4 ms·

I dunno. The thing is, Kagi isn’t really that much better than Google. When they still had a free tier, I tried it every once in a while, and it quickly wastes

by ant6n 2y ago

I dunno. The thing is, Kagi isn’t really that much better than Google. When they still had a free tier, I tried it every once in a while, and it quickly wastes a lot of searches even while just entering queries, and then the chance to find something better than Google is mediocre. Perhaps a prepaid model might make more sense, especially if it’s designed not to blow through queries quickly and transparent about how many searches were actually done. Compare to ChatGPT, which is much more expensive, but the value relative to Google is pretty obvious.

pfix 2y ago
From kagi.com: > No ads. No tracking. No compromise. Just deep, powerful search. So you are not paying for better search but for no tracking and no ads. If you don't care about those, you're not kagi target audience.
- lostlogin 2y ago
  I get better results. I block the shit (a user preference with some good easy options), I up rank my favourites and pin Wikipedia. I’m happily paying for a family plan.
  - sillyfluke 2y ago
    Oh yeah, in this political climate I'm definitely going to voluntarily tie my and my children's search results to my credit card. As long as people continue to gush about how amazing this service is, I'm going to gush about how ridiculuous this proposition is.
    - gkbrk 2y ago
      You think Kagi tracks you, to the risk of killing their business, but Google doesn't track you or collect data about your searches?
      - sillyfluke 2y ago
        yes I do think there is a important difference between google triangulating data, trading data with others and attaching a name to an ip adress by their own efforts without me voluntarily giving them that information for free. And you seem to forget that Google lost a class action suit about incognito mode. And I'd rather sue Google than Kagi. Plus, like 23andme, when times are tough I don't want to think about what a smaller company in dire straits will do with my dafa.
        ethbr1 2y ago
        The difference is the business model. Today, Kagi has a negative incentive to even historically track user search data (if discovered, their business would be cooked). Consequently, it's very likely they're being honest and don't. Furthermore, they're building a sustainable business around subscription revenue. In the event any of the above changes, they still won't have any historical data to share. As opposed to Google, who keeps things in their vaults until the heat death of the universe. > And I'd rather sue Google than Kagi. Ha! You and what European data authority supporting you? Because that's the only way you'd have a chance of making headway.
        sillyfluke 2y ago
        > Today, Kagi has a negative incentive Thank you for agreeing with me. Why would I bother using a VC-backed search engine today that forces me to login to use it routinely only to receive an email later saying, "An Update to our Terms of Service". And whose only way to convince me that they do not store my data is to tell me that I can "trust them." Even if I trusted them, I wouldn't trust their investors or their random late stage C suits. >As opposed to Google Are you willfully ignoring what I wrote in bad faith? Google had to settle a class action law suit that forced them to delete "billions of user records" and still allowed them get sued for individual claims down the road. Use kagi to search for the winston strawn summary of the case. Here is an excercise: Open a three letter browser starting with the letter T, go to google.com and search for the life expectancy of ALS. Now close the browser. Now tell me what google can deduce about about the real-life ethbrl with certainty and how they came by that information.
    - snowe2010 2y ago
      Your position is baffling. You think that Google, who maintains every search you’ve ever made, including correlating them across every Gmail account you have, and who routinely provides this search data to authorities, as well as sells access to this data is somehow more safe to use than a company based in Europe, who are funded off of a subscription model, whom are not VC funded even though you claim that, and who’s entire sales strategy is that they don’t sell your data or even retain it. Your position is completely devoid of logic.
      - sillyfluke 2y ago
        Nothing in the comment you're responding to says anything about me using Google search or Gmail. In other comments I'm simple comparing the use case of using google search with an obfuscated connection and without ever signing into a google account with the use case of having to sign into Kagi. In that respect, I have no idea what you're talking about. If you're responding to another comment of mine please respond to that comment so I can better understand your point.
        snowe2010 2y ago
        Nothing in any of your comments indicates that you are using an obfuscated connection to search Google at all. In that case there is little difference to using Google signed in or not, you are still trackable across numerous devices and your searches are correlated. So being signed into kagi has little difference besides them now being less incentivized to sell your information or track you in any manner.
- Evil_Saint 2y ago
  I straight up get better results than current Google.
- ant6n 2y ago
  you can get that on DuckDuckGo. The main problem with Google is that the search is garbage. Kagi wasn't able to convince me that their better within the free searches (I have an account since 2022). Now that I can't try them anymore, they can't ever convince me they're better - so their pricing model perhaps isn't very smart.
  - tacomagick 2y ago
    People see no tracking and just trust it nowadays? I'd much rather use a public SearX/NG instance than to trust something that claims to have no tracking and isn't open source. Same thing with DuckDuckGo.
