Has anyone used Kagi Search (search engine)?

Basically the title.

I’m interested in any opportunity to inprove the way I navigate the internet. What I’ve been for a few years now is DDG, which works fine. Not great, not amazing, just fine. And that’s ok considering how they opperate.

I just heard about kagi and was really cosidering it. Makes sense as a business model (pay so we don’t have to sell you data), seems privacy respecting, and claims to strive for best search results in the market. Some test searches from the trial seem promising.

If you’ve used it for any amount of time, what has your experience been with it? What plan are you using? What are you mostly searching for?

Even you haven’t used it, any thoughts / opinions are welcome.

Cistello,

I use Startpage You can also use any good SearchXNG instance I think etsi(dot)me uses Ai unlike Startpage Kagi is a good search engine but it comes with a price

PopOfAfrica,

I really like Kagi. Its text search is better than Google’s. Its image search still sucks though.

crystalshower,

FYI: I’m not affiliated with Kagi, even though my opinion seem very biased

Been using Kagi for so long. Currently I’m using their unlimited plan. It’s really helped me with my research because kagi can summarize pdf directly on the search result. You can also ask about pdf like what chatgpt premium version did.

I went from $10 to $25 because I want to support them for making this beautiful simple search.

acow,

My trials of it always seem outstanding, but the price with search limits has thus far discouraged me from signing up every time I think to do so. $5 for 10k searches (or some number that I wouldn’t have to think about as a human user searching for things) would get me over the fence. Even the family plan with up to 2 users seems stingy.

DuckGuy,
@DuckGuy@lemmy.zip avatar

I really like how it looks and how it performs, but I can’t justify the price.

EarlTurlet,
@EarlTurlet@lemmy.zip avatar

I’ve been using it for about a year and a half, on the unlimited plan. I pay for the year up front for the discount. There’s no way I’m willingly going to stop using Kagi. I’m a developer and perform about 2500 searches a month.

The ability to adjust the ranking of domains and the lenses save me a ton of time. No other engine comes close to the productivity.

You can easily talk to the developers and founder, too. I’ve had many of my suggestions actually implemented. It’s great when you pay for the service and they are in it for you, not your data.

procrastinator,

Ah a fellow discord member

Wisely,

I have used Kagi for a few weeks now after hearing about it on Lemmy.

At first I wasn’t that impressed for the price. It is really growing on me the more I use it though. Where it really shines is the customizations. Once you rank up and down to your preferences the results are way better than anywhere else.

One way they rank results is based on how much tracking a website has. You can also see the number of trackers, check the archive or do an ai summary of it without even visiting the website. You find a lot of high quality nonprofit information with the commercial high tracking websites filtered out.

I also made custom redirects for sites like reddit and quora for privacy frontends.

I find myself actually using bangs now that I can customize them. You can also add other search engines so they are one click away if you want a second opinion. Lenses are great, I made some custom ones to search the top 10 websites for forums, tech support, news, etc.

When I don’t feel like sifting through a bunch of results the ai summarizes the results. When it doesn’t come up with a good summary it’s because the results don’t have the answer and you saved a bunch of time.

The free trial wasn’t enough time for me to decide if I liked it. I am glad I paid for the $10 plan. However, I seem to do about 3,000 searches a month. I was able to upgrade to unlimited at a prorated amount. $25 is a lot per month but it is saving me a lot of time and helping me to find better results so I find it worth it.

EarlTurlet,
@EarlTurlet@lemmy.zip avatar

$25 is a lot per month but it is saving me a lot of time and helping me to find better results so I find it worth it.

I justify the cost by relating it to how it helps me at work. I believe Kagi makes me more effective; my boss(es… :( ) and peers notice, and that translates to better performance evaluations and raises. I don’t hide my usage of it from my team, but I don’t think they realize how much of an advantage it gives me. Once you get the rankings and lenses tuned to your workflow, it’s amazing how it lets you cut through the nonsense of the internet.

Crazyfrog,

I have not properly tested it, however I had a look at their sample queries. One of which was Steve Jobs, the main thing I noticed was that three of the top 5-10 results were the Wikipedia page for Steve jobs but in different languages. I appreciate that Google isn’t great but it’s not bad enough to serve you the same page three times. I personally use searxng.

