13 ms·

Fair Pricing

• lyzml_AF 2y ago
  [dead]
• rettichschnidi 2y ago
  Would love to see Kagi and Mozilla to collaborate.
  • throwaway290 2y ago
    Could be problematic since Kagi keeps paying Yandex/Russia and there's sanctions you know...
    • ilvez 2y ago
      I weekly monitor for news that they somehow allow using Kagi without Yandex. Still hurts after nearly 2 years of Kagi using to drop them. Without using Yandex at least I could convince myself that my money at least directly won't flow to Russia. I could revisit the idea of using Kagi again. Thanks for pointing it out, people mostly don't speak about it anymore.
    • ImHereToVote 2y ago
      Yandex is a godsend to get information behind the silicon curtain.
      • throwaway290 2y ago
        Google too. Unless you mean specificslly Russian sites in Russian. But those are not going to be available for long since Runet is slowly separating and VPN is now as illegal as in China
        • ImHereToVote 2y ago
          No, even content hosted on YouTube. Some videos are almost impossible to search for even if they are linkable via YouTube. For instance, it's almost impossible to find the video of MSNBC hosts saying they will vote for Trump if Sanders becomes the Dem candidate. First result in Yandex. Both are vehicles for state propaganda obviously.
  • SllX 2y ago
    I have too much respect for Kagi to want to see them overshadowed by Mozilla in any kind of partnership. In particular, I am a very recent but very happy convert to the Orion web browser which uses WebKit (not Blink, not Chromium, certainly not Electron, but WebKit) but supports both Firefox and Chrome extensions even in the iPhone and iPad apps, and has zero telemetry baked in and doesn't try to upsell you on a read-it-later service that was a questionable purchase by Mozilla even at the time it was made. Kagi also actually has a business model. Mozilla has a teat that a US Court might order removed from their mouths soon as a possible remedy to sanction their Mommy in an antitrust suit; and looking at their 990, things are not looking particularly good for them if that happens.
• chitw00d 2y ago
  [dead]
• efitz 2y ago
  Kudos for adopting a user friendly billing policy. I would love to see the FTC mandate a policy that prohibits automatic renewal billing if the service hasn’t been used for some time.
  • ranger_danger 2y ago
    how would that be enforced?
    • moooo99 2y ago
      Fines
    • scott_w 2y ago
      European countries like the UK have consumer protection laws and they get enforced all the time. There’s a few ways: - Act on customer complaints (or consumer protection organisation complaints) - Proactively investigate and check - Require businesses to submit proof that they follow the regulations e.g. test results I’m sure there’s other ways and you can do one or more of these things to ensure compliance. It’s really context dependent on which methods one would use.
      • larusso 2y ago
        Also helps to scare with huge fines set up for the likes of Google and Facebook which any normal company can‘t pay in their wildest dreams.
        • weird-eye-issue 2y ago
          Common sense should tell you that the amount a company like Google or Meta are fined is a lot higher than a "normal company"
          • Propelloni 2y ago
            It's built in. EU laws usually have a fining mechanism that says X % of {global/EU/regional} sales or a fixed sum, whichever is higher. For example the GDPR says in Art. 83(5) [1]: > Infringements of the following provisions shall, in accordance with paragraph 2, be subject to administrative fines up to 20 000 000 EUR, or in the case of an undertaking, up to 4 % of the total worldwide annual turnover of the preceding financial year, whichever is higher [...] (An "undertaking" in EU law speak refers to any entity that is engaged in economic activity, regardless of its legal status or the way in which it is financed.) EDIT: formatting
• siddharthgoel88 2y ago
  This is the best thing I have seen today. I read about this notification in the morning and had to re-read it to verify that I understood it correctly.
• haxton 2y ago
  Kindle has been doing this for years and has really made me a loyal customer to them. Always surprised the penny pinchers at Amazon haven't killed it yet.
  • nicolas_t 2y ago
    You mean kindle unlimited? That's the only monthly subscription they have?
• denkmoon 2y ago
  That's great, but I can't even imagine "forgetting" to use Kagi. Completely indispensable.
  • optionalsquid 2y ago
    It's also hard to forget once you've set it as your default browser. So I imagine that it'll mostly benefit people on the limited (300 search/month) tier, where you might want to ration your searches
  • vincnetas 2y ago
    Could you share what you find in kagi indispensable? Just subscribed, and looking around.
    • JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > Could you share what you find in kagi indispensable? The academic lens is like Google Scholar, but better. The papers it surfaces are simply higher quality. Otherwise, append your query with a question mark. The baby AI will do what Google's tries to do, except with a little more skill and better citations. Most broadly, however, search. It's kind of wild but I forgot that searching the internet used to be fun. Kagi made it fun again.
    • greatgib 2y ago
      For me, it is not even any particular feature, but just doing a search and getting straight and instantly the results that I need, without crap. Also I guess part of this is probably the option I used to give higher priority to some websites like python org. When I subscribed with Kagi, I was so totally pissed off and stressed by using Google where you will now have crap and unrelated ad links everywhere on the page. And in addition often first link that are garbage Copycat of principal websites. For example, for python, when looking for a module documentation, the official doc is the best but there would be hundreds of ad filled shitty pages that would appear first.
      • lolc 2y ago
• junon 2y ago
  Well I guess it's finally time to try Kagi then.
• yellowapple 2y ago
  Probably won't affect me much, since I've happily been a daily user since learning about them at Handmade Seattle last year, but I'm glad they're going this route nonetheless.
  • z64 2y ago
    Always happy to hear people finding us through HMS! It's a fantastic community, and the Handmade ethos resonates deeply with a lot of us on the team. Thank you for your support. - Zac
• annexrichmond 2y ago
  Kagi is awesome, but the thought of having a limit led me to use it less and less and I eventually unsubscribed.
  • _kidlike 2y ago
    The 10$ plan doesn't have a limit anymore!
  • zaptrem 2y ago
    This is how I think about unlimited data plans haha. I think a rate limit is easier to stomach (e.g., X requests per hour where they bank up to one hour so you can burst up to 2X for especially crazy hours or something).
    • annexrichmond 2y ago
      yeah that's interesting. $5 for 35/day could be better as well
  • throwaway290 2y ago
    I noticed if I need something hard to find I have to do a dozen+ different queries (and sometimes not find anything because it doesn't exist). Both with Kagi and Google the result is the same but with Kagi I also rack up a bunch per one attempt to find something. And if I need something easy to find but lazy both Google and Kagi reliably show the first correct result. So it's either unlimited or nothing. But since I know Google's search operators well I don't have trouble finding things if they exist so $10 per month is hard to justify. Plus, you're anonymous with Google but you're not anonymous with Kagi since you pay them. But Kagi can be good for tech illiterate relative you want to shield from sus sites.
    • deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    • fooqux 2y ago
      > Plus, you're anonymous with Google but you're not anonymous with Kagi since you pay them. The idea that you're anonymous with Google is laughable. The amount of data they aggregate is well known. Their entire business model is to know who you are.
• vincnetas 2y ago
  Just recently i was actually thinking about this pricing approach for netflix, apple arcade or whatever else. Basically i use it so rarely that i could just subscribe when i want to watch anything, and unsubscribe immediately. This will enable subscription till end of billing period (one month). Then when i want o watch anything again then i will repeat again. And now kagi has implemented exactly this but automated from their own side. Im subscribing just to vote with my wallet. Hopes that netflix or any other provider will implement this are small though. Because it's free money when someone pays for service and does not use it.
  • beAbU 2y ago
    Not just free money. I'm pretty sure the lions' share of any streaming service's income is from users that are subscribed but don't consume everything for that month. Their business model relies on this.
    • aimazon 2y ago
      I think this is a vast overestimation. The majority of people notice every payment they make every month, a Netflix subscription is a choice that they would not continue to make if they were not using Netflix. Those of us who can afford to pay Netflix whether we watch it or not are the minority of wealthy people. I think you would be surprised to learn how many normal people juggle different subscriptions by cancelling/subscribing each month.
      • hnlmorg 2y ago
        I think both statements are somewhat true. And we can look to COVID to see some evidence of this because when everyone was suddenly home and wanting to consume TV, Netflix had to lower the bit rate on even their premium tier to keep up with demand. If Netflix wasn’t relying on a degree of inactivity with in their infrastructure then they wouldn’t have needed to lower the bit rates. It makes sense, when you think about it. Over provisioning is a common practice when dealing with expensive finite resources. For example ISPs have been doing this for decades, offering households higher individual bandwidth than is available if every household within a local radius was to fully max out their throughput. VMWare also offers this to allow individual VM to consume more RAM than the total available on the host. The key is not to over provision so much that it becomes noticeable under “normal spikes” — and I think we can all agree that COVID was anything but normal.
• Shorn 2y ago
  No good. Not fair. I put money into the account, you bill me per search - pre-paid usage based billing is the only way this can ever be "fair".
  • whs 2y ago
    Kagi used to have limits on all plans, and I feel like associating cost to typos is a bad experience that you'd never have on ads-supported engines. Even now on starter plan (300/month) a mistyped query would cost you $0.0166 each. Now I use the unlimited plan and so I search first, spellcheck later. Or sometimes it corrects it for me.
    • ThePowerOfFuet 2y ago
      The time it took you to submit this comment was surely worth an awful lot of those $0.0166...
  • JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > you bill me per search This only works at the extremes of volume. If you're targetting very-low use users, or enterprise, you can price per search. In between the frictions just don't make sense for any sensible target market.
  • freehorse 2y ago
    Their search API is in beta right now.You can apply for access or wait for it to be released. I guess then making a front end to call it is simple eg an llm could make it.
  • bux93 2y ago
    A sliding scale would make sense. Don't use it? Don't pay anything. Fewer than x searches? Pay Y per search. More than z searches? Pay z * y for unlimited use. I suspect this would also work great for streaming services, like HBO or Netflix. Rather than paying for unlimited use on 6 platforms OR spend fortunes on pay-per-view on yet another platform, just reward your most loyal customers but keep the door open for incidental users.
• casenmgreen 2y ago
  I trialed Kagi. I liked it, the results were good, no ads, gave me access to Google without being tracked. I would pay for that, except they block Tor, and I normally use Tor.
  • throwaway290 2y ago
    > gave me access to Google without being tracked Hint: you can use Google in private mode. And unless you block all trackers almost all sites will still use analytics so Google knows what you read.
    • pixxel 2y ago
      [dead]
    • bugtodiffer 2y ago
      > unless you block all trackers almost all sites will still use analytics so Google knows what you read. That's like driving without light and seat belt. Should be very obvious to every HN reader, that a content (ad) blocker is the first thing you install
  • z64 2y ago
    Heya, this is Zac from Kagi. We do not block Tor - in fact, we recently launched our own self-hosted Tor node[1]. We have had problems with GCP blocking VPN and Tor traffic (mostly the former) when we have made zero configuration to do so. It's quite frustrating, and we have been working with their support to improve this generally. Haven't heard anyone having issues with Tor since we set up the node though :) If you give it a try, let us know how it works for you. [1] https://help.kagi.com/kagi/getting-started/accessing-via-tor.html https://help.kagi.com/kagi/getting-started/accessing-via-tor...
    • 0xbs0d 2y ago
      I used to have issues with VPNs but it’s been a long time ago. Works flawlessly now.
    • 2y ago
• manmal 2y ago
  Ok that’s it, I‘ll renew my account now. I‘ve been using it two years ago and was pretty happy, until a problem in my payment processor failed the payments to Kagi. I thought I wouldn’t miss it, but lately I haven’t been happy with DDG and been reaching more for Google, or should I say suffering Google? I also thought for a while that things like ChatGPT internet search or perplexity would replace DDG and Kagi, but, so far, I just want slop free sources to back up the slop I generated purposely in R1.
  • fhd2 2y ago
    Exactly! For a lot of work, I use Claude as my first source, then typically I verify what I got out of it with a search engine. If the search engine also starts to hallucinate (starting to see that on Google if I'm not crazy), I have zero use for it. I want results that match my search query, period.
    • pbronez 2y ago
      Kagi also has solid AI features. Their Quick Answer feature does an AI summary of your query results. By default it shows up automatically when it has high confidence. You can disable this in settings or force it to show up by adding "?" to your query. https://help.kagi.com/kagi/ai/quick-answer.html https://help.kagi.com/kagi/ai/quick-answer.html If you want to jump into an AI chat session, you can add bangs to your queries. "!expert" launches a top of the line research agent and "!code" is good and software development. Both of these use the underlying search engine to get current facts. Kagi even maintains their own LLM benchmark to monitor how well different models perform. They occasionally swap out default models to keep performance SOTA. You can specify a specific model if you want. https://help.kagi.com/kagi/ai/llm-benchmark.html https://help.kagi.com/kagi/ai/llm-benchmark.html
      • fhd2 2y ago
        OK you got me, gptel supports it, so I signed up :P Search result quality is awesome so far, gonna play around with their LLM stuff.