  - carlosjobim 2y ago
    What happened is exactly what's supposed to happen: You tried the product and didn't like it, so you didn't purchase it. It's the same with test driving a car: If you don't like it, then don't buy it.
    - stonemetal12 2y ago
      You test drive a 2022 Camry and now you can't test drive the 2025 model?
      - carlosjobim 2y ago
        Why would you, if you extensively tested the 2022 model and considered it garbage?
- carlosjobim 2y ago
  Kagi is entirely dependent on giving the best search. Without it they would lose pretty much all customers. "Privacy minded" customers is not a foundation for a business. They spend all their time complaining and accusing, and then after some time they cancel their subscription because spending $10 per month keeps them awake all night.
JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B 2y ago
I have the opposite experience: I use Kagi a hundred times a day with always relevant results while the GPTs always hallucinate random crap. I guess it depends on how you search.
- wkat4242 2y ago
  I think the real value is a combination. Use LLM to sift through search results (including all the crap clickbait) and find the thing you're really looking for. A bit like perplexity does though I run it locally with OpenWebUI and SearXNG.
- evilduck 2y ago
  I don't doubt you but this life experience is so far from my own I struggle to understand what you use that much search volume for. I maybe search for 4-5 things a day (based on my one stint paying for Kagi and their usage reporting and trying to use it everywhere, and this was before AI products were able to search on your behalf) which is what led me to cancel, I was usually not getting the paid plan value from it. A large amount of my searches today are often just fancy autocompletes for specific URLS on already known domains that I probably could have accessed without a search engine at all.
- scarface_74 2y ago
  Do you pay for ChatGPT with built in web search? I’ve been paying for ChatGPT for two years. I just started using the ChatGPT extension for Chrome for search and it is so much better than Chrome.
LoganDark 2y ago
According to my usage statistics, I use Kagi around 20-50 times a day. Date (UTC) AI Tokens Searches Feb 5, 2025 0 64 Feb 4, 2025 0 43 Feb 3, 2025 0 19 Feb 2, 2025 0 24 Feb 1, 2025 0 19 They don't seem to track any form of history, only the number of searches (since some of their plans have a quota). I pay for unlimited searches, but the stats are still interesting :)
- rckclmbr 2y ago
  Similar stats for me. It’s become an invaluable tool, sometimes I’ll use another browser that’s has Google as default and immediately notice how much worse it is — all the ads, irrelevant cards, etc. Kagi is like the way Google was 10 years ago, which is MUCH better… with the benefit of more personalization
  - LoganDark 2y ago
    I just wish they weren't hobbled by Bing's index.
mathw 2y ago
I'm finding Kagi gives me relevant results much more readily than Google, where I have to wade through all those sites which take technical content from other sites and repost it for ad revenue. I'm on the lower tier plan and haven't hit the monthly search limit yet... but I'll consider upgrading if I do, because wow it's so much better for me. It does seem likely though that it's not going to be better for absolutely everyone, other than in terms of having their business model being "give good search results" rather than "give people adverts we can charge advertisers for".
frereubu 2y ago
My experience is completely different - I get much better results from Kagi. And one of the things I really like is the ability to entirely block domains, so for example I never get any Pinterest links cluttering up the results the now. I also love the fact that you can enter a ? at the end of a query and it'll give you an AI-generated summary at the top of the results. That's a great shortcut.
- hk__2 2y ago
  > And one of the things I really like is the ability to entirely block domains, so for example I never get any Pinterest links cluttering up the results the now Note you can do this on Google using the uBlacklist extension [1]. You can select domains but also use patterns to match specific URLs, like `somedomain.com/someprefix/*`. [1]: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ublacklist/pncfbmialoiaghdehhbnbhkkgmjanfhe https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ublacklist/pncfbmia...
  - Tostino 2y ago
    Know of any good pre-built blocklist?
    - hk__2 2y ago
      No, I’ve built mine from scratch and now I’ve ~450 patterns in it.
  - kstrauser 2y ago
    I prefer configuring that in the service itself so that it works the same on every device where I use it.
    - hk__2 2y ago
      Yeah me too, you can export/import blocklists but it’s cumbersome to have to do it every time between devices.
m-schuetz 2y ago
I found it way better simply because you can blacklist garbage SEO'd sites.
- layer8 2y ago
  There are also browser extensions like uBlacklist that can be used to do this on Google search results.
  - m-schuetz 2y ago
    I'm not keen on browser extensions. If it does not work without extension, it does not work.
andyjohnson0 2y ago
I've been a paying Kagi user since the beta - and thats because I get good value from it. Out of the box the search results were, and are, much better than Google or Bing. The ability to raise, lower, or block the priority of sites adds to that and gives me a very personalised tool. I'm very happy that it exists. On the other hand, the fact that we're having this discussion does point to how difficult it is for Kagi to explain its value proposition and differentiate itself from Google. As for chatgpt - I'd say its functionality relative to google search is obvious, but not it's value.
angoragoats 2y ago
> Compare to ChatGPT, which is much more expensive, but the value relative to Google is pretty obvious. What is the value of ChatGPT relative to Google? It's not obvious to me.

