I hate Pinterest lol, best thing about Kagi is being able to block whole sites and it remembers your preferences. I may come back to Kagi but I didn't feel like funding their AI features development. Now Im using Searx and 4get cause they're free.
It's a very minor annoyance and well worth it in my opinion.
I was searching for a book quote for over a year. I tried every search engine, tried changing the terms, checking back several times every few weeks or so, but couldn't find anything even close. I tried kagi and it was literally the very first result on my very first search.
I haven't looked back and have never had an issue finding what I'm searching for since.
You pay instead of seeing ads, so they need the account. Remembers you, though, so you just login once. Plus they have a solution for incognito/private windows too.
Signing up and logging in isn't a problem imo. I wouldn't even mind if I had to pay for searches, but I'm not going to make it a subscription service. Unless they add an option to do something like buy 1000 searches that never expire, its not something I'd considered. I do think they beat out competitors like google with their results pretty consistently though based on the trial.
I'm not gonna subscription my heated car seats but search is a service that costs an ongoing amount to provide. The subscription isn't significant, it's $5 a month for 300 searches (or $10 for unlimited).
I know we've been conditioned to expect search for free, but if we want to get away from the "the user is the product" model then I think it's a good thing to have a subscription to a service that has ongoing costs to provide.
Ah right, I get you. I wonder if they have considered this. Pretty sure their free/demo tier is 100 searches not confined to a time period so presumably the platform could handle that model.
I think this might be it. There were also some statements by the CEO I think which didn't exactly inspire confidencenin their company - but again, I don't remember the details unfortunately
That's what's kept me from using it, although I very much like the idea of paying for a good service. I would love to see them figure out a way to avoid accounts.
If i remember right, it wasn't just using brave, but including a referral id in brave searches. It wasn't intended, and they fixed it, so all good with me.
It was not even the emails. I tried to duckgo it and only found this controversy (which was new to me). What I saw was a specific qute, possibly on topic of privacy or something adjecent which just made me go "nope!"
Is it really $108/year good though for a single person (based on the tier that makes sense for me)? Just curious what other search engines you’ve used or tried and what features set it apart to make it worth spending the money on.
That really depends on your use case and how valuable web search is for your daily life.
I've personally tried Google, Bing, DDG, Brave search, and ChatGPT. Kagi is consistently able to find what I'm searching for more quickly and accurately than anything else, which has been very valuable for me in my personal and professional life.
It's easily worth the cost in result quality and time saving for me personally, but that doesn't mean the same will apply to you or anyone else.
As far as stand out features, there aren't really any that I can think of. It just gives me the results I'm looking for without any bullshit to wade through.