I've been using it since ~2022 and can't go back. I think it definitely has better results: whenever I'm using a new machine or a different computer without it, I notice the low quality of results immediately; and quickly side-quest to find a way to log in to Kagi.
The freedom of clicking on the first few search results without thinking whether or not those are ads and/or scams is priceless; a calm and premium experience.
I’ve been using it for a couple of years and would add that it’s probably the density of high quality results that’s better, rather than the best results being better than Google.
In other words, there are fewer low quality results which raises the average quality of the results you’re presented with
The only time I really go to Google is when searching for a product or local business. Google excels there, but that's obviously because they have several decades of business-provided information.
how does it compare to brave search? I switched over to that a few years ago because I often got better results but I tsill end up back on google a few times a month.
I can't think of any other product that makes it to the HN frontpage so consistently. I guess Kagi really hits the bullseye in terms of HN as a target audience.
I know that everybody here likes to bash on Google but i tried ddg, bing, qwant, brave search, all the other niche ones (searx, swisscows, etc...), and i found Google to be still better than all of them, especially for technical stuff.
I thought the same, and still get annoyed when I get "no results" back, but almost every time when I then try to use Google I get nothing but totally inapplicable results I had to sort thru. Google made the news a number of years ago about this, they found people really don't like to see "no results", so Google silently drop terms, even if they're quoted, when it can't find enough results otherwise.
Primarily I've found the source of issues like this are the lack of indexing anymore, and it's not just Kagi. A lot of tech discussions now have their own Forums or Discourse that are poorly promoted and (seem to?) have a robots.txt that says not to index them. I often have to manually go to those sites to run searches and find results from years ago. Also a lot of prohects keep moving away from Forums or equivalent, and using Discord, Matrix, or IRC, none of which end up searchable. No one is going to use those the same way no one is going to call you on the phone, and everyone just has to keep asking the sme questions if they do use it, so I always take that as "we don't support this software/product anymore" and rarely expect to find anything technical about it.
I've been paying for Kagi for the last few months and I guess the compliment I could give is: I have it on some machines but not the other and I don't really notice? when I'm on the kagi one other than ... no ads and no ads-ranked results
Which, frankly, I'm willing to pay for. I think it's a good product.
No ads, privacy of searches, and ability to filter junk sites is why I pay. I think the google results can be good but they are drowned out in this noise and constant reminder I’m seeking help from a malevolent agent.
I mean, it's something I'd consider. I have a little ARM SBC here that I run Plex and Immich etc on. But Kagi makes it very easy for a not terrible price -- not much more than the monthly power bill for a little server -- and they also do more than just grab from other search services as they _do_ have their own crawler (unclear how much it's used for results?) and have LLM stuff which isn't terrible.
Also as a former Google employee... I dig the idea of contributing funds for some competition in this space.
How much maintenance does running a private instance take, and would you say it should be fine to run from your own IP? I've been using Kagi for ages, but I wouldn't mind a fallback that does better than DDG.
Not much? I mean, I set it up initially to use as an LLM search tool for agents. That required me to use a specific version of SearXNG due to a JSON bug. My exact docker command is here:
I run this from the directory where I want to store the data on windows (hence the weird PWD thing). I also use cloudflare tunnels and have the internet facing website, https://sear.mydomain.com, pointed at http//localhost:9017. I set up all my cloudflare tunnels with email authentication. My token lasts a month (but is configurable to whatever time frame you like). My traffic is strictly mine, so it seems to be working ok.
Its basically no maintenance after this setup. I can mess with all the settings (except results format) from the main interface.
Because I can configure exactly which search engines to index, no ads, use it for my local LLM's for search, better image search (maybe not better, but totally different results), a bazzillion tweaks and mods. I don't have to pay Kagi for the same results or keep track of how many searches I have left.
product made by monopoly company worth $2T is better than small startups with less than 30 employees. shocker. the reason people are supporting Kagi is because we see the trend with google quality and we want alternatives, even if they are currently worse. it's called activist consumerism. it's why we supported AMD when they were at the brink of bankruptcy, and now look at their CPUs and look at intel.
