this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2023
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Kagi is a paid alternative to ad-supported search engines like Google and DuckDuckGo. It has recently revised its pricing model, reducing the cost for a plan with unmetered searches from $25 per month to $10.

Kagi boasts the following (and more) features:

  • Blocking or boosting specific domains in your search results
  • "Lenses", which are individual setting profiles (e.g. region locks, domain whitelists) that can be applied to search queries
  • All of the Bangs that DuckDuckGo has (e.g. type "!yt" in front of your query to immediately search on youtube.com)
  • Universal Summarizer, which works with any website, PDF document, YouTube video and more

This blog post goes into full details about Kagi's capabilities.

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[–] mojo@lemm.ee 13 points 1 year ago (16 children)

Why the hell would you pay for search when the free competitors are just better

Also it's automatically not private when it requires a login. They know exactly what user is searching what, and basically breaks search in incognito mode. Also people love more accounts to manage.

"If it's free then you're the product" isn't even true when search engines are ad supported, so stick with the much better free alternatives.

If you really want to pay while not having to login, self-host a searx instance and you'll be logging your own data. You'll have complete control, it's significantly cheaper, and it's far more private without having to even login.

[–] snaggen@programming.dev 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

No ads disguised as search results. Actually, no ads at all. Great search results. Lenses.

Also, there is a solution for incognito mode. And ad supported, in practice means tracked by advertisers, and hence you are the product.

[–] mojo@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

DDG proves literally all of that false. Also just use AdBlock with it. Elaborate on it working in private browsing without needing to login.

[–] lloram239@feddit.de 9 points 1 year ago

DDG is just a wrapper around Bing and substantially worse than Google, smaller index and less up to date. Not needing a login doesn't really guarantee you anything either, as they still can identify you by IP or device finger print if they want to. You basically have to trust their marketing that they don't do that.

What makes Kagi interesting is that it's actually right up there with Google in terms of results, while surpassing it in terms of features. Would I pay $10/month for Kagi? Nope. It's good, but not magic. It's still just regular Internet search and you'll find most of what it finds with other search engines as well, especially when you hop between multiple. But if you want a better search engine and have the money, Kagi does feel like an upgrade, which the other alternatives just don't.

[–] syl@programming.dev 3 points 1 year ago

DDG has ads in the search result. Laginis honestly a great service. You can easily filter results and it removes BS SEO spam..

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