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Did kagi recently (past 12 months) add the unlimited plan? Last time I checked even my human search usage was way beyond their limits (Google regularly accuses

by andai 3y ago

Did kagi recently (past 12 months) add the unlimited plan? Last time I checked even my human search usage was way beyond their limits (Google regularly accuses me of being a bot!), and my primary interest was in 100Xing that volume with autonomous agents. Now it says unlimited, but I'm not sure "you and a swarm of a thousand digital clones" counts as fair use...

golf_mike 3y ago
yes https://kagi.com/settings?p=billing_plan https://kagi.com/settings?p=billing_plan
- andai 3y ago
  To rephrase my question, was the unlimited plan not available about a year ago? Otherwise I don't think I would have disqualified kagi at the time. I recall the volume being too low for my needs, even without hooking it up to any automated systems (which for me at least, was the whole point of looking into paid search engines).
  - throwup238 3y ago
    Iirc it was available but more expensive as part of the Ultimate $25/mo plan. They made the $10/mo plan unlimited in September 2023
  - golf_mike 3y ago
    was it not available about a year ago? I'm not sure. Maybe the wayback machine can tell you. But I have a gut feeling that there is a slight misalignment between your use case and their intended use of their service :)
JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> I'm not sure "you and a swarm of a thousand digital clones" counts as fair use It obviously does not. You’re a commercial client.
- andai 3y ago
  > You’re a commercial client No, I'm broke and have no income. But about a year ago I wrote some 20 line Python programs that use GPT (feed it text from web searches) and was surprised to find they worked significantly better than Bing's AI search... I used it at a small scale with Python's (unofficial?) DuckDuckGo API, but I was looking for a way to scale up (ideally for free or very cheap). At the time, Bing's API was the best option I found, and it was pretty expensive. I think it would be really cool if I could have an autonomous agent doing research on my current interests in the background 24/7, but it seems my best option is a very low volume of (free) web searches to seed a small web scraper, plus possibly a custom-built search engine (see also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38703943 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38703943 )
  - golf_mike 3y ago
    You say you're broke witbout income, but from reading your comments you have at least some skills to pay the bills. And I bet that if you put your back into it you can do it without misusing the only good search we've got. Or anything else for that matter. Keep it up!
    - andai 3y ago
      Thanks. And I'm sure you can succeed without implying your prospects are crooks. Edit: from your tone I assumed you worked for Kagi, but now I'm not sure
      - golf_mike 3y ago
        Don`t work for kagi, and definitely not implying you are a crook. I believe your use case is not in good faith, and I also believe that you know that, but given your position it should be ok. And that is where we disagree, because I also believe you can do better. We all can. And sometimes that is something that needs to be said. I really wish you the best, and please do not take my words as an insult. It`s just the observation that my perspective grants me.
dotnet00 3y ago
There was actually an outage due to this (their first major outage!) a few weeks ago. Someone was scraping via their API a little too hard, which had unexpected effects on upstream systems. So 100x human search volume is likely to be an issue unless you discuss it with the devs first.
- jamessb 3y ago
  The page with the post-mortem for that outage now gives a 404 error, but was archived by the Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20240121000935/https://status.kagi.com/issues/2024-01-12-kagi-down-on-some-regions/ https://web.archive.org/web/20240121000935/https://status.ka... (It was discussed on HN at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39019119 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39019119)
  - genimelineji 3y ago
    [dead]
  - freediver 3y ago
    We switched to a differnt monitoring system and the URL changed to https://status.kagi.com/clrnl9zwl97290beoine8zlvzx https://status.kagi.com/clrnl9zwl97290beoine8zlvzx
MostlyStable 3y ago
>regularly accuses me of being a bot! >swarm of autonomous agents. So....Google is right?
- andai 3y ago
  I haven't launched the swarm yet. Google is reacting to (as I said), my "human" search usage. (Also possibly Brave browser's anti-tracking, which their captcha system hates and actively punishes.) Apparently the average person does 3-4 Googles per day.. I checked my search history and I'm somewhere in the 100-200 range.
  - IIsi50MHz 3y ago
    I've sometimes had a similar issue with searching at www.startpage.com. It became increasingly frequent during work-from-home, blocking me with a captcha or a false message titled "Just Checking…" (implying they're inspecting something, but actually requiring that you fill out a freeform text box explaining yourself). After a few dozen times, I started appending to the textbox an appeal for a paid version. When I switched to eu.startpage.com, it stopped treating me like a bot. But eventually it started misbehaving in other ways: more than a page of ads (more than two, on mobile!), inserting the ads at the last moment so that your eyes and sometimes your click or tap would land on an ad. Occasionally, I'd win by searching for something so esoteric that no ads displayed. But later they started inserting results specific to my realworld location for searches that returned few or no results. I reluctantly removed the adblock exemption for StartPage, which causes them to now insert a plea to support them by enabling ads. I contacted their support, who refused to believe that the had pages of ads, and they had no interest a paid version. Then I found Kagi, and tried it every once in a while until it matured. I still sometimes goto StartPage's EU site on other computers, but on my own I mainly use Kagi.
MattTheRealOne 3y ago
They added the unlimited plan in September last year. Announcement: https://blog.kagi.com/unlimited-searches-for-10 https://blog.kagi.com/unlimited-searches-for-10