I am 100% in agreement, between SearXNG and Google I can find darn near anything. Kagi was ok, it seems to really prefer reddit for the types of things I was searching for. I was also super conscious about the number of searches I had left in my plan. F-that. I type random stuff into the omnibar all day. Leaving Kagi as just enough friction to go to kagi, type a search, etc. that I didn't want to deal with it.
No, I believe it is true because it’s harder to find what I was looking for and it’s clear that the algorithm is skewed for political reasons and likely also economic reasons.
> I believe it is true because it’s harder to find what I was looking for
Yes, because there’s more stuff and different stuff than there used to be.
What makes you so sure the old algorithm would’ve worked as well with more and different stuff to sift through? Other than the fact that you really want to believe it.
> it’s clear that the algorithm is skewed for political reasons and likely also economic reasons
I agree but I also think it is also a google problem specifically because their other products (most notable maps) started giving me worse and worse routing over the last several years and it is very bad now, like they are purposely sending me out of my way to pass some store they think I will impulse stop and shop in or something. I ended up switching to organic maps, which is missing a ton of stuff like store/business locatiosn in my area but if the thing is in there i almost always get better routing that google maps.
To be precise, it might indicate how much Google sucks specifically for the HN audience. I have never seen Kagi mentioned outside of HN. Not that I disagree that Google has ruined the web lately but let’s not assume that this means Kagi will eat their lunch just yet.
I’m a happy Kagi user. I set it up on my wife’s phone… she was relieved when the trial was over and I set Google back up. I’m starting to think this line of thought is more accurate than just ‘Google sucks now’. It depends on your demographic. I think Google has become so optimized for people who click on ads that they have alienated people who do not.
I never click on ads. Back when I used Google, if I searched for something specific and saw both the ad and the search result I wanted- I just scrolled down to the search result. My wife would just click on the ad, and I think most people do. Beyond that specific example, she clicks on other types of ads as well. For me, I just see them as invasive and hostile. I’m not the type of user Google cares anything about, and maybe that’s why I perceive a drop in quality results.
I think that’s precisely why you perceive it. I am actually curious if anyone has done a large scale rigorous study in perception of search quality among average users.
Monopolies are not easy to defeat. Look at how bad IE was and how much better FF and Chrome were. Both were free and yet IE still dominated for a very long time.
Kagi is not mentioned true, but there are always talks w.r.t using site, intitle, time (before 2018 eg) filter to improve search. That indirectly can be considered as "having low quality" from one POV.
most normal people have been have been shifting their search habits. tiktok (banned soon), youtube, reddit (though many use google to search reddit since their native search isn't good)
Depending on your perspective. For "next Google", 35k subscribers is nothing. For a search engine, which has been assumed to be free for the whole decade, 35k paying users is a miracle.
My perspective is "tech startup" that reaches the front page of HackerNews on a weekly basis.
There are plenty of billion dollar companies that make users pay for something that has always been free (note taking apps just off the top of my head).
Subscriber count is not a measure of quality or importance of the service category. Hacker news is less popular than TMZ or the DailyMail, but it is not a lower quality news website.
I just moved to Kagi last month. Here’s my experience:
Searching for real time information that happens within a day is way worse than google. I realise how much I missed the shopping search of Google. Google map is still irreplaceable. Google search has better UX, I particularly missed the favicon that identified the site next to URL.
You picked the exact three things that Google does better than Kagi: Maps, Shopping, and realtime information. I'd also add local business information to this list.
But you didn't mention the things that Kagi does better than Google which is in my experience: everything else.
Google is still "free" though so there's nothing stopping you from adding !g to your Kagi shopping searches.
I have a bookmarklet for Kagi's Universal Summarizer, and if a long article or video doesn't immediately tell me "what it's gonna tell me" then I just click it.
Protip: Youtube changed something recently, and now I think you have to show the transcript and watch/wait a little bit before Kagi can find the transcript and summarize the video.
> Searching for real time information that happens within a day is way worse than google
This is fair. On the other elements, I’ve found Kagi to be superior. In particular, having shopping results separated from recommendations (and summarising them with quick answers). As for favicons, uprank or even anchor your favourite domains [1]. That’s what the favicon was proxying.
You can put the favicon next to the url in the settings (appearence).
Ime image search is far better in kagi. I found some specific images that i was looking in google _for months_ and i could not find. Just because they were some older blogposts probably and google penalises older posts, and because of the AI generated cesspool that it is becoming.