• nomilk 2y ago
  I'd pay more for more search results (as opposed to searches, which are already unlimited with Kagi subscriptions). I found google unbearable when it removed the '100 results' default setting (until I found a chrome extension). But I stopped using Kagi for the same reason. Sometimes seeing lots of search results has its advantages, for example when gauging how common/popular a term is, or just being able to quickly survey many sites, or seeing where one of your sites/article appears in the search rankings. Kagi attempts to only provide results it thinks will be relevant. While I liked the accurate results, I was frustrated when none of the 5-10 results was what I was after; at that point the UX is to type a new search term rather than simply scrolling further (I prefer the latter). One other small downside is I slightly missed google's 'WebAnswers' (certain google searches will display images and summary info for the search term, rather than strictly results). WebAnswers were handy on super quick searches for, say, a particular car or aircraft model). I didn't think I'd miss this, but I did, although it was very minor.
• animanoir 2y ago
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• CaptainFever 2y ago
  Pleasantly surprised. Nice job, Kagi! This is consumer-friendly and to be commended.
• Euphorbium 2y ago
  Would be great if every company was forced by law to do this. Pay only for what you use.
• manx 2y ago
  Why not directly pay what you use? Similar to how LLM Apis are billed these days.
  • raincole 2y ago
    Because they don't want the users to feel stressful for using their product more. > LLM Apis... Yeah exactly, ChatGPT doesn't have this option for their web interface either, only for API. For the same reason.
• ciphix 2y ago
  This is a promising trial of an innovative pricing model. Many AI products require a $19.9 subscription fee just to try them out, yet I only use most of them a few times a month. For such occasional use, a monthly subscription doesn't seem very practical or user-friendly. I hope AI products eventually move to a usage-based charging model.
  • barnabee 2y ago
    Sign up for an API account and connect something like Open WebUI[0] and you can have just that, with a few caveats (mostly around specific UI features). Bonus is you can query multiple models at once, including local llama.cpp/Ollama models. I use it with the Claude and OpenAI APIs, as well as local Mistral, Qwen, and DeepSeek models. [0] https://docs.openwebui.com/ https://docs.openwebui.com/ (one liner if you have `uv` installed)
• dirkc 2y ago
  This makes sense, if someone isn't using your service for a month, chances are good that they are going to cancel soon. Maybe they'll keep on paying for another few months, but if they're not using it, they're not getting any value from it. So rather than getting them to cancel, pause their subscription. You don't have to deal with cancellations, and if/when the user does return, you are one step further than you would be with a new subscription. Furthermore this generates goodwill, and I'm guessing goodwill has some % that converts to conversions and lower churn.
  • fnord123 2y ago
    More importantly you can tell investors you have even more accounts than you do and your churn rate is very low.
    • eviks 2y ago
      not unless said investors demand better metrics like active user count...
      • lostlogin 2y ago
        Once you are navigating these waters, it might pay to ask for a definition of ‘active’.
      • mathw 2y ago
        This is the point where you realise the investors were, like most times, a mistake. I don't know if Kagi have any investors or not, but I am kind of hoping the subscription model means they don't need them.
        • ffsm8 2y ago
          Technically, they do https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36517149 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36517149 But as the comments pointed out, the invested money is "only" ~700k, so they're likely not such a mistake as you're imagining
• lyu07282 2y ago
  if the plans included the search API for personal use I would almost consider, but brave search+ai is good enough for me, also they blocked my vpn's another big nono
  • z64 2y ago
    We would like to eventually offer everyone an API credit stipend with their subscription. Our APIs should get plenty of love this year, so please stay tuned. > also they blocked my vpn's another big nono Argh, I am sorry to hear that. We do not block _any_ VPN, but have been struggling with our hosting provider (GCP) to not do this. We are working with GCP support on this - if you give us a chance, and encounter any issues, please reach out to support@kagi.com with details and we will see what we can do. Also, see my other comment in this thread about Tor, if that is helpful for you.
• jbverschoor 2y ago
  Why not charge x ct per search. Or rather, x ct per click through. Or rather, x ct per action on a target website? Search = advertisements
  • ajdude 2y ago
    Kagi used to charge based on the amount of searches you would do. It wasn't x ct per search, but x $ per Y searches. A lot of people didn't really like that, so they introduced the $10/mo for unlimited. You can still pay $5/mon for 300 searches: https://kagi.com/pricing https://kagi.com/pricing I would probably be paying less if I just did cents per search, but I honestly just like unlimited plans, so personally wouldn't get pay per search. I'm the type of person who does a Kagi search for "5+7" instead of pulling up a Calculator, so I would rack up pretty quickly.
    • SllX 2y ago
      I remember when they initially announced their plans here a while back and that actually held me back from pulling the trigger until I figured out that they updated their plans. $10/unlimited was an easy sell for me. I did consider maybe giving the $5/300 searches plan a try, but I actually wanted the inclusion of the FastGPT you can invoke by adding a "?" onto your query. Unlike Google and their inclusion of Gemini, it's nice that it's not there if I don't want it, but there if I do. But on search and paying for search: I'm all for paying for search, but if I'm going to have a search engine set as my default, I don't want to feel penalized for my mistakes, and the most common mistake I make is simply not quite getting a URL entered in correctly and having my browser redirect me to a search page instead, and if I'm paying for Kagi in any capacity, then it's going to be Kagi.
• neilv 2y ago
  For the frugal-minded customers, will this be motivation to avoid using the service for the first time that month (and a little sinking feeling when you do)?
  • dmos62 2y ago
    My first thought. I'd think that first N searches being free each month would fix that for me. Paying for the full month for 1 search feels off, but paying the same for 10 searches dilutes the feeling by factor of 10.
    • promiseofbeans 2y ago
      But then it becomes a question of where exactly draw the line? And if you're going to do that, why not just charge per search so that you're not wasting money on searches you aren't using? Now you just have metered billing. We've seen how that plays out with cloud computing: a few people wayyyy overpay and subsidise a lot of people on the free/cheap tiers
      • dmos62 2y ago
        10 free searches a month would work well for me, I think. A small free tier might be enough to get me to pay for Kagi. Currently I'm just not sure I'm missing anything and I don't have a way to test that, last I checked.
• ajdude 2y ago
  Unfortunately, I will never be able to take advantage of this policy, For the very reason that I have kagi Set as my exclusive search engine on every single device that I own, And there's no way that I could go even a Day, let alone a month, without using this fantastic service. Keep up the good work guys!
