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I gladly pay for Kagi because the experience is so much better that it’s worth it to me.

Arubis 2mo ago
Kagi has so completely replaced other search engines for me that their appearance in other people’s browsers is disconcerting.
colinhb 2mo ago
Rather than make another top-level comment, adding here that Kagi is a better experience for me than Google or DDG. Not perfect, and I wish they would lean even harder into pure search (they're also developing AI features), but still an improvement over alternatives.
bayindirh 2mo ago
I'll also pile-in and say that Kagi is great.
dinkblam 2mo ago
been on Kagi 2 years, super happy - haven't googled at all for like a year.
drcongo 2mo ago
Kagi is the best search experience ever. The only reason I started using it in the first place was because DDG started ignoring my quotes. Never looked back.
mrtomservo 2mo ago
I've been a Kagi user since 2022, and a paying user since January 2024, and I can say that I have not thought about another search engine in as much time. Absolutely worth the $10 per month. Using a browser that defaults to another search engine is jarring. I see screenshots of what Google search results look like now, and it's like seeing the neighborhood you grew up in with shuttered storefronts and mouldering houses.
teroshan 2mo ago
I'll expand on a few reasons why I personally love Kagi: - Ability to block/lower/raise/pin domains. Some examples of commonly tuned domains are here https://kagi.com/stats?stat=insights https://kagi.com/stats?stat=insights - Shared custom bangs across my sessions. I can add work-specific bangs (e.g. !bug -> Jira search) and have them available across my devices. - Regexp redirects, to automatically redirect online documentation results of some libraries to the specific out-of-date library we use in a legacy project. All of these are not as important as knowing there is no incentive for the search engine to enshittify the results to bump some sponsored product in the results, to raise ad-heavy websites to the front to get back some precious ad revenue due to a conflict of interests, and to lower the quality of results in the hopes of making me search a second time so I am served a second batch of sponsored links.
- kstrauser 2mo ago
  > Shared custom bangs across my sessions. I can add work-specific bangs (e.g. !bug -> Jira search) and have them available across my devices. I’ve been on Kagi for 2 years and just learned about this. I really, really need to sit down and RTFM.
chinggis 2mo ago
Not only is kagi private, but it is also genuinely a much better experience than Google or DDG. However, Brave Search is great if you want something free.
abtinf 2mo ago
The value of Kagi is hard to overstate. You have to actually use it and try out the features. Some things that I wish were different about Kagi: I wish Kagi Ultimate LLM credits could be shared with the whole family, rather than each person having to sign up for an ultimate level account. That costs an additional $162/year per person, which makes no sense for my younger kids (even though their Research Agent and image generation would be great for my kids). This is actually the reason I’ve been hesitant to setup a family plan at all. I wish I could use Kagi LLM routing as a generic LLM provider outside of Kagi Assistant. (I don’t really care that they charge ~4x the markup of openrouter; I just want one place to pay the bill and that it includes search is nice). Alternatively, I wish Kagi would support BYOK. I wish Kagi API search would simply draw down from the same bucket as LLM credits. I really don’t understand why they are splitting it up like this. I just want to give my local LLM harness a search tool hooked up to my $270/year account. I wish clicking on the top left Kagi logo on Kagi News would just go back to the Kagi home page. I wish Gmail hadn’t routed Kagi emails to junk, because I missed the Kagi early adopter free tshirt. I wish Kagi would implement an Apple TV video app that I could use in place of the abomination that is YouTube. I wish there were guides in Kagi help or the feature pages themselves that included lots of community examples of how to actually use Kagi features. Like I want the Kagi Redirect Rules for more than just routing Reddit to old Reddit. There is a lot more. But I think this list is a ringing endorsement of Kagi. Objections betray interest. I use it constantly and can’t wait for it to get better.
mtlynch 2mo ago
Also a happy Kagi user since 2023, and full disclosure: I participated in their crowdfund, so I have some financial stake in the company that I don't really understand. I'm always surprised when I see people say, "I can't imagine paying for a search engine." Imagine if you lived in a city with horrible air pollution, and you were coughing all the time and coming down with mysterious respiratory illnesses. And then you go to a friend's house in the same city who's happy and healthy, and it turns out they have an air filter they pay $10/mo for. And your reaction is, "I can't imagine paying $10/mo just to breathe air." Pay for search! Get out of the ad-optimized Google black hole. This is a tool you use hundreds of times per month and it fundamentally influences the way you experience the web. It's something that should be a no-brainer to pay for even if it was only marginally better than Google, but I've found it significantly better than Google in most dimensions.
themadturk 2mo ago
Another vote for Kagi. I don't even think about it anymore.