by andai 3y ago

golf_mike 3y ago

yes https://kagi.com/settings?p=billing_plan https://kagi.com/settings?p=billing_plan

andai 3y ago
To rephrase my question, was the unlimited plan not available about a year ago? Otherwise I don't think I would have disqualified kagi at the time. I recall the volume being too low for my needs, even without hooking it up to any automated systems (which for me at least, was the whole point of looking into paid search engines).
- throwup238 3y ago
  Iirc it was available but more expensive as part of the Ultimate $25/mo plan. They made the $10/mo plan unlimited in September 2023
- golf_mike 3y ago
  was it not available about a year ago? I'm not sure. Maybe the wayback machine can tell you. But I have a gut feeling that there is a slight misalignment between your use case and their intended use of their service :)

JumpCrisscross 3y ago

> I'm not sure "you and a swarm of a thousand digital clones" counts as fair use It obviously does not. You’re a commercial client.

andai 3y ago
> You’re a commercial client No, I'm broke and have no income. But about a year ago I wrote some 20 line Python programs that use GPT (feed it text from web searches) and was surprised to find they worked significantly better than Bing's AI search... I used it at a small scale with Python's (unofficial?) DuckDuckGo API, but I was looking for a way to scale up (ideally for free or very cheap). At the time, Bing's API was the best option I found, and it was pretty expensive. I think it would be really cool if I could have an autonomous agent doing research on my current interests in the background 24/7, but it seems my best option is a very low volume of (free) web searches to seed a small web scraper, plus possibly a custom-built search engine (see also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38703943 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38703943 )
- golf_mike 3y ago
  You say you're broke witbout income, but from reading your comments you have at least some skills to pay the bills. And I bet that if you put your back into it you can do it without misusing the only good search we've got. Or anything else for that matter. Keep it up!
  - andai 3y ago
    Thanks. And I'm sure you can succeed without implying your prospects are crooks. Edit: from your tone I assumed you worked for Kagi, but now I'm not sure
    - golf_mike 3y ago
      Don`t work for kagi, and definitely not implying you are a crook. I believe your use case is not in good faith, and I also believe that you know that, but given your position it should be ok. And that is where we disagree, because I also believe you can do better. We all can. And sometimes that is something that needs to be said. I really wish you the best, and please do not take my words as an insult. It`s just the observation that my perspective grants me.

dotnet00 3y ago

There was actually an outage due to this (their first major outage!) a few weeks ago. Someone was scraping via their API a little too hard, which had unexpected effects on upstream systems. So 100x human search volume is likely to be an issue unless you discuss it with the devs first.

jamessb 3y ago
The page with the post-mortem for that outage now gives a 404 error, but was archived by the Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20240121000935/https://status.kagi.com/issues/2024-01-12-kagi-down-on-some-regions/ https://web.archive.org/web/20240121000935/https://status.ka... (It was discussed on HN at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39019119 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39019119)
- genimelineji 3y ago
  [dead]
- freediver 3y ago
  We switched to a differnt monitoring system and the URL changed to https://status.kagi.com/clrnl9zwl97290beoine8zlvzx https://status.kagi.com/clrnl9zwl97290beoine8zlvzx

MostlyStable 3y ago

>regularly accuses me of being a bot! >swarm of autonomous agents. So....Google is right?

andai 3y ago
I haven't launched the swarm yet. Google is reacting to (as I said), my "human" search usage. (Also possibly Brave browser's anti-tracking, which their captcha system hates and actively punishes.) Apparently the average person does 3-4 Googles per day.. I checked my search history and I'm somewhere in the 100-200 range.
- IIsi50MHz 3y ago
  I've sometimes had a similar issue with searching at www.startpage.com. It became increasingly frequent during work-from-home, blocking me with a captcha or a false message titled "Just Checking…" (implying they're inspecting something, but actually requiring that you fill out a freeform text box explaining yourself). After a few dozen times, I started appending to the textbox an appeal for a paid version. When I switched to eu.startpage.com, it stopped treating me like a bot. But eventually it started misbehaving in other ways: more than a page of ads (more than two, on mobile!), inserting the ads at the last moment so that your eyes and sometimes your click or tap would land on an ad. Occasionally, I'd win by searching for something so esoteric that no ads displayed. But later they started inserting results specific to my realworld location for searches that returned few or no results. I reluctantly removed the adblock exemption for StartPage, which causes them to now insert a plea to support them by enabling ads. I contacted their support, who refused to believe that the had pages of ads, and they had no interest a paid version. Then I found Kagi, and tried it every once in a while until it matured. I still sometimes goto StartPage's EU site on other computers, but on my own I mainly use Kagi.

MattTheRealOne 3y ago

They added the unlimited plan in September last year. Announcement: https://blog.kagi.com/unlimited-searches-for-10 https://blog.kagi.com/unlimited-searches-for-10