  • shortrounddev2 2y ago
    I just wish the unlimited plan was $5 instead of $10
    • gjm11 2y ago
      I too wish that the things I might spend money on were half the price.
      • shortrounddev2 2y ago
        I just mean that I've got a lot of subscriptions, and it would be psychologically easier to justify a $5/mo subscription over $10/mo for search.
  • nmstoker 2y ago
    I'm in exactly the same situation as you. I would really struggle going back to not having bad sites suppressed in search results!
  • user3939382 2y ago
    My pitch to friends is that it’s like Google used to be before they started adding all the crap to their results and ignoring your search terms. Really, it’s even better than that given the full feature set.
    • CarRamrod 2y ago
      Note to self: Make something good enough that friends will feel the need to make up pitches for their friends to use said thing.
• barnabee 2y ago
  This is cool. It’d be great if they extended it to refund $5 for anyone on a Pro or Ultimate plan doing less than 300 searches in a month, too. (I pay for ultimate and would still be very happy with that gesture.)
• llm_trw 2y ago
  The one area that'd make kagi thousands of dollars from me and the apps I use would be to lower their APO searches to a sane price. Currently they charge 2.5c for an API search. This is between 1,000 to 1,000,000 times more than other companies in the space charge. AI systems need to do dozens of searches for every question to get good results and kagi's results are really good. But not 1,000,000 times better than the competition.
  • nektro 2y ago
    maybe don't search with an llm
  • freehorse 2y ago
    I love kagi, but indeed I am a bit concerned of long term usefulness/sustainability of their model if they do not manage to reduce their search costs.
    • llm_trw 2y ago
      We are rapidly approaching the point where using an embedding model to run over the whole internet will be the best way to rank search results. At that point all the special sauce Google et al have spend decades mastering will be worth as much as expertise in analogue computers is today.
  • freediver 2y ago
    Hi, the API is still work in progress. Expect many more features and lower price once we officialy launch it (next few months)
• Vexowsky 2y ago
  tried Kagi for 2 months. It works really nice, but I think it is overpriced. I as a heavy user do notice the difference in milliseconds in comparison with google. Paying $10 and still having that delay felt really bad, so I ended up canceling my subscription.
• icar 2y ago
  I stopped using Kagi because the results in my native language are terrible. It's a pitty because Google is the only search engine good at it.
  • sersi 2y ago
    That's why I never ended up using ddg. On the other hand I find that kagi is decent enough when I search in French, not as good as English but still better than google.
  • aacid 2y ago
    this. I tried so many times to run away from google but I have to come back every time because all search engines are extremely anglo-centric (or maybe rather US centric) and really don't care about other localizations.
    • dgellow 2y ago
      German results are reasonable if I select Germany as a region
• cyberax 2y ago
  Subscribed! I have a severe subscription fatigue, so I was avoiding Kagi. But with this change, it makes it much less problematic. That reminds me, I need to cancel my 24 Hour Fitness subscription.
  • jeff_vader 2y ago
    When most of services nowadays seem like a hostile subscription, this brings joy. edit: use of Yandex on the other hand.. yeah that's a no go for paid subscription.
• butterNaN 2y ago
  They probably have enough data to indicate that a negligible number, if not none, of their customers are searching quite a lot. If they had a lot of customers who were using the service at a very low frequency, this policy actually disincentivises them from making that first search. For those people, the cost of their first search is suddenly 5 (or 10) dollars!
• bugtodiffer 2y ago
  Maybe introduce a security team instead of building a browser and email on top of your search
  • ykonstant 2y ago
    Care to elaborate? Comments like this are not helpful for people outside of whichever loop you are in, and people in the loop already know what you are alluding to.
    • bugtodiffer 2y ago
      They have 0 people knowing security stuff, but think they are capable of writing a browser or email service.
• wtmt 2y ago
  I like such moves by companies. It seems fair and stands out compared to most others who’d just take money even if the service is unused. I’m not a Kagi subscriber though. The USD 150 and USD 216 a year prices for family duo and family are quite high for many geographies. Hopefully Kagi scales its customer base and is able to provide affordable plans.
  • sedatk 2y ago
    The Ultimate tier comes with an AI assistant that has access to Claude 3.5, GPT 4o, DeepSeek R1, and so forth. It basically comes down to almost free for me.
  • xigoi 2y ago
    https://kagifeedback.org/d/687-implement-regional-pricing/5 https://kagifeedback.org/d/687-implement-regional-pricing/5
• rpastuszak 2y ago
  Balsamiq does something similar with their subscriptions: https://untested.sonnet.io/notes/auto-hibernate-subscriptions/ https://untested.sonnet.io/notes/auto-hibernate-subscription... I think it’s a good balance between locking the user into your product and dealing with the cost of a constantly evolving service.
• wiether 2y ago
  Kind of related: Audible offers the same thing, by reporting credits if you don't use them in the current month. But there's a catch: you can only "Report" 6 credits, after that, your unused credits are lost. A warning from someone who forgot to disable their subscription for 18 months before realizing what they lost.
  • BossingAround 2y ago
    Oh wow, thanks for this, had no idea there's a credit limit. More annoying to me is that you have to use up your credits before cancelling your sub. If you have credits and you cancel your sub, you lose the credits.
    • wiether 2y ago
      Yeah, once I discovered that, I basically bought the first six audibooks in my wishlist with the credits I had left and cancelled the subscription
• gaazoh 2y ago
  Kagi has popped up a couple of times here recently and looks interesting, but there are a few things keeping me from actually trying it out * I don't trust the product's claims. Sure, privacy and user-centered results sound cool, but literally every company on the internet claims to cater to the user and value their privacy. Kagi can apparently afford to be more specific than usual, but how binding is that? I don't know, I'm not a lawyer and definitely not versed in US/California law, and given all the obviously exaggerated claims in this domain by all kind of actors, I can't give it much credit. I guess Kagi has to pay for the whole industry's decades of malpractices in this regard and that sucks, but I guess you could do better if you opened more about your * I don't trust the product's ability to stay around. Startups come and go, and I'm not subscribing to a paid service and switching workflow without a reasonably solid belief that I won't have to do it again in a near future. Your new pricing policy actually helps quit a bit in this regard, the other bit requires you to actually stand the test of time, so just keep on doing your best I guess. * Pricing has is shown excluding taxes. I'm not going to figure out the US tax system just to know how much I actually to shell out, and I'm not paying if I don't know how much. In Europe, VAT is around 20%, so it's a pretty significant figure, that would be 60 bucks a year for the Ultimate plan. I don't have the slightest idea if that's the order of magnitude expected in California. Have your lawyer or accountant figure it out, because I sure as hell am not. Allowing me to pay in euros would also be a quite large hurdle removed, for similar reasons: exchange rates fluctuate, banking operation costs fluctuate, and even if I can work it out more easily than US taxes, I'm not going to do because this should be your job, and whatever figure I work out will be obsolete by the next time I'm billed.
