Maybe make the pricing not how many searches, but more about latency between searches for a session:
Update to Kagi Search Pricing
61–70 of 239 posts
Re: Update to Kagi Search Pricing
#62I 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…
I was finding it hard to justify the current price. This new pricing is madness to me.
I think their rationale about the 'average number of searches' is misguided - what about the average number from people who are Kagi users? Those are the ones willing to pay for search, which I'd argue are currently not the 'average internet user'.
Re: Update to Kagi Search Pricing
#63Really disappointed with this pricing. Such pricing will kill their product and move regular consumers away from the product. I have used Brave search that gives similar search results for way less money.
And that's really the sad thing. If this pricing is too high for the business to be viable, it suggests that people would rather participate in surveillance capitalism than pay for privacy.
I think that's been clear since at least the early 2000s
Re: Update to Kagi Search Pricing
#64I 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…
Sorry I don’t understand this POV.
We know Kagi is losing money on that pricing. ( They have stated it multiple times ). They offer options to donate for those willing to help and chip in.
They now updated the pricing model. They gave you extra 300 on top of their current pricing. The extra 600 search will only cost you $9 more, slightly more than what you tipped them.
So what is wrong ?
And you are supporting their browser development. I mean I understand people want unlimited, but then you are already tipping them. So something must be missing here I am not getting it.
Re: Update to Kagi Search Pricing
#65I checked my usage and tend to use ~1200 searches per month. Kagi shows that of the money I spend, around 60% pays for my results, so it seems like Kagi is still profitable with the current pricing. Presumably though, they don't see this as sustainable. I wonder why? What kind of margin are they looking for here?
Bing pricing is more than doubling, so they'll be losing money on simply proxying your search requests, let alone everything else they do.
Re: Update to Kagi Search Pricing
#66Yikes, I understand why they're doing this, but I just learned I do about 1500 searches a month, and I'd have to upgrade to the $25/mo plan, which is a pretty steep increase. And I don't care about AI.
I will probably move back to Brave Search.
Re: Update to Kagi Search Pricing
#67I really wish they sent an email about it.
In my account settings, the option "Receive Product Updates" is turned on and in my opinion updating pricing counts as a (huge) product update.
If I hadn't found this HN post, I wouldn't have been informed about any changes.
Re: Update to Kagi Search Pricing
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
Those are my exact feelings since testing Kagi. I did not found it appealing as a plain search engine, nor private. But they have recently shown a tech preview of an "Universal Summarizer"[1] which I have found far superior to ChatGPT (cGPT is worse than some freely available pre-trained models in this regard). I have asked Kagi and cGPT to summarize my own post[2] which Kagi did rather well (I don't have a screensho…
> I have asked Kagi and cGPT to summarize my own post which Kagi did rather well (I don't have a screenshot), while cGPT spilled utter nonsense > https://wojteksychut.com/pic/chatgpt_post_summarization.png ChatGPT currently has no capability to access external sources, and its training data cuts off at the end of 2021, so there's no way for it to have ever succeeded at this task. It was essentially asked to summarize…
It spelled my last name correctly in 4th paragraph (although could have got it from domain name). This domain was registered in 2023 so it could not have data from 2021; but maybe has been fed from Bing later?
It currently states: "As an AI language model, I don't have direct access to real-world events that have occurred after my knowledge cutoff date of September 2021. However, I can access information and data from websites created after September 2021, as long as they are publicly available on the internet."
> it responded to your query with totally fabricated nonsense, which is a horrible failure mode
Agree. I would be fine with getting "I cannot summarize this post as I don't crawl external sources" but not this.
Re: Update to Kagi Search Pricing
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Kagi doesn't strike me as a privacy alternative given that all my searches are necessarily tied to a user id which is further tied to a payment method. I agree to some extent, but also consider: if you are not paying for search, then they are going to have to monetize somehow, and the most likely way they'll do that is through selling search history/data. The only way to be respected as a customer is to actually be…
> the most likely way they'll do that is through selling search history/data No? Google, the largest search engine, doesn't monetize by selling search history/data. I would hazard a guess that not a single free search engine monetizes by selling search history/data. Selling ads is extremely and literally different from selling search history/data.
> Google, the largest search engine, doesn't monetize by selling search history/data.
Google, the owner of the largest ad network in the world, does not make money from your searches? Are you trolling or completely misinformed?
Re: Update to Kagi Search Pricing
#70I 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…
I think what becomes clear from this price increase is how expensive search is.
Google seems to be free, but they are making a profit by gatekeeping the internet. If you offer a product or service, and you want people to find your restaurant, your hotel, your guided tour, your private tutoring lessons, or anything else, you pretty much have to pay Google.
It's kinda like the Yellow Pages, except 100x more expensive.
If you as a user don't want your search results dictated by who pays the most, it's going to be expensive.