this post was submitted on 22 May 2026
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Privacy

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Kagi is a subscription-based search engine that argues that paying for search is a reasonable thing to do in order to avoid ads and companies selling your information. They also have lenses, e.g. for searching the fediverse specifically. Anyone that wants to share their experience of using Kagi?

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[–] german@pawb.social 2 points 2 days ago

I subscribed briefly, then requested a refund. The reason was both for the highly customisable and curated search, but also for Assistant - because I trust Kagi a little more than Google, Anthropic, OpenAI, or Perplexity with my “best pancake batter according to Reddit” queries - even if that’s fundamentally compromising my privacy. Kagi tended to deliver better information in general, so maybe I’d want to use LMs less frequently - I thought.

However, that slight hint of trust was shattered very quickly when they did what every company with a profit does best - sold me a lie:

https://kagifeedback.org/d/10116-kagi-assistant-standalone-subscription

Which means what I’d subscribed to will have eventually gotten worse, likely for the same price, and Kagi had no intention of letting me know before I subscribed, and their intention seemed to be to just make active subscriptions worse, as they were opposed to grandfathering in the thread.

So I decided I’ll pass, I have enough “products” I don’t trust. Even if it’s all in the “we’re ‘contemplating’ stage”, it’s clear what their approach is and how far they’re willing to go with, pardon me, fucking users over.

P.S. I understand the sustainability problem. But I’d have expected them to have that part figured out before actively offering it in a subscription. The way they are going about it is off-putting. So, no thanks.