  • lostlogin 2y ago
    What search engine do you use?
    • gaazoh 2y ago
      Mostly DDG, but that's beside the point. Kagi seems to be marketed at the general public, for whom FAANG companies control the narrative. Even though they are obviously bad actors wrt privacy and UX dark patterns, they claim otherwise, that they value privacy and strive for the best user experience, and having a startup just claim that they do better, but offers no hard guarantee and require a payed sign-up to actually try it out with a pricing incomprehensible to most of the world shows that progress can be made. From afar, it looks like an interesting and good product, but I'm just not going to bite the bullet just yet.
• padolsey 2y ago
  It's rare to find a subscription service doing something kind-hearted, sensible and good-faith towards their customers. There are so many dark-pattern subscription practices out there. Thank you - you've got a new signup :)
• pmkary 2y ago
  Awesome Kagi, always the awesome Kagi.
• s_dev 2y ago
  I will sign back up for a paid service when funding Russian search engine Yandex is dropped. Many like to forget there is a war.
  • ranguna 2y ago
    Sources?
    • cuu508 2y ago
      https://kagifeedback.org/d/5445-reconsider-yandex-integration-due-to-the-geopolitical-status-quo/19 https://kagifeedback.org/d/5445-reconsider-yandex-integratio...
      • mbix77 2y ago
        Calling the invasion of Ukraine and the killing of hundreds of thousands people, targeting kindergartens, hospitals, normal civilians, destabilizing an entire continent --> "politics". "any search source we consider using goes through rigorous evaluation process that considers: result quality, API availability, economic viability, result latency, legal terms, privacy terms, and technical feasibility. the moment 'politics' is a part of factors being considered for search results, is the moment I stop working on a search engine."
        • Novosell 2y ago
          What else would you call it?
          • mbix77 2y ago
            War, invasion, terrorism,... take your pick.
            • Novosell 2y ago
              Are you under the belief that the US, in which bing, kagi and google primarily operate, has never done anything repugnant? Seems like ignoring that while cutting ties with Yandex because of Russia is a very political move.
• roenxi 2y ago
  An interesting problem with Kagi's basic model is that it ties up search history with an account in the financial system which adds failures not present when using something like Google or DuckDuckGo. But, since they accept Bitcoin, it is actually possible to wash the payment through a privacycoin and disassociate everything again. So there is a use case for crypto here that isn't obvious at first glance.
  • frereubu 2y ago
    > Kagi does not log and associate searches with an account. https://kagi.com/privacy https://kagi.com/privacy
    • roenxi 2y ago
      Google: Don't be Evil. Although I'm having some trouble finding a reference on their website to back that up. If you're going to start trusting search engine companies then maybe don't have them linked to your bank account. They can put what they like in a policy document but the problem is what happens when they decide to start doing things differently.
    • dizhn 2y ago
      Real privacy oriented solutions REMOVE their ABILITY to keep your data. This is the reason I will probably never use Kagi. I am not logging into a search engine. Period. (I know this is futile,but it's the principle of the thing. And I don't want this to be more commonplace than it already is.)
      • g_p 2y ago
        You might find Privacy Pass of interest then - https://help.kagi.com/kagi/privacy/privacy-pass.html https://help.kagi.com/kagi/privacy/privacy-pass.html It should be out in the next day or so.
        • tomcatfish 2y ago
          Holy crap this is going to let me move some privacy-focused folks over to join me in Kagitopia. Good job guys, you are always working on something cool.
• leokennis 2y ago
  I find Kagi to be very expensive. $10 a month for unlimited pricing. For around the same price, I can stream millions of songs, or stream thousands of high res videos, or subscribe to both premium e-mail and a premium task manager. What makes web search so expensive?
  • gkbrk 2y ago
    How do you stream millions of songs per month when there is 43,200 minutes in a month? If what you mean is you can pick from their library of millions of songs, Kagi sounds like an even better deal. For $10 a month you can search 400 billion web pages.
    • permo-w 2y ago
      for $0 a month you can search 400 billion web pages on any other search engine with an adblocker. if Spotify's business model was "we're going to charge you $120 a year to show you otherwise free and ad-free content more efficiently", they'd be face down in the pool, and rightly so. I would love to pay for kagi, but the $5 tier would give me search anxiety and $10 is cheeky as fuck. I appreciate that charging per search is a less stable business model than monthly tiers, but it would have made me a customer a long time ago.
  • carlosjobim 2y ago
    It's not that Kagi is expensive at all. It is that your streaming services and premium e-mail service are incredibly cheap. Can you name a few things which you can purchase in your local supermarket that brings you the same value for $10?
    • permo-w 2y ago
      the value of a paid online service is not "how useful is it in a vacuum?", it's "how much more effective is it than a free competitor?" kagi's value is "how much more effective is it than using google with an adblocker?" getting the value of the only search engine in the world at the supermarket for $10 would be a challenge. getting the value of "improved search results" is absolutely trivial. you could keep yourself alive for many days with $10. for $0 you can use google with an adblocker.
• neoromantique 2y ago
  A reminder that Kagi still uses Yandex under the hood so part of money is going to Russia. No thank you.
• hnlurker22 2y ago
  Only paying customers seem happy about Kagi. I have a strange feeling that a lot of paying customers think Kagi search is "better" just because their brain wants to justify them paying for search. Is there a psychological term for such a syndrome?
  • dagurp 2y ago
    I think you're talking about Choice-supportive bias. I don't know why you're throwing this out here without anything to support it.
  • gabrielgio 2y ago
    > Only paying customers seem happy about Kagi. It is paid service, what is the other option? People that don't use the service being happy with it? > because their brain wants to justify them paying for search It is search engine, not candy crush. No one wants to pay for searching, if they do it is because they find it useful. It is not their brain gets a shot of dopamine every time they do a search on it.
  • reddalo 2y ago
    I don't know if it has a name, but Scott Galloway's "The Four" describes this phenomenon as the reason why people love their Apple phones and computers so much; they're overpriced products, so they must love them in order not to feel like "idiots".