by ant6n 2y ago

pfix 2y ago

From kagi.com: > No ads. No tracking. No compromise. Just deep, powerful search. So you are not paying for better search but for no tracking and no ads. If you don't care about those, you're not kagi target audience.

lostlogin 2y ago
I get better results. I block the shit (a user preference with some good easy options), I up rank my favourites and pin Wikipedia. I’m happily paying for a family plan.
- sillyfluke 2y ago
  Oh yeah, in this political climate I'm definitely going to voluntarily tie my and my children's search results to my credit card. As long as people continue to gush about how amazing this service is, I'm going to gush about how ridiculuous this proposition is.
  - gkbrk 2y ago
    You think Kagi tracks you, to the risk of killing their business, but Google doesn't track you or collect data about your searches?
    - sillyfluke 2y ago
      yes I do think there is a important difference between google triangulating data, trading data with others and attaching a name to an ip adress by their own efforts without me voluntarily giving them that information for free. And you seem to forget that Google lost a class action suit about incognito mode. And I'd rather sue Google than Kagi. Plus, like 23andme, when times are tough I don't want to think about what a smaller company in dire straits will do with my dafa.
      - ethbr1 2y ago
        The difference is the business model. Today, Kagi has a negative incentive to even historically track user search data (if discovered, their business would be cooked). Consequently, it's very likely they're being honest and don't. Furthermore, they're building a sustainable business around subscription revenue. In the event any of the above changes, they still won't have any historical data to share. As opposed to Google, who keeps things in their vaults until the heat death of the universe. > And I'd rather sue Google than Kagi. Ha! You and what European data authority supporting you? Because that's the only way you'd have a chance of making headway.
        sillyfluke 2y ago
        > Today, Kagi has a negative incentive Thank you for agreeing with me. Why would I bother using a VC-backed search engine today that forces me to login to use it routinely only to receive an email later saying, "An Update to our Terms of Service". And whose only way to convince me that they do not store my data is to tell me that I can "trust them." Even if I trusted them, I wouldn't trust their investors or their random late stage C suits. >As opposed to Google Are you willfully ignoring what I wrote in bad faith? Google had to settle a class action law suit that forced them to delete "billions of user records" and still allowed them get sued for individual claims down the road. Use kagi to search for the winston strawn summary of the case. Here is an excercise: Open a three letter browser starting with the letter T, go to google.com and search for the life expectancy of ALS. Now close the browser. Now tell me what google can deduce about about the real-life ethbrl with certainty and how they came by that information.
  - snowe2010 2y ago
    Your position is baffling. You think that Google, who maintains every search you’ve ever made, including correlating them across every Gmail account you have, and who routinely provides this search data to authorities, as well as sells access to this data is somehow more safe to use than a company based in Europe, who are funded off of a subscription model, whom are not VC funded even though you claim that, and who’s entire sales strategy is that they don’t sell your data or even retain it. Your position is completely devoid of logic.
    - sillyfluke 2y ago
      Nothing in the comment you're responding to says anything about me using Google search or Gmail. In other comments I'm simple comparing the use case of using google search with an obfuscated connection and without ever signing into a google account with the use case of having to sign into Kagi. In that respect, I have no idea what you're talking about. If you're responding to another comment of mine please respond to that comment so I can better understand your point.
      - snowe2010 2y ago
        Nothing in any of your comments indicates that you are using an obfuscated connection to search Google at all. In that case there is little difference to using Google signed in or not, you are still trackable across numerous devices and your searches are correlated. So being signed into kagi has little difference besides them now being less incentivized to sell your information or track you in any manner.
Evil_Saint 2y ago
I straight up get better results than current Google.
ant6n 2y ago
you can get that on DuckDuckGo. The main problem with Google is that the search is garbage. Kagi wasn't able to convince me that their better within the free searches (I have an account since 2022). Now that I can't try them anymore, they can't ever convince me they're better - so their pricing model perhaps isn't very smart.
- tacomagick 2y ago
  People see no tracking and just trust it nowadays? I'd much rather use a public SearX/NG instance than to trust something that claims to have no tracking and isn't open source. Same thing with DuckDuckGo.
- carlosjobim 2y ago
  What happened is exactly what's supposed to happen: You tried the product and didn't like it, so you didn't purchase it. It's the same with test driving a car: If you don't like it, then don't buy it.
  - stonemetal12 2y ago
    You test drive a 2022 Camry and now you can't test drive the 2025 model?
    - carlosjobim 2y ago
      Why would you, if you extensively tested the 2022 model and considered it garbage?
carlosjobim 2y ago
Kagi is entirely dependent on giving the best search. Without it they would lose pretty much all customers. "Privacy minded" customers is not a foundation for a business. They spend all their time complaining and accusing, and then after some time they cancel their subscription because spending $10 per month keeps them awake all night.

JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B 2y ago

I have the opposite experience: I use Kagi a hundred times a day with always relevant results while the GPTs always hallucinate random crap. I guess it depends on how you search.

wkat4242 2y ago
I think the real value is a combination. Use LLM to sift through search results (including all the crap clickbait) and find the thing you're really looking for. A bit like perplexity does though I run it locally with OpenWebUI and SearXNG.
evilduck 2y ago
I don't doubt you but this life experience is so far from my own I struggle to understand what you use that much search volume for. I maybe search for 4-5 things a day (based on my one stint paying for Kagi and their usage reporting and trying to use it everywhere, and this was before AI products were able to search on your behalf) which is what led me to cancel, I was usually not getting the paid plan value from it. A large amount of my searches today are often just fancy autocompletes for specific URLS on already known domains that I probably could have accessed without a search engine at all.
scarface_74 2y ago
Do you pay for ChatGPT with built in web search? I’ve been paying for ChatGPT for two years. I just started using the ChatGPT extension for Chrome for search and it is so much better than Chrome.

LoganDark 2y ago

According to my usage statistics, I use Kagi around 20-50 times a day. Date (UTC) AI Tokens Searches Feb 5, 2025 0 64 Feb 4, 2025 0 43 Feb 3, 2025 0 19 Feb 2, 2025 0 24 Feb 1, 2025 0 19 They don't seem to track any form of history, only the number of searches (since some of their plans have a quota). I pay for unlimited searches, but the stats are still interesting :)

rckclmbr 2y ago
Similar stats for me. It’s become an invaluable tool, sometimes I’ll use another browser that’s has Google as default and immediately notice how much worse it is — all the ads, irrelevant cards, etc. Kagi is like the way Google was 10 years ago, which is MUCH better… with the benefit of more personalization
- LoganDark 2y ago
  I just wish they weren't hobbled by Bing's index.

mathw 2y ago

I'm finding Kagi gives me relevant results much more readily than Google, where I have to wade through all those sites which take technical content from other sites and repost it for ad revenue. I'm on the lower tier plan and haven't hit the monthly search limit yet... but I'll consider upgrading if I do, because wow it's so much better for me. It does seem likely though that it's not going to be better for absolutely everyone, other than in terms of having their business model being "give good search results" rather than "give people adverts we can charge advertisers for".

frereubu 2y ago

My experience is completely different - I get much better results from Kagi. And one of the things I really like is the ability to entirely block domains, so for example I never get any Pinterest links cluttering up the results the now. I also love the fact that you can enter a ? at the end of a query and it'll give you an AI-generated summary at the top of the results. That's a great shortcut.

hk__2 2y ago
> And one of the things I really like is the ability to entirely block domains, so for example I never get any Pinterest links cluttering up the results the now Note you can do this on Google using the uBlacklist extension [1]. You can select domains but also use patterns to match specific URLs, like `somedomain.com/someprefix/*`. [1]: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ublacklist/pncfbmialoiaghdehhbnbhkkgmjanfhe https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ublacklist/pncfbmia...
- Tostino 2y ago
  Know of any good pre-built blocklist?
  - hk__2 2y ago
    No, I’ve built mine from scratch and now I’ve ~450 patterns in it.
- kstrauser 2y ago
  I prefer configuring that in the service itself so that it works the same on every device where I use it.
  - hk__2 2y ago
    Yeah me too, you can export/import blocklists but it’s cumbersome to have to do it every time between devices.

m-schuetz 2y ago

I found it way better simply because you can blacklist garbage SEO'd sites.

layer8 2y ago
There are also browser extensions like uBlacklist that can be used to do this on Google search results.
- m-schuetz 2y ago
  I'm not keen on browser extensions. If it does not work without extension, it does not work.

andyjohnson0 2y ago

I've been a paying Kagi user since the beta - and thats because I get good value from it. Out of the box the search results were, and are, much better than Google or Bing. The ability to raise, lower, or block the priority of sites adds to that and gives me a very personalised tool. I'm very happy that it exists. On the other hand, the fact that we're having this discussion does point to how difficult it is for Kagi to explain its value proposition and differentiate itself from Google. As for chatgpt - I'd say its functionality relative to google search is obvious, but not it's value.

angoragoats 2y ago

> Compare to ChatGPT, which is much more expensive, but the value relative to Google is pretty obvious. What is the value of ChatGPT relative to Google? It's not obvious to me.