Is Kagi worth it? I mostly use DDG but every search engine I’ve tried is terrible now and rapidly getting worse by the day.
this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2025
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Try the free trial.
They give you enough searches for free that you should be able to figure out if there is value for you and the type of searches you do.
I find it a much better experience than Google which was what I was using before.
Absolutely. I've been using it for a month and it feels like Google, but before they enshittified. DDG was my previous goto search engine, but it's gotten really bad as well. Especially the aggressive keyword replacements drove me almost insane.
I think so. I’ve been using it for over a year, as another poster said Kagi feels like Google did 15 years ago, before it destroyed itself.
Every time I use a search on another machine, my first reaction is “oh my god what is all of this shit everywhere? ads, spam, AI slop, shopping garbage, etc”, then I quickly realize it’s not my computer and that’s just what Google looks like now.
Yes
I enjoy it. They have a 100-search free trial so you can test it out for yourself. Between them down ranking sites full of trackers and allowing you to put your own preferential ratings on sites, I find myself getting the results I'm after so much quicker.
Is Kagi worth it?
I've heard differing accounts. Some people definitely swear by it. But if you're just using search as a portal to Wikipedia or Generic News Of the Day, it still points you to the same catalog of high profile sites as everyone else.
$5-10/mo isn't a wallet buster. But is it really any better than searching Google with udm=14 turned on? YMMV.
Nobody has satisfactorily explained to me how much Kagi is cribbing from the other search engines and how much is their own internal web crawling and sorting heuristics.
Could improve it by calculateing % on how much some site has published ai slop vs has not. This way it would promote those who avoid that shit and push offenders to the bottom or even let users just outright filter them.
It's sucks not knowing anybody IRL interested in Kagi, I would love to try the 2-person account.
Wait, 2-person
Edit: oh, my dad and I both subscribe. I might even do the family plan and bring my wife into it.
I don't have a problem paying for a good service. I do have a problem having all my searches, video or article views linked to an account (with my payment data i.e. real name no less).
Then I have great news for you! Kagi accept bitcoin, does not validate email addresses (so you can register as fhhdsbgwg@hrjesbgwgw.com if that appeals to you), and they implemented privacy pass tokens that fully anonymize your searches. They also allows searching through tor!
You still need to log in and link all your searches to each other. Those are trivial to de-anonymize you from.
https://help.kagi.com/kagi/privacy/privacy-pass.html
When you enable Privacy Pass, instead of logging in with your Kagi account for each search, you use special cryptographic tokens. These tokens prove you have the right to use Kagi's services without revealing who you are. This means your searches can't be linked back to your account or to each other, providing an additional layer of privacy.
Obviously you lose some of the customization, but otherwise still a great service.
These tokens prove you have the right to use Kagi’s services without revealing who you are.
Ok that sounds like an actual technical solution that - to be honest - I wasn't expecting here. Sadly, there's way too many processes involved for me to consider this for myself. Also, I am not transferring a single penny to the divided states of southern northern america until I run out of options - but that's just me.
Just use their third party crypto payment service. It doesnt transmit any of this. Perhaps look this kind of thing up prior to insinuating these things are required for Kagi.
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They have a no-log, no-profile policy, which is why I use them.
I wish there was a way to buy a Kagi subscription without AI assistant bundled in. I never plan to use it and it adds no value to me. I'd rather save the money and get a cheaper subscription.
It makes sense it costs them something, but if it helps at all I've been paying for kagi since before the ai assistant stuff was included, it was the same price.
Same. I have been using Kagi since before they added AI features. I didn’t use them then and I don’t use them now. The price is the same.
By far the best search engine in my book. They even have a fediverse search mode.
I never knew about this browser before today. Trying it out on iOS. It’s just an extension, but it’s good so far!
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