  • Unearned5161 2y ago
    You should also ask yourself if there's a psychological effect making you think that the people on the other side of the fence are delusional. Admittedly it's a tough current to pitch yourself against, that search should be a paid service. But that's mainly because the best advertising company in the world is leading the charge on the other side. The truth on who's more delusional appears murky to me...
  • paulfharrison 2y ago
    It could also be that the aspect of personality that causes people to think Kagi is better also causes those people to buy it.
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• mbix77 2y ago
  I will never support the Russian invaders. I will happily subscribe to your service if you drop Yandex. Until then, hell no.
  • efilife 2y ago
    Dod Yandex invade someone?
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• cianmm 2y ago
  Is Kagi getting better for places outside the USA? Last time I tried to use them (in Ireland) all of the results were US focused, while Google would realise that I'm in Ireland and prioritise Irish businesses/sources and so on. I needed to include the word "Ireland" in any search phrase like "curtain cleaners Dublin" or otherwise I'd get curtain cleaning companies in a Dublin somewhere else, with no Irish results until the 2nd page. Also, there was significant latency in searching compared to Google.
  • zorked 2y ago
    You have to switch the country yourself. It does not get more local than country. Local searches are a weakness in Kagi, yes.
  • rkangel 2y ago
    I use it in England and I've had no problem with this at all. Out of curiosity I just tried the same search, and all the results I get are for .ie domains, so it looks to be working correctly.
  • mjlee 2y ago
    Yes, and there's a dropdown so you can easily pick a country other than the one you're in.
• eth0up 2y ago
  Not anti Kagi, but.. Imagine Tom Cruise in a variation of Minority Report. As he enters the shopping mall, the onslaught of cognitive infiltration envelopes him. He's not there for recreation, nor to evade or investigate anything. He knows why he's there. Or, he did know, but now finds himself trying to remember as he fends off sleazy desires for strange things. He knows he doesn't need more ugg boots, the unworn pile in his closet and fact that he's never worn boots of any kind a testament to this. He knows a new car won't reignite the wonder of his youth or make the foggy shores of a moribund sea glisten with golden light. He couldn't afford it anyway. Despite a lobotomizing decade of overtime and side hustles, the red queen always stays ahead. It's those damn conversations with the pariah professor. If I didn't waste my time with her, my social credit score would expand and I could afford the newest virtual vacation to the green place they say existed before Amazon bought the planet. That hag is oppressing me, damn her! Tom was different though. Somewhere in the vestiges of his mind he knew this was bullshit. She was no hag; she was beautiful and fascinating and wise. It was her and only her that made him think again, to contemplate meaning, to ask forbidden questions, to feel. "It's just the mall, stupid" he remembered. The enormous image of an inflamed scrotum foisted itself onto his entire being, gracefully rotating to show all angles. That's right... He was just slipping into the drugstore with the sole purpose of buying antifungal cream for the persistent case of ringworm he contracted from that robotic concubine store. He was becoming disoriented and dizzy. Boundaries were beginning to dissolve and he knew it was time. An androgynous figure in full lotus hovered before him, emitting a calming hum. In its halo could be faintly seen a scrolling index of the stock market. "Do you want sanctity of mind? Is it time for inner reflection? Do you need focus?". "Buy Now Pay Later!" it hissed. In a whirling, scintillating carousel of nausea and mumbling faces he lifted his wrist, touching it to the NFC receiver on the hovering being's pulsating third eye. And suddenly, as if waking from a nightmare, he was human again, with will and self definition. Compelled to move quickly, he knew there was only 20 minutes, and his balls were screaming.
• zuzulo 2y ago
  I use Kagi since 6 months, and it's the best experience i've ever had with a search engine.
• pointlessone 2y ago
  Let me be sceptical for a second. This is such a non-feature. A single search a month consitutes usage. You literally have to forget about Kagi for more than a month to have any advantage here. My guess it this happens less than in 0.1% of paying accounts. Wake me up when they announce unused searches rollover.
• tossandthrow 2y ago
  I love this - the world needs more of it. Last time I checked in on this, Kagi was bootstrapped. The single biggest motivation for me to make a bootstrapped business, is to make an ethicals busines. This includes ethical pricing, ethical communication, and ethical UX.
  • promiseofbeans 2y ago
    They took a little investor money, then spent a big chunk of it on t-shirts lol: https://blog.kagi.com/celebrating-20k https://blog.kagi.com/celebrating-20k
• percevalve 2y ago
  I haven’t seen this mentioned in the conversation yet, so I’ll bring it up here. A research paper from a few years ago introduced the concept of “customer inertia.” It found that users tend to overestimate their difficulty in unsubscribing from a service. In other words, when a subscription includes auto-renewal (or a similar feature), a significant portion of potential users will choose not to subscribe because they fear they won’t be able to cancel if they stop using the service. According to the study, this affected about 30% of users. So, could offering something like fair pricing reduce this barrier and increase new subscriptions by 30%? https://bfi.uchicago.edu/insight/finding/sophisticated-consumers-with-inertia-long-term-implications-from-a-large-scale-field-experiment/ https://bfi.uchicago.edu/insight/finding/sophisticated-consu...
  • benrutter 2y ago
    That's really interesting as a concept. As one random person on the internet (not a sample) I definitely avoid services that look like they'll be a pain to unsubscribe from, and will be much more likely to try out a free trial of something if it looks like an easy one to cancel. Super interesting that some people are trying to factor in that things into wider-scale enomics.
    • percevalve 2y ago
      Same here, hence why I remembered it (even if it is from 2022), it did resonate so much with my own experience.
  • klabb3 2y ago
    Yeah such are race to the bottoms. Because some assholes did turn cancelation into a Kafkaesque nightmare, now people don't want to subscribe in the first place. Who could have seen that coming? Genius MBA logic. And now honest businesses are in the shitter for it.
  • wongarsu 2y ago
    Seeing how much revenue subscription services make from inactive customers (and how much I have paid over my lifetime to services I no longer used) people don't overestimate this at all. If anything, users still underestimate it. The disconnect between the researchers and people's actual estimations is that "cancelling a service" is much harder than the couple button clicks it usually takes. You have a structural problem: If you don't use a service, you don't spend a lot of time thinking about it. It's easy to cancel something if you make a conscious decision to stop using something. But if it just gradually falls out of use, your only reminder that you should cancel it are your bank statements or the occasional payment reminder email (that some services avoid sending for exactly this reason).
• rsynnott 2y ago
  > Introducing Fair Pricing This is _really_ weird marketing, in that it implies that previously the pricing was _unfair_. That's not an idea you generally want to put in your customers' heads.