I agree on the first part. Having used kagi for about 6 months it often lacks behind on recent things. I find myself automatically adding !g on such queries
Would be great if you reported it with screenshots so we can try to debug what went wrong. I encourge you to do that next time via https://kagifeedback.org
- Professional ($10/user/month): Unlimited search
- Ultimate ($25/user/month): Unlimited search plus LLMs
You can mix and match users on different tiers.
So you don't need to splurge on LLMs for everyone.
Still, I'm only using Kagi Search and not any of their LLM Agent stuff.
I am still waiting for better pay-per-use LLM access, rather than $15-20/mo subs.
I don’t know how I could generate that much LLM traffic without building an AI product that drove automated traffic. With current API pricing, my consistent, daily personal use amounts to at most $2-3/mo.
Suggestion: it would be cool if the Teams plan included a “personal” plan you can use with a personal account for each member. 1Password does it this way - if you have 1Password at work, you can “link” your personal account to it to get a family plan free of charge - but it’s linked for just this purpose, your employer doesn’t get access to your personal 1Password.
This is great to keep professional and personal accounts separate.
Huh, how come?
That would be a big selling point for Kagi for me, getting rid of w3schools, "geeksforgeeks" etc. and have things like MDN pushed to the top without having to specify it in the search query.
Yes I like that. Let's go further: What Kagi needs is to use AI to figure out what domains are full of 'commercial' activity (buy/cart buttons, ads, telemetry, SEO, login-walls, etc), give those domains a 'commercial' score from 0 to 1, and then when the user slides the Kagi® Commercial Control Slider™ down, nothing with a commelcial score above that point shows up. If the user slides it to zero, the kind of sites which should be the supermajority of results should be the non-commercial non-monetizeable geocities-tier passion project sites built by, and forums frequented by, obsessed autists.
It's the only way to fix search: designs which are detectable attempts at monetization should be nerf-able by the user. A new search game must be set up where seeking money kills your site rankings in search. I only care about sites where the webmaster is paying and working to tell me something he cares about, for free, because he is obsessed. No I don't want to buy your stupid product/service, I don't have money to spend and spending it on anything except survival and advancement is counter to my strategic interests. I want autist site and forum results, I do not want marketing-driven money making results... period.
If the site makes money, it prima facie doesn't have my interests at heart. This heuristic works really well for me.
Haha that’s pretty interesting. I only have a very few of these adjustments configured. Mostly I boost sites that I subscribe to.
For example, I use this to put Encyclopedia Brittanica results above Wikipedia when the former has a matching article. Similarly, I prefer all3dp results for 3d printing searches.
I must be missing a minimum team size? Because if there isn’t one then why would anyone pay for “individual Ultimate” over “Team Ultimate” when they are the same price but you get more with the Team version?
- AI Assistant with access to leading LLM models, grounded in Kagi Search
- Universal access to:
- OpenAI
- Anthropic
- Google
- Meta
- Mistral
Are the same thing or different things. Like do I get their AI Assistant which uses those models under the hood or do I get a web chat interface with those models directly?
However, based on that page, the team plan cannot be prepaid annually for a discount, so if you are willing to do that the individual plan is 10% cheaper.
I would be surprised if at any point in time there are more than 5 LLM providers who are widely considered premium (close to SOTA in my interpretation).
What's the difference? Is it just being able to manage billing in a central place?
The actual offering and price seem identical to just giving people their own account, right?
Two years with Kagi, sometimes go months without using Google. Stay pure.
Kagi plus a few good LLMs (I use local ones via ollama because I do that, and also Claude sometimes) gives you research capabilities that are as good as the pre-enshittification Internet and often better. I use LLMs like brainstorming partners and research assistants and then use Kagi to search for real data to verify results and make sure the LLMs aren't hallucinating.
Going back to Google I'm sometimes shocked at how absolute trash it is. I'm sure they're maximizing their internal KPIs.
Of course I know the real problem with Google is that I'm not the customer.
When I install Linux on a new computer, I install Firefox from its package manager, log in with Firefox Sync, and this switches my default search engine to Kagi. So I never once visit Google, not even to download Firefox.