Kagi has so completely replaced other search engines for me that their appearance in other people’s browsers is disconcerting.

colinhb 2mo ago

Rather than make another top-level comment, adding here that Kagi is a better experience for me than Google or DDG. Not perfect, and I wish they would lean even harder into pure search (they're also developing AI features), but still an improvement over alternatives.

bayindirh 2mo ago

I'll also pile-in and say that Kagi is great.

dinkblam 2mo ago

been on Kagi 2 years, super happy - haven't googled at all for like a year.

drcongo 2mo ago

Kagi is the best search experience ever. The only reason I started using it in the first place was because DDG started ignoring my quotes. Never looked back.

mrtomservo 2mo ago

I've been a Kagi user since 2022, and a paying user since January 2024, and I can say that I have not thought about another search engine in as much time. Absolutely worth the $10 per month. Using a browser that defaults to another search engine is jarring. I see screenshots of what Google search results look like now, and it's like seeing the neighborhood you grew up in with shuttered storefronts and mouldering houses.

teroshan 2mo ago

I'll expand on a few reasons why I personally love Kagi: - Ability to block/lower/raise/pin domains. Some examples of commonly tuned domains are here https://kagi.com/stats?stat=insights https://kagi.com/stats?stat=insights - Shared custom bangs across my sessions. I can add work-specific bangs (e.g. !bug -> Jira search) and have them available across my devices. - Regexp redirects, to automatically redirect online documentation results of some libraries to the specific out-of-date library we use in a legacy project. All of these are not as important as knowing there is no incentive for the search engine to enshittify the results to bump some sponsored product in the results, to raise ad-heavy websites to the front to get back some precious ad revenue due to a conflict of interests, and to lower the quality of results in the hopes of making me search a second time so I am served a second batch of sponsored links.

kstrauser 2mo ago
> Shared custom bangs across my sessions. I can add work-specific bangs (e.g. !bug -> Jira search) and have them available across my devices. I’ve been on Kagi for 2 years and just learned about this. I really, really need to sit down and RTFM.

chinggis 2mo ago

Not only is kagi private, but it is also genuinely a much better experience than Google or DDG. However, Brave Search is great if you want something free.

abtinf 2mo ago

The value of Kagi is hard to overstate. You have to actually use it and try out the features. Some things that I wish were different about Kagi: I wish Kagi Ultimate LLM credits could be shared with the whole family, rather than each person having to sign up for an ultimate level account. That costs an additional $162/year per person, which makes no sense for my younger kids (even though their Research Agent and image generation would be great for my kids). This is actually the reason I’ve been hesitant to setup a family plan at all. I wish I could use Kagi LLM routing as a generic LLM provider outside of Kagi Assistant. (I don’t really care that they charge ~4x the markup of openrouter; I just want one place to pay the bill and that it includes search is nice). Alternatively, I wish Kagi would support BYOK. I wish Kagi API search would simply draw down from the same bucket as LLM credits. I really don’t understand why they are splitting it up like this. I just want to give my local LLM harness a search tool hooked up to my $270/year account. I wish clicking on the top left Kagi logo on Kagi News would just go back to the Kagi home page. I wish Gmail hadn’t routed Kagi emails to junk, because I missed the Kagi early adopter free tshirt. I wish Kagi would implement an Apple TV video app that I could use in place of the abomination that is YouTube. I wish there were guides in Kagi help or the feature pages themselves that included lots of community examples of how to actually use Kagi features. Like I want the Kagi Redirect Rules for more than just routing Reddit to old Reddit. There is a lot more. But I think this list is a ringing endorsement of Kagi. Objections betray interest. I use it constantly and can’t wait for it to get better.

mtlynch 2mo ago

Also a happy Kagi user since 2023, and full disclosure: I participated in their crowdfund, so I have some financial stake in the company that I don't really understand. I'm always surprised when I see people say, "I can't imagine paying for a search engine." Imagine if you lived in a city with horrible air pollution, and you were coughing all the time and coming down with mysterious respiratory illnesses. And then you go to a friend's house in the same city who's happy and healthy, and it turns out they have an air filter they pay $10/mo for. And your reaction is, "I can't imagine paying $10/mo just to breathe air." Pay for search! Get out of the ad-optimized Google black hole. This is a tool you use hundreds of times per month and it fundamentally influences the way you experience the web. It's something that should be a no-brainer to pay for even if it was only marginally better than Google, but I've found it significantly better than Google in most dimensions.

themadturk 2mo ago

Another vote for Kagi. I don't even think about it anymore.