this post was submitted on 21 Jan 2024
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I tried Kagi last fall because everyone was raving about it.
Now I’m paying $5/month for search and couldn’t be happier 😅
What is Kati and is it actually good?
Edit:
Is it kagi?
https://kagi.com/
Seems like something I'd be into but I'm also not a fan of my search results being logged against me.
First time I've heard of them. I like the concept but 5$ a month for only 300 search makes me think that you'd still need another search engine on the side, or pay for the more expensive plan.
The 300 searches goes pretty far because you usually get the correct result the first time.
Also you can just use hashbangs to search directly from a site like imdb, letterboxd, goodreads etc so those don't count against the 300 either.
What do you mean? That you have an account so your searches are "linked" to you?
Exactly
Well luckily for you, they don't do that. It doesn't maintain a search history at all which has its pros and cons. The only reason you have to login to use it is to check your payment level to determine your feature access. It is nice that login also allows you to use the same settings for multiple devices. One of those settings I really like is hiding results from certain websites (e.g. pinterest).
Sounds ideal, but there's no way we can ever truly know, is there?
You can never truly know about almost any online service, you kinda just have to take their word for it, do some research, and pick the option that best matches both the performance and philosophy you're looking for.
Yup, same reason I don't do VPN services. This is actually a perfect example of my concerns:
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-58476983
If privacy is your goal, Mullvad is the answer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mullvad
They have been targeted by law enforcement and haven't given anything because they don't have anything to give.
They don't even have user accounts, you just have an account number and you can buy more credits even by mailing cash to them if you're really gung-ho about being private. I usually just use my excess Bitcoin to top up when I need to use it (they give a 10% discount for blockchain purchases)
But if you need to get past geolocking or have huge download speeds for pirating, then they're not what you're looking for. I use Mullvad on my mobile router so every time I log in at a hotel or similar, all of my devices are behind VPN automatically
Further reading for those who don't have a tinfoil hat yet
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavabit
Here's the summary for the wikipedia article you mentioned in your comment:
Lavabit is an open-source encrypted webmail service, founded in 2004. The service suspended its operations on August 8, 2013 after the U. S. Federal Government ordered it to turn over its Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) private keys, in order to allow the government to spy on Edward Snowden's email. Lavabit's owner and operator, Ladar Levison, announced on January 20, 2017 that Lavabit would start operating again, using the new Dark Internet Mail Environment (DIME), which is an end-to-end email encryption platform designed to be more surveillance-resistant.
^to^ ^opt^ ^out^^,^ ^pm^ ^me^ ^'optout'.^ ^article^ ^|^ ^about^
I think they mean the fact they count each search you do, and depending on your pricing plan, can run out of searches in a month..
I'm not worried about Kagi's privacy, the only thing you need to give them is an email address (which is kind of a no-brainer if they need to contact you).
You can pay with Bitcoin if you want more privacy.
And they don't even allow you to store your own search history, because they don't want to save it anywhere.
Do you find the limited number of searches enough? I’d do it if it were unlimited for $5, but not going to pay $10 for a search engine.
I do 20-30 searches a day at work, so I definitely need to upgrade (annually it's around 100$ so not bad at all).
Their Universal Summarizer is awesome too
The summariser works on Youtube videos too btw...
You can just do
!sumand get a summary of what they're saying in seconds. Changed my life.I thought the bang is only for the highest tier
Works fine for me on the starter tier, it used to behind the early access tier (Ultimate?)
Oh yeah, nice!
It's either money or your data. I prefer to pay with money. If enough people do, the price might lower (hopeium) or the competition might increase for the same service, creating better or cheaper services in the same space.
Exactly. If you're not paying, you're most likely the product being sold.
People always keep forgetting that Google (or Alphabet) is an ad company, that does tech stuff with its 20% time. Everything they do is geared towards delivering more ads more efficiently.
This is why I've paid for email for years to Fastmail referral link
Similarly I started paying Kagi for searches, mostly because their results are better than DDG, which I used for years.
And, like the people I know from infosec, my phone is from Apple. They're the only company who makes you pay through the nose for the hardware and because of that specifically do everything they can not to know anything about you. (One of the reasons why Siri sucks so bad btw)
I'm at 243 searches now and it resets in 8 days. Seems to be enough for me.
I do use bangs quite a bit, so if I need to find a movie I go
!imdb the matrixand if I'm looking for a book I can go!gr rando splicerwhich saves on search credits.Why do you call "!" a hashbang?
"#" is a hash
"!" is a bang
"#!" is a hashbang
Not enough coffee, edited =)
Where do you see that number? I'm trying to find mine
settings -> billing
I have made 1,617 searches since October
Depends. I use search engines a lot as a programmer. I have over 600 so far. But the results have been good. I'm willing to pay for that.
I thought I'd burn through them but I haven't had an issue. I use DDG for low hanging fruit but I'm going to stop bothering.
You may have changed my life with kagi. It is amazing so far at giving the results I want, and categorizing stuff like discussions so you don't have to add "Reddit" at the end of every search to get decent results.
And you can easily block or boost sites in the search results: I've got all pinterest domains blocked, along with a bunch of "news" outlets that don't actually produce anything good in the world.
Similarly I have stuff like reddit, hackernews etc boosted in the results if they match.
I did the free trial for a while and only used Kagi for a while, still going strong with the $5 300 searches per month tier. I don't really need to search that much because the results are usually correct the first time :)
Yep. I'm 100% sold on it. Thank you very much kind human. It's crazy how used to Google I had become. Not thinking about features which would be helpful like simply raising/lowering a sites visibility. It even has done well for me when it comes to local searches! Truly a game changer.