Comment by greatgib
14 days ago
I had a very very hard time to make the jump to Kagi passing the steps of "paying", and "setting kagi as my default browser" because of inertia, and also Fear Uncertainty and Doubt of change.
But once I did it, that was very great, and a source of joy in my life. No regret at all.
Same. I assumed it would be a marginally better product. I was wrong - it's a substantially superior product.
I didn't realize Google had gotten so bad. They've been cooking their frogs for a long time
Seconded.
I signed up for the 100 search free trial, and in that, Kagi was as good as, or better than, Google.
I then began also to use the filtering Kagi offers, and that simple feature makes a big difference.
I'm currently on the starter package (5 USD/month for 300).
Kagi also provide an Onion service - but of course you do have to be logged in, so your searches can be logged and be known as coming from you in particular (as you provided payment method), which is the downside of paying.
Much as anonymous payment systems are abused, they have utility for ordinary people.
I know the feeling. I made the switch a few months ago, and haven't regretted it at all.
It's funny in a way the reluctance people have to part with relatively small amounts of money like $5 or $10 a month for something so core. Given the amount of complaining online about being the product instead of the customer, you'd think more people would jump at the chance to establish the proper relationship with their primary source of information on the internet for the equivalent of the price of a cup of coffee or a fast-food meal.
Just that alone is easily worth the cost, not to mention the drastically better search results, and the ability to customize things intentionally, based on what you actually want, versus what Google thinks you should want, or more like what their actual customers, the advertisers, think you should want.
My problem with Kagi is the AI junk. I get that people want it, but I do not, and I don't want to pay for it. In other words, if there is no "zero AI" plan that is cheaper than the equivalent one with AI, then count me out.
And it doesn't even have to be that much cheaper. Maybe 15% or so.
That said, a lot of people want it, so I hold no grudge that they do it. It certainly is reasonable use of AI compared to others.
> it doesn't even have to be that much cheaper. Maybe 15% or so
Isn’t this the $10 versus $25 plan? Are you saying you’d feel better if they charged you $9 and turned off quick answers? (Which are totally optional to use.)
The $10/mo. plan is technically not "without AI". You still have FastGPT (quick answers), meaning any query ending with "?" aggregates an answer based on the scraping of the top search results, rather fast. And you have Kagi Translate, and Universal Summarizer. So there isn't a "no AI Kagi subscription".
But the search itself is worth $10/mo. if you ask me.
I subscribed a year before I bought into AI, and I was very happy with it.
I believe you're funding a free tier more than you're funding AI product research.
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> it doesn't even have to be that much cheaper. Maybe 15% or so
Isn’t this the $10 versus $25 plan?
I find it difficult to trust these (recurring) Kagi is so much better comments. Because a) no one I personally know ever mentions it and b) everyone seems satisfied with Google.
That might be because Kagi currently has "only" 43,508 members, according to their live stats. That number might be too low for you to be able to expect someone in your personal circle to already be using and talking about it. The number being this low isn't a bad thing, though. Kagi is already profitable and the number is growing, that's all that matters for now. There's a free tier that gets you 100 free searches (I'm testing it myself right now, haven't used it enough to really have an opinion on it yet).
Regarding your point b: Heavily disagree. Even ignoring HN's seeming love for Kagi, surely you must have noticed the narrative about how AI is fixing search? People asking ChatGPT or Bing instead of googling things? Why would they do that if they were satisfied with Google? Also, Google search quality worsening has been a common news headline for years now.
They recently gave out some 3-month free trial vouchers for users to give to friends. I have a spare one that I’d be happy to share with you if you’d like. Though I don’t know the best way to get it to you since I don’t think HN has DM functionality. Username is dperrin.01 on Signal if you’d like it.
I also believe I have one or two trial vouchers left. Happy to spare them to someone (my email is in my bio).
EDIT: Two people have emailed me, so if you are reading this you are too late.
And yeah, to the GP: Understand that fans of paid services like Fastmail and Kagi aren't shills... we're just... enthusiastic about stuff that's just... so much better. And yeah, there's probably some sense that for paid services to take hold for things like this, more people coming to it is a good thing.
Good is completely good enough, in the same way that broadcast TV networks are good enough you don’t have to pay for premium content.
It only falls down if you care about taste and quality.
I feel bad mentioning Kagi so much. But it’s a better product and I also want other people to use it so that it sticks around.
Honestly it was odd to read an article about leaving Google search as if it was a momentous thing. $10/month or whatever is pretty minor in the grand scheme of things.
I’ve introduced it to a small number of friends who do more research-oriented search (programming, law, building code, etc.) and the response has been positive. Paying for search is a difficult hurdle even for me as Google is just so deeply ingrained. Those who reached a tipping point with Google recently, thanks in large part to the terrible AI answers, are the ones who’ve stuck it out with Kagi. If you’re going to try it I recommend sticking with it for a week or so before fussing with any settings.
Are you implying people are shilling for it? You can look at my account here to check I've been around for more than a decade and I'm one of those praising Kagi whenever I can because it's a much, much improved experience than I was having with Google until I switched.
It's been over 18 months I'm a paying customer and have absolutely no regrets, I cannot stand Google search anymore after being used to Kagi's results and tools.
I find it difficult to grasp than someone on HN would take anyone’s word for it instead of trying it out themselves…
I have had people in my network mention it directly as worthwhile.
Anecdata, and I have yet to switch myself, but Google has gotten noticeably worse over the past few years and I’ve been considering it.
https://www.google.com/search?q=google+search+quality+reddit (the irony is not lost on me, still better than reddit search)
https://gizmodo.com/google-search-results-are-getting-worse-...
I felt the same way. Tried it for a week or so and decided to buy. That was over a year ago.
"mentions" and "seems satisfied" may not be sufficient sources of data, as (a) is easy to believe, (b) is much, much harder to believe.
Because you think the Kagi boosters are shills?
As far as I understand Kagi displays results based on calls to Google and/or Bing. How can it be better than those then?
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I have exactly the same a) and b) experience and thats ok with me sitting here wearing my free Kagi t-shirt.
Just being able to block all Pinterest and Quora results forever makes it worth the purchase price.
I recently switched to Kagi and it didn’t take me very long to get accustomed to it, surprisingly. Which is probably a good thing, since mostly “It Just Works.” Also I found it surprising that I apparently do like 400-500 searches a month.
Id consider using their browser too if it worked with Private Relay, but alas.
I was concerned that I would still be semi-reliant on Google Search for things like local business opening hours etc. While it's true that Kagi doesn't return that stuff at the top of a search (I'm outside the US so YMMV), in practice it's been a non-issue because the top result—rather than an ad or some AI nonsense—is just that business' website. So at most it's one extra click.
I don't think I've deliberately done a Google search since I signed up, apart from to check that the !g option works as expected with the Safari extension (c'mon Apple, support custom search engines already)
That's actually one of the main reasons I don't join... Where I live, many shops, bars and restaurants have opening hours in Google but don't even have an actual website.
Is it easy to launch a Google search from Kagi if you need this kind of functionality?
Yes, Kagi supports the !g bang to do a google search. Even better, you can make custom bangs that do anything you might want that doesn't have a default bang.
I subscribe to Kagi but I keep using other search engines for some specific searches. It’s really easy to do using “bangs”, or configuring them in your browser directly.
For local businesses I always search on Google instead, that’s the main topic in which it is clearly superior still.
how does it compare to brave search? I switched a few years ago and am pretty happy with brave search but always looking for even better.