about one thing: the search just work.
I forget I'm using it, because I never have to switch search engine, literally last week a friend asked me "what is kagi?" and I couldn't understand why they were asking me that (it took me a bit)... I was searching for something we were talking about and he was watching my phone ;D
It'll be tough for you to find a middle of the road review of this, because people either pay a monthly subscription fee, and are aware of this, and use it because otherwise they'd be wasting their money... or they don't use, it and can't really contribute.
Personally, I've been turned off by it for a couple reasons:
- I do not agree with their manifesto, which flies in the face of privacy and the dangers of the Filter Bubble
And when you ask your own AI a question like "does God exist?" it will answer it relying on biases you preconfigured. When you ask it to recommend a good restaurant nearby, it will do so knowing what kind of food you like to eat. The same will happen when you ask it to recommend a good coffee maker - it will know the brands you like, your likely budget and the kind of coffee you usually drink. All this information will be volunteered to the AI by you...
- The face of the company is rather weird
- Subscription money goes to AI
- It doesn't offer me sufficient value compared to free search engines that keep me anonymous by default.
ETA: If you use Kagi, don't rely on promises alone to keep your data private. Consider a masked email for login (you must provide one), and definitely use their Privacy Pass to keep your searches unlinked from your account instead.
This is very similar to my experience.
I was a Kagi user for around 3 years, didn't really ran into issues looking up stuff, but also never really had to compare it with other search engines. I found answers to what I needed, and it was a passable answer. Don't need much else from a search engine.
I left when they started investing my money into muddying search with AI. Yes, you can turn it off. But that still means I get way less worth for what I pay, because instead of focusing the respurces on making a better search engine, they are focusing on AI.
I found out I'm ok with just using DDG or recently Ecosia. Both have AI, I can turn it off, but at least I'm not paying for it so IDC. In the case of Ecosia, at least they have a greenwashing twist as a bonus so I can feel better about myself, lol.
I like it a lot. I pay for it through work though. If I didn't, I'd probably still use their $5/mo plan - it is worth it to me to not have to deal with google.
DDG is fine for basic stuff but gets caught in the SEO trap.
Been paying for it for probably two years now. It's not a silver bullet for how supremely fucked the entire web is but it's much nicer than anything else I've tried. It does what I ask and, more importantly it doesn't do what I don't ask.
https://www.osnews.com/story/139270/do-not-use-kagi/
They give you a free trial (no CC required) so just give it a try for yourself.
Its the least bad option. AFAIK no one else even offers paid search, much less ones that allow you to block sources, or limit your search to "the small web".
No, there's other paid search engines, the others just look like they are from the pre-iPod era and have suboptimal spiders
The free trial lasted me 2 months. I then bought the year subscription and have been evangelizing Orion to all the iPhone-users in my friend group and my family. This is the only subscription I am willing to pay for.
Really, when you pay for Kagi most of the money actually is supporting the development of the Orion browser. I eagerly await the release of the Linux version of Orion. It's like Brave, but without any of the crypto bullshit that keeps me from reccomending Brave to people.
I love Orion as well. Being able to install extensions on a mobile browser (on iOS) is sick.
I have used it for more than a year, I enjoy it. I also pay for email if that tells you the kinda person I am.
I care more about trying to not give google data willingly whenever I can.
I just started a free trial yesterday. They don't require payment info to try it, which impressed me some already. Off to a good start with searches so far too. This is the first non-google search I haven't been instantly disappointed in.
For years now, and that article floating around about not being to google "disregard" anymore (because it breaks the AI) may have me switching to a Duo package soon.
The results are great. Lenses and personalized results are well worth the $10 on their own. Privacy pass is (IMO) a priceless insurance policy.
I've been using it for a few years and honestly I can't go back. Nothing I've ever tried comes close. Heartily recommended.
Images search is so so, some with video but it often does enough of what I need and in case it doesn't I simply add g! in front of the search query and off i go to Google.
Love it. Any time I'm forced to go back to something like DDG, it now feels absolutely painful.
Been a customer for a year and I love it.
It's worth it. There's a lot of functionality available, although I've only used a fraction of its features so far.
Great service. I have been a customer for awhile now. Lensing through the internet is very very useful. Downranking SEO shit is amazing. I use the summarizer frequently and their LLM assistant gives you access to some mid models but also very useful for searching.
Personally, I haven't, but someone I follow posted about it some days ago:
https://explains.social/users/veronica/statuses/01KS2VC1E0W1AVHJQETGX44X8T
Kagi is great. I love it and they have so many great tools and features.
How good is their video/image search with respect to adult content?
It's been my experience that even with Kagi's version of Safe Search off, it indirectly filters most adult pics/videos. This is the only use case where I'd fall back to DDG, if I were a raging pervert, which I'm clearly not.
Easiest $10 per month for me.
I'm happy to pay for it. Its far from perfect but its the best search engine I can find.
I've been pondering this as well. I've been running my own SearXNG instance for several years, and for most of that it was really nice. Recently I've been getting rate-limited/block/slowed by damn near every provider. I'm the only one who uses it, so no searches are that excessive. No amount of tweaking is helping all that much.
Kagi may be worth it just to avoid having to mess with that.
Have you been pondering what I said. U come highly commened and would like you to be a mod of askhistorians.
Just do it if you can afford it. I’ve got friends roasting me for paying for search but we spend a little for life improvements everywhere. Even if Google wasn’t dog shit, the Kagi experience is just better.