  • p3rls 2y ago
    What my mind went to, how could someone forget to use a search engine, especially one that is supposedly so much better than Google for a whole month?
  • AiAi 2y ago
    I guess... Still a positive thing that they are trying to make their product/service more "fair", and are progressing in a good direction?
    • rsynnott 2y ago
      Yeah, I mean it's a positive move, I suppose (though, if this is a _common_ thing, then they have other problems, because clearly the people involved aren't using it as a search engine), but it's a strange way to market it.
• whereismyacc 2y ago
  I've never heard about Kagi but a paid search engine just sounds great? I assume the userbase will always be small enough that websites won't bother doing SEO for it. Maybe there's some low hanging fruit there in getting less spammy results?
• stuartjohnson12 2y ago
  Took this opportunity to become a paying customer. Thank you Kagi. I pray that your sadly inevitable enshittification can be warded off.
• AiAi 2y ago
  It would be great if they consider power purchasing parity to make the service more accessible for developing countries.
  • tossandthrow 2y ago
    My impression is that pricing of kagi is already close to cost price (plus salaries). I think we are entering an era, where these things will just not be available to people in developing countries, as they cost more than they can pay. Especially taking Ai into consideration. However, we could start paying fair prices for produce like clothes.
• nashashmi 2y ago
  Will Kagi survive in a world where realtime pressures to conform to censorship and link promotion can destroy search experiences? I mean this is great. But how are they resisting the global trend to be an advertising influenced portal? How are they not adapting?
  • z64 2y ago
    I would say there are three major factors: 1. We have a diverse set of upstream sources. It would require all of them to be "compromised" for our results to completely tank. 2. We have a "crawler-lite" that solely collects info on page quality - number of ads/trackers detected, page speed, etc. - and we take that into account when ranking the results, generally nudging them down the page if "cleaner" ones can be found. 3. Our sole source of income is our users, and we actively respond to impacts in search quality that our users submit to us on our feedback form. If they are not happy with the results quality, then we are out of business. Put simply: Our technology and business model is completely aligned to resist "enshittification". We have no reason to bias results or "sell out" to anyone. With the momentum we've gathered, we are also taking first steps to building our own full scale index[1], both as a valuable contribution to the ecosystem of search and a contingency to reduce our reliance on 3rd parties. [1]: Help us build it! https://help.kagi.com/kagi/company/hiring-kagi.html https://help.kagi.com/kagi/company/hiring-kagi.html
• eitland 2y ago
  Tangentially related: Whenever I mention Kagi is actually better, someone will claim the opposite. So yesterday someone here said something along the lines of: "With apologies to Bill Buxton every user interface is best at something and worst at something else". So I started looking on Kagi and only found a few results, even if I took parts of it, but I narrowed it down to that the original must have been about "every input". Guessing that Kagi had excluded a few results so I tried in Google (Googles usual problem is adding things I never asked for and I wondered if Kagi had become overzealous or something). So here are the results from Google: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Every+input+is+best+at+something+%22 https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Every+input+is+best+at+so... For me Google says: > No results found for "Every input is best at something ". > Results for Every input is best at something (without quotes): Meanwhile Kagi gives me a few relevant results: https://kagi.com/search?q=%22Every+input+is+best+at+something+%22&r=no&sh=AWDRHMZt3Z7EVHwLjMafWw https://kagi.com/search?q=%22Every+input+is+best+at+somethin... So now, while Kagi has always been a lot better at not including unwanted results, it now seems it also has a larger effective index than Google.
  • KomoD 2y ago
    I get 2 results from that Kagi link and they're both what I'd consider to be spam.
    • eitland 2y ago
      But they are there, and they are real, and they don't drown out any better results.
      • deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      • KomoD 2y ago
        I'd rather have no results than spam results.
        • eitland 2y ago
• forty 2y ago
  Paying for good search sounds interesting to me. It's there such thing but without AI stuff?
  • louthy 2y ago
    You can disable Kagi’s AI answer feature in the settings. But, personally, I find it extremely effective. If I want an AI answer I put a ‘?’ at the end of my query, if I don’t use a ‘?’ then I get a regular search engine set of results. Really simple UX. The AI answers all have references too.
• i5heu 2y ago
  Looks like I am a kagi customer now. What a bold and genius move.
• pseudocomposer 2y ago
  This is a nice way to convince people to dip into the Kagi ecosystem. I use Kagi full-time, by default in all my browsers and love it! So this won’t save me a dime (which is still totally cool). It would be nice if they implemented it (or some metered pricing) for the extra-cost AI/LLM features, though (since I pay for them but rarely, if ever, use them). I also really like this model for subscription services in general. It would be nice to, say, not be billed by Netflix (though really, I’m looking at Paramount+ or Peacock) for months when you don’t use the service. It’s the kind of thing that wouldn’t be hard for companies to implement, and could potentially be regulated into existence everywhere by bodies like the EU or the CA state government.
  • nonethewiser 2y ago
    Its good and they deserve credit for it. Let me be clear on that. Now, wouldnt it be even better to implement usage based pricing with a maximum that's equal to the current subscription? I dont know the Kagi details. Say you pay 10/month and each search is $0.02. You pay max(search_count * 0.02, 10). I guess the logic is much simpler for their current system. It's 10/month, period. Then if you didnt search anything you get a refund. Instead of tracking and calculating usage. However, usage pricing should be more enticing for casual users. With the statement refund for 0 use, there is now an incentive for infrequent users to NOT to use the product.
    • pseudocomposer 2y ago
      I think metered pricing makes sense for a service that's $10/mo (which the base Kagi w/ AI features is). However, Kagi search unlimited is $5/mo. And, especially because of the whole "payment providers taking their cut" thing, I'd argue for services that are $5/mo or under, metered pricing doesn't really make sense. Finally, I'd argue that this approach has other advantages over metering, even for higher-cost services: * It's easier for devs to implement. Just one search needs to be recorded a month for an audit trail, rather than all search history. * Keeping a search history for users is not needed at all, really (or, again, at most, one search per month). It's much better for user privacy. * Most countries/states would have much more luck passing legislation forcing companies to implement this than metering, as well as enforcing it.
• __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
  Wow, awesome. If everybody did this I could stop charging my credit card number every 6 months.
• daft_pink 2y ago
  It’s nice that they are in a position that they can do this. I use Kagi every day.
• neves 2y ago
  Does it mean that if someone dies they won't need to cancel the service?