Wisely,

deleted_by_author

    •
    Crazyfrog,

    I just checked the test results again and it still has the three Wikipedia pages for Steve Jobs. It makes me question how good their results are, but I am glad it works for you :)

    Wisely, (edited )

    deleted_by_author

    •
    Crazyfrog,

    That’s really interesting, I checked it again and the results are much better. I may properly check this out now!

    sky,

    My partner and I have been using the family plan for a couple months now and have been extremely happy with it. It’s replaced all search on desktop and mobile.

    We’re usually searching for programming and devops related information, world and political news, and then local businesses and contractors, that sort of stuff.

    Lemmchen,

    I’m actually in my first month as a paying subscriber. I’ve tried their 100 queries trial and was pretty happy with the results. However, with my current search profile I definitely need the $10 subsription, if not more. I’m honestly not sure their new pricing model makes sense at all. It seems way to expensive for the average person or poweruser alike.

    I’ll decide whether I stay a customer after this month, when I have a better impression of all the features and shortcomings of the service.

    adespoton,

    To me kagi will always be the DRM supplier and shareware payments processor company.

    barf,

    I’ve been using Kagi since their public beta, and paying for it has been a no brainer. For programming related searches it isn’t even comparable to Google, as there are very little/no SEO spam re-post garbage sites (like the ones that just scrape and reformat GitHub issues or stack overflow questions). And if there are, I block those domains and never see them again. For all other searches, I have the same experience of better results with less garbage.

    The lack of ads has many great advantages, somewhat obviously. Results load faster, my pihole doesn’t break anything, I can see the top result immediately, I never click a sponsored result on accident, etc. I don’t really use many of the advanced features like lenses or GPT functionality and still feel like I get my moneys worth every single month.

    barf,

    I’ve been using Kagi since their public beta, and paying for it has been a no brainer. For programming related searches it isn’t even comparable to Google, as there are very little/no SEO spam re-post garbage sites (like the ones that just scrape and reformat GitHub issues or stack overflow questions). And if there are, I block those domains and never see them again. For all other searches, I have the same experience of better results with less garbage.

    The lack of ads has many great advantages, somewhat obviously. Results load faster, my pihole doesn’t break anything, I can see the top result immediately, I never click a sponsored result on accident, etc. I don’t really use many of the advanced features like lenses or GPT functionality and still feel like I get my moneys worth every single month.

    Zomg,
    Zomg avatar

    I'm an active subscriber of their service and have had no issues. The results are good, very rarely do I query through Google anymore.

    freeman,

    I was chatting about it yesterday here in this thread

    lemmy.pub/post/77321

    • I use the 10/month plan with a $5.0 soft limit and a $10 hard limit, though I have yet to exceed my plan quota at all.
    • I have used it since hearing about it on HN a couple months ago during one of the DDG controversies.
    • Its completely replaced my search engine. I use it on my work machines, personal machines and phone for all searching.
    • Most searches are probably work related ie: Systems Admin, “Devops” (depending on your definition of the term), Security etc etc but also random thoughts. Heck today i was searching for flounder lights on it.
    • I generally find I have to refine searches less often, and rarely do I need to use bangs to pipe a search to DDG. I have had co-workers mention in recent months that they are always amazed that I will find very relevant sources fairly quickly, often ones that they cant get a front page hit on even when looking for it because i mentioned it. Though that may speak more to how I structure searches already since Kagi is fairly new to me.
    • I use the filters/lenses quite often. The recipes one is awesome for a lot of the cooking/smoking I do. Programming is solid too.
    • I would NOT reccomend this for general use yet unless it has a specific value add, such as with me and work. For example my wife still uses DDG (because i put her on it) and probably google on work devices or something. Its fine for her and thus for me. I would only reccomend it if you happen to work in a specific field that has a TON of crap sourcing/junk articles that are SEO gamed (ie: Tech) or you specifically align with the privacy ideology.
    • the account thing is only for stripe for billing for now, they go have a greyed out and unchecked box enable query history. I have seen it mentioned you can use a totally fake email to sign up (since it doesnt necessarily require verification) though the owner has recommended against it for obvious reasons. Adding crypto options brings baggage, I think he just tied it to stripe to the ease of billing/use.

    https://lemmy.pub/pictrs/image/6d9147f3-6178-4909-b3ef-41c55f974b50.png

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