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Update to Kagi Search Pricing

blog.kagi.com

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Re: Update to Kagi Search Pricing

#211

Post by michaelsalim »

shepherdjerred wrote: post #48

I cancelled by Kagi subscription because of this. I don't want to have to pause before I search and think "do I need to search for this? should I look through my bookmarks, notes, etc? is this worth one of the 7 searches my $5 plan will cover for the day?". I've been a frequent user of Kagi for the past ~9 months. Last month I made 1600 searches. I've even 'tipped the difference' (~$70) in the past to support Kagi. I…

Same sentiment here. The last thing I want to do is adding friction to my research and having to consider whether I should use Google instead for some queries.

So under the new plan, I'd have to base my decision on the ultimate plan, $25. That's quite a steep change from $10...

I'll probably get the annual plan to lock it for a year and evaluate again next year.

The most annoying part is that it seems that the price is increasing partly due to their investment to AI and the browser. They are cool and all but I only agreed to pay for search :/

Re: Update to Kagi Search Pricing

#212

Post by MacsHeadroom »

dave_walko wrote: post #207

I am sorry, I said this when they first went pay. Vlad does not seem like a nice guy. My emails that I have exchanged with him have been very short and to the point of "he is better and knows better". I do not pay for their service due to this as well as I do not see the value. I didn't see the value with their old model, and see the value even less now. I give them another year or 2 and they will be a relic of the p…

>I didn't see the value with their old model, and see the value even less now.

I do see the value and would be happy to pay for the $25/month unlimited plan.

Search and AI are the largest boons to my productivity by a long shot. $25/month is nothing when the alternatives (Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo) all suck. If it was $25/day I would start to question the pricing.

Re: Update to Kagi Search Pricing

#213

Post by [deleted] »

Aeolun wrote: post #105
threatofrain wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference in privacy I see between Kagi and Google is that Kagi requires me to have a signed-in account to search, and Kagi accurately associates more valuable information with a signed-in account.

I don’t think you can have both ad-free (e.g. paid) search and anonymous search at the same time. You have to pick one. And you can’t really fault Kagi for providing the one when the other is already “adequately” covered by Google.

[deleted]

Re: Update to Kagi Search Pricing

#214

Post by dave_walko »

MacsHeadroom wrote: post #212
dave_walko wrote: post #207

I am sorry, I said this when they first went pay. Vlad does not seem like a nice guy. My emails that I have exchanged with him have been very short and to the point of "he is better and knows better". I do not pay for their service due to this as well as I do not see the value. I didn't see the value with their old model, and see the value even less now. I give them another year or 2 and they will be a relic of the p…

>I didn't see the value with their old model, and see the value even less now. I do see the value and would be happy to pay for the $25/month unlimited plan. Search and AI are the largest boons to my productivity by a long shot. $25/month is nothing when the alternatives (Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo) all suck. If it was $25/day I would start to question the pricing.

While I value your thoughts, judging by the other comments on here, you are in the minority. I REALLY did/do want to like them and their product. Being on a Mac, I have tested both their standard and beta browser. It is decent. However, after seeing Kagi go from free to paid and now being even more, I see the same happening with their browser down the road. I just do not want to invest my time into an experiment only to be treated the way they have to their users. It is just shady.

Re: Update to Kagi Search Pricing

#215

Post by poxrud »

D13Fd wrote: post #137
SirensOfTitan wrote: post #126

The pricing changes are unfortunate, yes, since they encourage me to think about querying, which ought to not be the case. The more worrying update here is that Kagi is not grandfathering in legacy plans beyond the next billing cycle, which is a departure from a promise: > If such change to Individual plans is to occur, we plan to grandfather-in all early adopters (meaning all current and future paid customers, up un…

Agreed. I also don’t like how they are jumping on the AI bandwagon and splitting their efforts between search, a pointless new browser, and AI. It’s like Google all over again. I’m happy to give them $10 or $25 per month for excellent search and privacy. But I’m really not interested in funding their other junk.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion but I thought that their summarizer tool was amazing. I was using it multiple times a day to get summaries of long articles and pdfs.