I just tried going to Google, and it is simultaneously satisfying and saddening to be met with a cookie disclaimer pop-up: Saddening because I'm reminded that ubiquitous search access comes at the cost of tracking, and satisfying because I never once visited Google on this one-year old computer (after which the pop-up disappears).
Just be aware that Google runs a lot of other integral services that hoover up data anyway and are practically unavoidable for modern life. For example, I blocked all domains including google and I was then unable to use local rent listing websites, unable to comment on forums, and unable to browse university research publication lists, because they were captcha blocked. In fact one of the only upsides of Apps I see is that they tend to avoid captchas.
They fail in a nasty way too - nobody expects you to block them - so you'll simply see blank pages, etc. Likewise for Firebase which it seems 40% of startups use.
I've moved on from Kagi. Their service is absolutely better than Google, but not at least $120 / year better than Google. Especially when you have to deal with the plugin and private browsing nonsense that introduces a ton of friction.
I'm completely on the opposite camp, the quality of life I get from using Kagi instead of Google is definitely worth $120 to me. I spend more on some video streaming service and that's purely for entertainment, a search engine is my portal to finding information on the web, that's much more valuable than watching some films and series.
I regularly compare results for the same query between Kagi and Google just to check if still makes sense, 18 months in and every single time I do this comparison I feel more validated to pay for it.
Of course, totally personal experience but I've got so used to the quality of results from Kagi that Google has become almost unusable in comparison.
I'm in the same camp since I subscribed. I became a 10x developer because my search results are way more accurate and I don't waste time anymore when filtering spam. I would estimate that I used to waste 1 hour per day while looking for what I wanted. It's not a cheap tool, but $10 for gaining 20 hours a month is something that I can live with.
An AI equivalent would be the JetBrains AI for the same price which seems to be integrated to CLion but I'm still not completely sold about it.
What field are you in, or what type of searching do you regularly do?
I’m also curious about the LLM integration with Kagi. I currently pay for a Claude subscription but would be happy to drop that and pick up the $25/mo Kagi if LLM access was similar. Is there a dedicated chat app? Interface?
They have a dedicated chat interface at https://kagi.com/assistant You can access this from any search bar by adding !expert to your query. That’s the general case… there’s also !code for development questions and you can create your own more focused flavors.
You can provide custom instructions and set up multiple assistant flavors. For example, you can have one that highlights controversial information about a topic, another one that jokes about everything, etc.
All the assistants have optional web access. They use Kagi search to look up relevant information for you. You can apply a search lens to restrict web results to particular domains.
You can set the assistant to use different LLM APIs. They currently support Anthropic (Claude 3 Haiku, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, Claude 3 Opus), OpenAI (GPT 4o, GPT 4 mini), Google (Gemini Pro), Mistral (Pixtral, Large) and Meta (Llama 3.1 405B).
Kagi maintains their own LLM benchmark. Their goal is to (1) ensure that models haven’t ever seen the questions before and (2) emphasize reasoning and instruction following, which they’ve found to be most important for the assistant. https://help.kagi.com/kagi/ai/llm-benchmark.html
Once you've set up the plugins and private browsing API keys there's no more friction is there? I found the iOS Safari extension buggy for a bit, but I haven't had any issues for quite a while now. The price does make me wince once in a while though. What are you using instead?
I'm happy with the price but Firefox randomly logs me out in private mode (maybe after an update? too infrequent to be able to spot the pattern, but it's there), which is a bit annoying.
I do almost all browsing (except for services where I need to be logged in) from private mode. For the ones where the app needs to know me, I have separate profiles (multi-account containers ftw!).
Nothing especially sensitive, I just consider it basic online hygiene.
That's what I dealt with. It seemed like roughly 50% of the time I'd have to re-auth for private browsing searches. Across multiple devices this becomes even more of a pain in the ass.
For some reason you can't just add a custom search engine url to Firefox, you need to have an extension. Kagi has one that swts up the engine and injects the token, but it sometimes breaks so I need to uninstall/install it.
Oh wow, I forgot about that. I tend to add a bookmark and then make that a search engine, but yeah, that will require you to type the bookmark's character every time. Annoying that you can just add your own engine URL.
There is this firefox extension I have used before: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/add-custom-se.... It lets you configure a custom search engine, so you could add the Kagi token url to it, and have a logged in search engine in both regular and private browsing. Unlike the kagi extension, I haven't had issues needing to reauth when using it.
