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Every time Kagi comes up, a lot of folks say it is too expensive. That it should be unlimited. That if it was just $x per month, then it would be worth it. That
by abtinf 3y ago
Every time Kagi comes up, a lot of folks say it is too expensive. That it should be unlimited. That if it was just $x per month, then it would be worth it. That they feel uncomfortable about the limits.
I will simply say that I cannot imagine going back to being a “user” of a “search provider” over being a paying Kagi customer. It is the single most critical service I worry about losing.
If they octupled the price tomorrow, I would murmur an expletive under my breath, then thank god that they didn’t choose to go down the path of fucking me over by materially changing the business model to adtech, and continue paying them.
I am actually not sure what at what price point I’d drop the service. I’d probably start looking at canceling less used subscriptions first. Another shitty Gal Gadot Netflix movie has negative marginal value for me.
If you haven’t tried it for an extended time and used its core features, then you don’t get it and no one can explain it to you. “Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is.”
Edit to add: this is search we are talking about. It is literally your entry point to the world’s entire body of knowledge and ultimately affects your decisions and actions both daily and over the long term. And nearly everyone is perfectly happy to let it be run by companies that make more money when they lead you astray to click bait, hot take, content farm, and AI generated sites. Garbage in, garbage out, both in software and the knowledge you depend on to live a thriving life.
- berdon 3y agoYep. As a developer my life is infinitely better because of Kagi. The product is wonderful, the team is wonderful and responsive - it’s everything I want from a company I pay money to. I sound like a shill but I’m not. I’ve just been a happy user since their private beta and have had genuine, kind, and personable email back and forth with Vladimir.
- metadaemon 3y agoI feel the same way. I've been a very happy customer without any desire for going back to other search providers.
- josephcsible 3y ago> That it should be unlimited. Isn't that what their $25/mo plan gives you?
- jackson1442 3y agoYep. They’re trying to drop the price as well—users on an annual Legacy Professional plan have been given unlimited searches again (which is the $10/mo pricing). Really hoping this is sustainable because Kagi is night-and-day for me compared to google and ddg.
- int_19h 3y agoIs that a different thing from "early adopter professional"? Because that one still shows "$10/mo - 1,500 searches included" for me on the billing page.
- jackson1442 3y agoI believe it is currently only available to people whose $10/mo subscriptions had not renewed before the end of May.
- KoftaBob 3y agoFor comparison, $25-30/month is the lower end of what US mobile carriers charge per line. That $25-30/month gets you access to a nationally covered 5G/4G mobile ISP that cost billions to build out. Having said that, does it seem reasonable to assign the same monthly value for an early stage search engine?
- fLaMEd 3y agoThe multi billion dollar carriers certainly didn’t start out at $25 a month…
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- unshavedyak 3y agoSidenote, i'm a very happy $5-10/m Kagi user. However i also happily pay $20-$30/m for ChatGPT or Phind. I hope one day Kagi consumes some of these shares too (to convert my $30 to Phind into $30 for Kagi). That might sound insane, i'd think so too, but FastGPT[1] is pretty damn good. It's not trying to be Phind, but still, quite surprising to me that it exists.
- unshavedyak 3y ago[1]: https://labs.kagi.com/fastgpt https://labs.kagi.com/fastgpt Oops
- freediver 3y agoWe are gradually rolling out more search assistant features, a large update is coming very soon. And you can already use many advanced AI features like the ability to summarize results directly in Kagi interface [1]. This is also available as a stand-alone app for example here is the summary of this HN discussion [2]. [1] https://help.kagi.com/kagi/ai/summarize-page.html https://help.kagi.com/kagi/ai/summarize-page.html [2] https://kagi.com/summarizer/index.html?url=https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37006082&target_language=&summary=summary https://kagi.com/summarizer/index.html?url=https://news.ycom...