Re: Update to Kagi Search Pricing

#216

Post by jlund-molfese »

Atlas22 wrote: post #182
rainbowjelly wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No but they do incorporate Google and Bing results in their search. They should probably work towards their own index to lower their costs.

Yeah, ultimately this is what turned me off. Used the beta and loved it for as long as it lasted. When it ended it was hard to migrate elsewhere but I couldn't convince myself it was a good idea to continue investing in a service that was entirely at the mercy of its direct competitors and shows no signs its working to reduce that risk and cost. Unless they mitigate those risks they will only exist for as long as goo…

They have their own index[1]. It's not easy, when a bunch of sites block anyone who isn't Google or Bing. But this is the same strategy Brave seems to be pursuing, where they try to rely more and more on their own indices.

[1] http://teclis.com

Re: Update to Kagi Search Pricing

#217

Post by hojinkoh »

SirensOfTitan wrote: post #126

The pricing changes are unfortunate, yes, since they encourage me to think about querying, which ought to not be the case. The more worrying update here is that Kagi is not grandfathering in legacy plans beyond the next billing cycle, which is a departure from a promise: > If such change to Individual plans is to occur, we plan to grandfather-in all early adopters (meaning all current and future paid customers, up un…

> I paid for Kagi the first moment I was allowed to, and this news soured me on Kagi overnight. Trust is hard to earn back.

Me too. I still have many months of my early-adopter $10 unlimited annual subscription left. I'm going to start drafting my migration plan several months later. I no longer trust them, nor do I want to do business with them anymore.

There's the Bing API price thing yeah. But it's also clear that they're trying to fund their AI experiments. I'm a paid user of OpenAI's GPT-3 API and ChatGPT plus. I routinely ask the GPT family to imagine things for me. But I don't want my search engine to imagine things, even if they're based on search results.

I speculate Kagi knew their target audience won't be happy about paying them for AI things, so they just came up with the whole average monthly search things as a cover...

Re: Update to Kagi Search Pricing

#218

Post by ssd532 »

phs wrote: post #204
ac29 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the FAQ they they mention the average Kagi user does 700 searches a month. Perhaps uncoincidentally, the $10/month plan includes exactly that many searches.

It does appear that my current usage (as confirmed on their linked dashboard) will be covered by $10/mo plan I'm already effectively on. Without even considering the early adopter benefit, this pricing update for me is a nothing-burger.

I am exactly in the same boat. I had raised my concerns regarding pricing twice and both the times they had said that they will introduce new pricing model. I was really hoping that they will reduce my $10/mo subscription pricing.

Re: Update to Kagi Search Pricing

#219

Post by nifoc »

jsnell wrote: post #111
islon wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm paying ~10 bucks for spotify to stream music non stop. I'm also paying netflix some ~16 bucks for 4K movies/series. There's no way a text search is more expensive than a 4k, 5.1 channels movie. I'm using Kagi since they were in beta, but as soon as my subscription expires, I'm done...

Arbitrary and quite possibly unique searches over substantially all knowledge ever produced by humanity seem a lot harder than sending an unchanging large file over a network.

And since Bing rasing prices affects their price so much, I'd argue that Kagi isn't investing enough into their own crawler/index, so that they can ultimately bring down the price of search.

Instead they're integrating yet another third-party (OpenAI), thereby rasing the price even more and tying their price to third-party API pricing even more.

Re: Update to Kagi Search Pricing

#220

Post by monort »

Aeolun wrote: post #105
threatofrain wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference in privacy I see between Kagi and Google is that Kagi requires me to have a signed-in account to search, and Kagi accurately associates more valuable information with a signed-in account.

I don’t think you can have both ad-free (e.g. paid) search and anonymous search at the same time. You have to pick one. And you can’t really fault Kagi for providing the one when the other is already “adequately” covered by Google.

Surely you can. You can use blind signatures, it's like issuing anonymous tokens in the style of David Chaum digital cash. Or you can just use existing cryptocurrency.

Supposedly they are not doing it because of advantages of associating your payment method and searches.

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