I found that access to the LLMs alone make it worthwhile, even if you completely ignored search. Access to all commercial LLMs for barely above the price of a single one.
Very interesting going after enterprise. How do you pitch to a CFO that you now need to pay for a web search license on top of Copilot/AI Assistant or whatever?
Kagi has been slowly positioning itself as the single point of entry for both search and AI. They offer some LLM integrations and are working on making the whole experience well integrated.
Not a bad idea, just quite hard to pull off when Microsoft starts pushing Bing and Copilot to their enterprise clients more aggressively.
On the other hand, the red tape is the problem, not the $10.
The amount of effort to get anything paid approved is often similar whether it's $1 or $100. Above that, it probably gets exponentially harder but that's fair.
I think the original comment pointed out that justifying any new purchase (especially for something that's generally taken for granted as free such as web search) is hard, not necessarily whether it's $10 vs $20.
If that’s your treat model: fair, but not processing payments if a user is on a VPN is very understandable. You don’t want users to use you as a credit card validation service.
What's the difference between using Kagi and Perplexity? On X everyone talks about Perplexity, on HN, about Kagi. Do they both search -> put results in an LLM as input text?
Kagi is a regular search engine, like Google. They started to bundle some optional AI features with the subscription, but I personally never use them.
Perplexity is yet another AI startup trying to find a way to monetize LLMs. Will they survive when the bubble pops? Idk. Do I trust them with my data? Fuck no. Just look at all the advertising they're investing in and ask yourself how they plan to make that money back.
Dropped Kagi after being a happy user and annoying all my friends about it for years. Sadly integration with Yandex is a deal breaker and a total violation of trust, sad.
Stopped paying for Kagi after finding out that they are using Yandex for some part of the search results and are paying Yandex 2% of their revenue for that.
For the unaware, Yandex Search is tightly integrated with the Kremlin.
Apparently this has been happening for a long time but only recently drew attention when they announced integrating images. The founder cites the 2% number as if it's supposed to make it all okay, but when it comes to principled objection to funding Russian propaganda, it's hard to argue that we should be okay as long as the number per subscriber is small.
I've been a Kagi subscriber from the beginning and am up for renewal, and I've got to say here (since I can't say so there now that it's locked) that this is giving me pause. I've fought back against boycotting Russian-founded companies before (anyone remember when JetBrains came under fire?), but this is Yandex, not some little company that happens to have a Russian founder.
Edit: I just want to draw attention to the fact that this subthread was the top comment and now has been downranked to the bottom. Whether that was moderator action or algorithmic, I disagree with the decision.
Very good point about the lack of principled objection - that's pretty much anyone needs to know about this business - if they put anything else (in this case the idea of "being the best search") - over doing the right thing, it doesn't deserve to exist.
When a founder's/owner's moral attitude is this unprincipled, supporting their company will only make the problem worse. "Immorality scales with the business".
We are seeing this with Reddit and fake users. Kagi owners, employees and (prospective) users should ask themselves: "what good would even the best search engine be, if the world is already corrupted?" You will find what you support.
Very unfortunate and caused me to cancel my subscription immediately. Any alternatives that people can recommend to someone who throughly enjoyed Kagi?
Considering I am highly skeptical of the western elite apparatus today, this is positive news to me. Yandex beats Bing (ddg) hands-down and gives Google a run for its money.
It is prudent to be skeptical of the "western elite apparatus", but it is positively insane to consider the Russian apparatus preferable. I understand why some people dislike their government and country, but I don't understand why doing so makes them blind to the even more egregious failings of other states.
Hmm I wasn’t aware of the revenue share setup. What’s the source for that?
This was a good nudge to check in on how close Yandex is to the Russian government. Answer: way closer than they were 5 years ago. Russia basically nationalized them, and routinely modifies search results to align with the government’s preferences.
Thank you, I was about to subscribe until I read this. Yandex has become / is becoming a tool for Russian propaganda, and I refuse to put money into something supporting Putin's War Machine.
