Like many folks, I’m over a year into using Kagi full time and my primary reason was privacy + avoiding ads.
Coming from DuckDuckGo before, I’ve found that other than the hyper local results mentioned, I find the right answer in the first few results or not at all. Switching to Google or DuckDuckGo provides no better answers.
Also retaining the full set of DuckDuckGo bangs was essential (and probably what I use more than actual search )
The hacky solution for default search in mobile safari sucks but only Apple can fix that.
I ran Kagi for a couple of months in a test trial alongside Qwant as part of my support for the EU movement to divest of America-first interests. I found little material difference between search results across the two websites, both actually work far better (in my opinion, as someone who knows how to use search operators and was using them primarily for technical searches) than other search engines, have cut out a lot of the SEO crap that proliferates first pages of results these days, and gave me the answers I need far more quickly (it was very rare that I didn’t find the page with the information I needed in the first couple of links listed).
Ultimately, because Kagi is American, is a paid-for service and doesn’t necessarily honour the foundational principles of a free web, can’t support equitable web access because of this, and has question marks around the ethics of financial links to Russia at this time, Qwant is the better offering for EU citizens presently. It’s free and partially funded by several EU programmes and countries, and is working with Ecosia to build a new search index, which will enable search engines to reduce their reliance on Google and Microsoft indexes (most the common search engines are using indexes from these two).
They’ve also developed a separate product for children in order to safeguard children whilst allowing them to learn and develop their web skills (Qwant Junior). I didn’t test this as it wasn’t the purpose of the trial but in principle this seems an exceptionally worthwhile idea and it’s strange no-one’s done it before (well, it’s not so strange when you realise most search engines are funded by marketing).
For the trial I was only running the two search engines on my main Mac, since that’s where I work and where the most benefit was to be had in improved web search. Since completing the trial I have installed Qwant across all my devices (replacing DuckDuckGo) and so far have been happy with the results (because its so good at filtering out SEO and AI generated web nonsense, it’s unexpectedly good at finding the answers to annoying little tech problems where you just need someone to tell you what settings need changing in something - a nice quality of life improvement!).
Kagi has been my only search engine since March 2024. I pay $108 USD per year and it’s worth every penny of that.
I was a Google user prior to this. I didn’t move to Kagi for privacy reasons; I moved because Google search results are terrible these days. Kagi in 2025 feels like Google did in 2005, it’s made the internet fun for me again in ways that are hard to quantify.
I remember trying to find some obscure things on Google, and they must be really de-prioritizing old content because it was just impossible for me to find. With Kagi, I feel like my search engine is working for me again, not against me.
It doesn’t take a Masters in Economics to understand the issue with Google. They make money via advertising, so they are financially incentivized to keep your eyeballs on Google search results. Kagi makes money directly from me paying them, and that makes them financially incentivized to deliver me the perfect search result so I get off their website and stop costing them money!
Lastly, I’ve really been using Kagi Assistant more and more as my interface to AI models. They way they have structured the pricing means I get to effectively spend $108 per year of their money on AI models AND get unlimited searches on Kagi itself. I imagine I will upgrade to their $270/year plan that includes the premium AI models before too long.
I had this on my todo for couple of months, delaying. Last month, gave in and subscribed for a cheaper plan, with limited search numbers. Not sure I’m happy. Not sure I’m happy with google either, or duck duck go. they don’t find me what I’m looking for most of the time on a first page. (google sometimes does, but there are bunch of ads first and sometimes miss it)
product search is not helpful at Kagi.
heard they released news product (or update to it) last week, didn’t yet try – still have 40 or so tabs to read before getting to that tab
Didn’t try their browser either, happy most of the time with Safari and Firefox mix.
AI? didn’t try directly, but saw few very unhelpful and simply wrong summarizations.
It’s very interesting reading this thread. Kagi seems to be working very well for some people, but others have abandoned it (and the common theme seems to be for local results).