- deepspace 3y agoFunny story: Earlier this week, my Kagi results when to shit. If I made the slightest spelling mistake in a query, it would return nothing. Often it would just return nothing for a query where google would return millions of results. It got so bad that I started getting in the habit of typing 'g' in front of searches to go straight to google, but then I was hit with the usual google issues of SEO sites, spam sites and low-quality results. I wanted to cry in frustration because my wonderful Kagi experience was suddenly gone, and was furiously typing up a support ticket when I noticed that the "verbatim" choice was somehow permanently selected, after I tried it a few days ago. Lessons learned: 1. Kagi really is hugely superior to google as a daily search engine 2. "Verbatim" should not be a sticky choice, or at least Kagi should enclose "verbatim" results (or lack thereof) in a bright pink frame or something.
- freediver 3y agoNoted. Small ask - please consider sharing any issues on KagiFeedback [1] so that we can track and act on it right away. [1] https://kagifeedback.org https://kagifeedback.org
- slaw 3y agoI don't see any people say Kagi is too expensive, where do you find them? I don't use Kagi as I found it useless. It is only UI for Google search. Yandex and Bing works better than Kagi.
- microflash 3y agoI'd say it is expensive in countries where dollar conversion rates are very high due to inflation. I did ask about introducing different prices based on purchasing power parity in different geographies but got a very polite rebuff :)
- int_19h 3y agoThey claim that the prices are largely defined by the actual cost of the search, with fairly slim margins. In which case they literally can't do what you asked without becoming unprofitable.
- slaw 3y agoSo if buying search result from Google is too expensive, Kagi should use another provider, Brave search?
- 0x073 3y agoThey spend 5% of their profit for donations. It's ok as a company for general, but for payment with this low rates of search results and the argument that they can't reduce the price because of the cost. I get mixed feelings.
- abtinf 3y agoKagi search results come from a variety of sources, including their own private index. https://help.kagi.com/kagi/search-details/search-sources.html https://help.kagi.com/kagi/search-details/search-sources.htm...
- oktoberpaard 3y agoI've become a paid Kagi subscriber because DDG (UI for Bing search, as you would call it) didn't cut it for me. One of the most annoying things was that it often ignored a crucial part of my search query and only delivered very generic results. What kind of searches do you do and in what language(s)?
- silisili 3y agoQuite the glowing review... enough to get me interested. Do you have any specific examples or reasons you can share that might help force my hand? I'm definitely tired of Google search, but not sure I'm tired enough to take on another monthly sub just yet.
- Dah00n 3y agoNot all HN users are US tech employees though. How much US$25 is differs a lot.
- nottorp 3y ago2 Starbucks lattes i think? Elsewhere the lattes are much cheaper though. Common problem with a lot of SaaS offerings. I made a Kagi account when they had a free tier, thinking I'll test and then decide on paying or not. Then they dropped the free tier and with the # of trial searches limited, I'd need to make a conscious effort to use it to test instead of just trying it when DDG fails me, which was the initial plan. Somehow that's not very enticing. And I'm in the demographic that would indeed block pinterest and w3schools. It's just that my lattes aren't $12 each... Edit: Btw @freediver, you should turn this top blocked list into a public indepth report every 3 months or so. Just like Backblaze does that hard drive reliability thing. It would be great for your marketing.
- o1y32 3y agoNot everyone has the same spending habits. I (in the US) happen to know that none of my colleagues buy Starbucks or any other shop coffee on a regular basis. Although we are paid a decent (although not high) salary and can easily afford this without thinking, I don't see people eagerly spend $25/month on this. Not to mention $25 is very different in other countries.
- trubeliever 3y ago[dead]
- suslik 3y agoVery few people actually need unlimited searches. I search things compulsively - for example, while searching for something related to language A, my mind makes me search for the same thing in languages B and C, what happened to the last duke of Brunswick, and where can I download the latest bonobo genome. When Kagi transitioned from unlimited plan to 1200 searches (later increased to 1500) for early adopters, I was certain this would bankrupt me, but I decided to try it out. Turns out, most of the time I somehow don't even hit that limit.
- vluft 3y agoyup. I pay $25/mo happily but would go up to at least $100 without blinking. I do between 1k and 2.5k searches per mo, and also use the summarizer a bit. Compared to DDG (which I was using before), I haven't done a bang to fall back to google in months at least. DDG searches were better on some topics but on average slightly worse than google for me, Kagi is fairly consistently better and being able to block domains is fantastic.