• ryukafalz 2y ago
  This actually makes me a lot more likely to sign up for Kagi! I've been hearing good things about it so I've been interested, but these days I'm very subscription-averse because there's just so dang many of them. But only paying for it if I actually use it makes signing up lower risk. (I know myself well enough to know that there's a good chance I forget to cancel otherwise.)
• edude03 2y ago
  I don't understand people who would use kagi (or any search engine) sparringly. If you're already willing to shell out money for a replacement, why wouldn't you use it all the time?
• a12k 2y ago
  I am hyper aggressive about cutting monthly services. If I don’t feel I am getting value, or can get the value from somewhere else with a little more work, I cut it. For example I would never, ever pay for YouTube Premium. This has led to a pretty disciplined set of monthly services and low cost. Kagi though is one of the most useful services I have and goes way above and beyond this bar, so keep it around. To ape someone else’s lament: I can’t take advantage of this because I use it daily.
  • ajyey 2y ago
    I use YouTube every day of my life and gladly pay premium. It costs money to host and serve the insane amount of video YouTube provides. To each his own
    • dewey 2y ago
      Same, it’s my most used streaming service and it also feels good to support creators a little bit while also not having ads on my TV / app where ad blocking is harder.
• zOneLetter 2y ago
  Well, this tipped the scale, and I just subscribed. Honestly, so refreshing to have a normal search engine after 2 years of nonstop AI crap thrown at my face.
  • dax_ 2y ago
    Uhm.. Kagi has plenty of AI features. :) To be fair, you can turn them off if you wish.
• maelito 2y ago
  Still no revision of the Yandex partenership. Spending money on Kagi is spending some on Yandex, owned by the Russian terrorist state.
• linsomniac 2y ago
  I would have purchased several services over the years if they had a pricing like this, which ultimately I did not (because they did not). In particular there was some video editing software for $20/mo, but I knew I'd probably go months between using it. I'd have gladly paid $20/mo when using it, but it would stick in my craw the months I didn't use it.
  • tuhriel 2y ago
    When the whole SaaS stuff started to pop up as buzzword I actually believed that it would work that way. You don't pay some heavy license fees for a local installation anymore, but get a login where you get billed a specific amount if you use it that day/week/month etc. I was pretty sad when I saw how it got implemented...
    • linsomniac 2y ago
      You're right, but the software I mention above was some locally-installed software with a SaaS-like pricing.
• tstocker 2y ago
  What happens when you cancel subscription with a lot of unused credit ?
  • z64 2y ago
    It just uses Stripe credit under the hood. So as long as you still have an account registered with us (active subscription or not), you can use that credit to resubscribe any time - or use it on other things, like API credits, or gift codes.
• whalesalad 2y ago
  this is cool but .. is it really worth a big announcement? who is paying for kagi and not using it for an entire month?
• wenbin 2y ago
  It’s great to see more companies adopting fair pricing models. The first time I encountered this was with Slack—they only charge for active users. We follow a similar approach with our products : 1) PodcastAPI.com - If no API requests are made within a month, the user pays $0. 2) website Premium Membership- rather than forcing users to pay a monthly fee, we allow them to buy a 2-day pass with one time payment (default option) - listennotes.com/premium Caveat: customers will demand more. soon, they’ll request for hourly fair pricing - don’t charge me for those hours that i don’t use your service!
• MrOxiMoron 2y ago
  Can I get this on my Netflix, Disney+, whatever too pls?
• m_kos 2y ago
  A little Kagi nitpick (off-topic): I contributed a few translations when Kagi was in beta. Then, Kagi introduced a subscription which was too pricey for my budget, so I stopped using it. Nevertheless, Kagi has kept emailing me to contribute even more free translations. Kagi team, folks say you have a great product, but if you don't pay attention to small issues like this one, you are bound to lose some of your goodwill.
  • freediver 2y ago
    We are definetely not emailing you, it could be the service we use to crowdsource translations (localazy). I suggest removing the account from there or check their settings? (as we do not have control over these emails)
    • m_kos 2y ago
      This is a very disappointing reply. Anyway, yes, they come from a service you are using with the subject line "[Kagi Search] There Are Some Untranslated Phrases." I know how to unsubscribe or reroute emails to my spam folder.
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• siliconc0w 2y ago
  Every service provider should be obligated to do this. I'd bet there are tons of phone or Internet plans that have 0 usage
• chuckadams 2y ago
  Just raising my hand as another who would sign up, but for that whole Yandex thing.
• Imnimo 2y ago
  Is this happening a lot? I definitely don't have any months where I make zero web searches. I'm not even sure I have individual days where I make zero web searches. Are a lot of Kagi customers going on month-long trips into the rainforest or something?
• miki123211 2y ago
  Now I just wish there was a way to purchase Kagi credits. I'd happily pay a one-time fee for a 1000-search package that would be added to my 100 free searches.
• jjice 2y ago
  The thing I appreciate most about Kagi is their "Quick Answer" option. Suffixing a question mark on a query to give me a high quality, cited RAG (?) AI summary has been such a nice option for quick answers.
• paradox460 2y ago
  They say billing cycle, but what if I'm on the annual plan? Is my cycle a year? Or does my renewal date get pushed back a month if I don't use it? I use kagi hundreds of times a day, so it's not something likely to happen soon, but I'm still curious
• sizzle 2y ago
  Someone please convince me to use Kagi. What makes it superior to Google for you?
• bryanmgreen 2y ago
  A good chunk of inflation is just price gouging, in today's modern world. There are more tools to understand data and squeeze every penny from customers. It's admirable when a company isn't trying to bleed customers dry.
• mystified5016 2y ago
  Is there any concern that this results in a negative feedback loop of "oh, I better not use Kagi for this one random thing, it'll cost a whole month's subscription"? Maybe a threshold of a dozen searches or so before the subscription fee kicks in.
• stevage 2y ago
  It seems "fair" but, if they even make a single search in that month, you charge them the full monthly fee. Real "fair" pricing just charges per request, and has the per-request pricing progressively go down as they reach various thresholds. Preferably with a free tier.
• larrybolt 2y ago
  This feels like an example of a company trying to do the "right thing" and deciding there must be a way to monetize that, regarding what everyone (even the web) is telling them. Imagine the balance of revenue from non-returning users (think fitness) vs very heavy users, and finding a way to keep both parties happy. And the implications it has (those "paused" users still count towards "onboarded" users). Major props Kagi team, or who-ever pushed this idea!
• minaleeas 2y ago
  [dead]
• sma3in 2y ago
  Good pricing approach that I think lots of companies should start adopting. But I just can't wrap my head around paying for my online searches. self hosting a free service like SearXNG will forever my go to option for privacy and security