> Volozh resigned as Yandex’s chief executive in June 2022 and left Russia; in August 2023, he publicly condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. After lengthy negotiations and in the face of mounting political and legal pressure, in February 2024 Yandex announced the sale of its business in Russia to an investment fund consisting of investors with close ties to the Kremlin
I'm sure the Kagi team is reading this thread: you need to seriously reconsider your business relationship with the Kremlin. I somehow doubt the quality of your search is so dependent on that one search provider to make the (apparent) 2% of subscription prices worth it.
what is wrong with using it for "some part" as long as they are balancing it out with other sources? there is no such thing as a search engine that isn't biased or compromised at this point, so pulling from many sources that have different biases sounds fine to me.
you could turn that argument back on itself and say the same thing about american companies since america has been ravaging the middle east for decades.
i like that they are using a diversity of sources with a diversity of biases for their information. i don't want them to just get their information from a single biased source in the west like literally every other search engine out there.
> you could turn that argument back on itself and say the same thing about american companies since america has been ravaging the middle east for decades
Why do people always turn to whataboutism rather than engaging with the criticism directly?
i think that diversity of perspective is better than only filtering for a specific bias. i dont know how many times i need to say it before you understand me. it is in fact YOU who is deflecting rather than addressing the point. you contributed absolutely nothing with your comment.
No, the deflection is yours. The theme of this thread is that some people don't want to give money to Kagi, because Kagi gives money to Yandex, which is associated with the Russian state and provides support for its war effort in Ukraine.
The desirability of diverse perspectives in search has no bearing whatsoever on that subject.
A non-deflective response would be something like: "I know paying money to Kagi indirectly supports Russia in its war against Ukraine, but I don't give a shit about that. What really matters is that my search results must include Kremlin propaganda alongside what I consider to be US propaganda".
Now, I suspect your response is going to be something along the lines of "But Google is American and America has done lots of bad things too." So to save you some time, I'll respond in advance: That too is a deflection. It is true, but it also irrelevant to the point at hand—many Kagi users do not want their money going to the Russian state.
all sources are biased, so i would prefer it include all of them. i dont really care if some of the money goes to russia. i'm not deflecting. i don't know how i could speak more clearly.
Well, my perspective is that the Russian government is much worse than the US government, even if both are bad (although the US is getting worse).
My perspective is also that search engines like Google are bad, but they at least aren't run by the US government in the same way Yandex is run by the Kremlin.
"You can't criticize Kagi using Yandex because the US is also bad" is why it's whataboutism, and why that's not an effective argument.
"XYZ is also bad, so your criticism of ABC isn't allowed."
What you call "whataboutism" is a bullshit term used to dismiss attempts to engage with criticism directly. It's not wrong to point out that the reasoning used to diss Kagi because of Yandex association is knee-jerk nonsense, because following a principled argument would lead one to making much harder changes to their purchasing choices.
See my other comment in this thread - there are degrees to everything, and my view is that the Russian government is one of the worst. It's absolutely valid to be more critical of a Kremlin run search engine than one that's in the US, even if they both have major issues.
And my perspective is that the American alternatives are not as bad as the Russian option. Even if the American alternatives are bad, there are degrees to everything. That's the reality we live in.
I'm concerned that they're paying Yandex—I have friends in Ukraine and friends that wish they could safely be home in Ukraine, and I can't fund a company that is complicit in Putin's wartime propaganda that seeks to keep the Russian people on board with his brutal invasion of my friends' country.
It would help somewhat if the founder could clarify whether funds are going to Yandex Russia or the newly split-off Nebius. If it's the latter I could at least satisfy myself that I believe the companies to be sufficiently distinct.
you pay for a service, which in turn pays for a Russian service, which is in bed with the Kremlin and used as a propaganda machine for an invasion of a sovereign nation.
The two-step may be convenient for you but depending where you land it is definitely an issue, even if you don't live in Russia.
Be thankful that it's not China doing the invasion, because you'd all have to stop buying anything except maybe local produce, and boycott all brands, foreign and domestic alike, because approximately everything is ultimately made in Chinese factories, thus contributing money to the Chinese government and its propaganda machine.
It's all about who you think is more likely to put you in a van. If you are an American it probably won't be the FSB. Different countries will vary on this decision.
Difficult to say if Kagi gives better results, but what's for certain is that it doesn't give worse results.
I am happy to pay 120$/year to support the business model.