Had a play, but it felt underwhelming. I repeated a bunch of searches I had done today in Start Page and they were… fine I guess? Not sure what you gain by paying other than supporting a smaller company.
The Quick Answer was frankly crap. In one search I asked for quick dinners and it gave me things like sloppy Joes and turkey tacos, which are not exactly popular meals here in the North of England. I did get to specify my location when I logged in, so it obviously just didn’t include my location in any respect.
Also tried the Kagi Assistant, which, again, was fine, but nothing special compared to any number of AI services.
At the mo I use Start Page for plain searches and Perplexity Pro for assisted AI search and I didn’t really see much to make me want to change.
I don’t see ads anywhere anyway due to network wide ad-blocking, but in any case, showing you generic ads based on what’s on screen always seemed like the fairest ad based model. Very different from trying to identify you as an individual and track you from site to site.
It just feels fundamentally wrong that search results should be determined by who pays the most to put their ads (or marketing material) in front of you. You are not getting the results that best match your search (i.e. the ones you are looking for) but something else. It also (very much like Google) turns the whole thing into an attempt to sell you things and that’s not appropriate for a lot of use cases: for example, if you are looking for information that might help you make an important health decision and all your search results are dominated by products you can buy.
Is that happening Chris? Or is Google an imperfect, but adequate, and feee solution for most? I’ve been using it 20+ years now and I get good enough results. Or, at least, I do most of the time if I ignore their half-cut AI answers.
I‘m firmly in the kagi camp. ever since listening to the interview with Vlad(?) on Daring Fireball.
It’s easy to set up on Arc Browser. I wanted ad-free, relevant results. The privacy is a welcome bonus. I am on the 5$ per month plan, which fulfills my needs. I rarely use kagi translate, it’s ok but not as good as DeepL. I haven’t tried the Assistant yet, thanks for reminding me!
I’ve been paying for Kagi for over a year—maybe almost two? Very happy to keep shelling out for it. Excellent results, constantly iterating. Now and then I check duckduckgo or google, and both are consistently inferior, with a few random exceptions.
I suppose the definition of “adequate” depends on what you are expecting and wanting. I would say that Google search results are very much less good than they were even 5 years ago, even if you ignore the (very hard to turn off) AI, and I don’t think, for a second, that the results are neutral and that’s not just the sponsored (paid for) ones.
Google works reasonably well if I want to buy something. It’s likely to find me local or online outlets with relevant goods or services. I suspect that it’s over-emphasising businesses that maintain their pages in the google directories (which means paying google, sooner or later) so I have often found better deals than Google pointed me to.
Google does not work well (or even adequately) where I am researching: it tends to give much more opinion than fact (articles about information rather than pointing me to the information itself)
Of course, you can’t be sure how results are being selected and ranked because the page-rank algorithms are secret.
Yeah, they’re definitely biased. I’ve tried other search engines and I keep coming back to Google though. Maybe it’s just me, but perhaps their bias doesn’t really matter all that much for a lot of people. Dunno!
That is my opinion as well. Advertisements are a necessary thing and I don’t believe they are all bad. When i’m looking at a magazine focused on a specific industry of interest I find that i’m tuned into who and what is being advertised. The internet is more generalized and despite the efforts to “target” advertisement to what the end user is supposed to I find the ads fall short of what I consider interesting in most cases.
I really despise the App Store ads. To me it’s one of Tim Cooks biggest debacles. The App Store needs to be as close to a meritocracy as possible. The exceptional apps should bubble to the top. Apple had a decent counter-argument to their 15-30% cut prior to what looks like shaking developers down for additional ad spend. It feels like the minute Apple did that, Governments like the EU began to descend like Ring Wraiths. Instead of appointing an Exec to make the App Store a first class digital marketplace including offering benefits that are difficult to deny they took the easy way out and did what other low effort stores do and now they being forced to open up the payment platform and support external stores.
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