Kagi
Paid, ad-free web search engine with user-tunable rankings and an AI assistant.
Loved for high-quality results that many commenters say beat Google,1234 plus per-domain ranking, custom bangs and an opt-in AI assistant.567 Complaints are scattered: weaker localized shopping results,89 objections to its use of Russian data,10 and a few who found it no better than free alternatives.1112
Why people recommend it
Result quality · 3
Commenters say results are high quality and better than Google, Bing or DuckDuckGo.
“This feels like a solved problem entirely: Kagi.”
“Kagi is almost always better now.”
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“Another vote for Kagi from me. Been using it for 3 years now and not looked back.”
Result customization · 3
Users block, lower, raise or pin domains and use lenses and a slop filter to tune results.
“I'll expand on a few reasons why I personally love Kagi:”
“kagi is great, love kagi.”
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“I love Kagi. I want to see them do well, of all of the search alternatives, this is the only one where I’ve never felt the need to go back to google.”
Paid, aligned incentives · 3
Paying directly is valued because the user is not the product and incentives stay aligned.
“Kagi is the stickiest digital subscription I have.”
“When I use Kagi I have a curated search experience that has a relatively high information density”
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“Just use Kagi. Not only is it way better, but you are also not the product.”
Opt-in AI · 3
AI answers appear only when a query ends with a question mark, and the assistant is called capable.
“I use the AI option more often than I thought I would”
“The results are extremely good, especially in the last 4 months.”
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“I'll probably renew Kagi because its assistant can answer my questions”
Bangs and redirects · 3
Custom bangs synced across devices and regex redirects are used for archives, Jira and docs.
“I use the Bangs feature to open paywalled links with archive.is with !a.”
“I'll expand on a few reasons why I personally love Kagi:”
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“for folks using Kagi Search, you can set up a search engine level redirect”
Search operators · 3
Some switched because Kagi respects quotes, exact strings and time filters.
“Kagi is the best search experience ever.”
“the main ones, which are time and exact strings, are the reason I use the product.”
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“Another reason why I use Kagi.”
Caveats and dissent
Political objections · 2
Some refuse to subscribe for political reasons, including its use of paid Russian data sources.
“their stubbornness in using Russian data in their indexing, and paying Russian businesses for the data is what is stopping me”
“As for Kagi - they've earned a life-long ban from me for political reasons.”
Regional results · 2
Shopping localization is moderate, so some still use Google for regional product searches.
“At risk of looking like a shill: Kagi.”
“Kagi is almost always better now.”
Value doubts · 2
A few found results no more useful than free AI chatbots or other search engines.
“I used to be a paying member but then dropped it because the results didn't feel more useful”
“their paywalled search offerings seem to be inferior to other options”
Plan pricing · 3
Ultimate AI credits can't be shared across a family plan, and some dislike subscriptions or add-on charges.
“The value of Kagi is hard to overstate.”
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Result changes · 1
One customer objected to Kagi silently changing Lake Ontario results in Kagi Maps.
“Currently I'm watching Kagi silently change results. If they're doing it for Lake Ontario, how can I be confident they aren't doing it with other search results?”
Orion browser · 2
Kagi's Orion browser is described as buggy and a distraction from search.
“the thing that makes me a paying customer in the first place”
“I ended up staying because the Adblock is good (search remains good).”
Often compared with
5 moved from DuckDuckGo to Kagi
2 moved from Kagi to DuckDuckGoGoogle Search19 comments mention both
14 moved from Google Search to Kagi
1 moved from Kagi to Brave
1 moved from Kagi to Claude
1 moved from Kagi to SearXNG
Who recommends it in their own words
From the makers not counted in the ranking
“We'd rather focus on building great software than on things in the world we can't control.”
“That line is simply referring directly to https://kagi.com/smallweb”
Threads where it came up
- Ask HN: What are the viable alternatives to DuckDuckGo? 21 mentions
- Kagi added a setting for removing paywalled links from search results 17 mentions
- Back to Kagi 16 mentions
- Leaving Google has actively improved my life 8 mentions
- google.com/goto: Google's anti-scraping update 7 mentions
- An Update on Orion for Linux and Windows 5 mentions
Also written as Kagi Search. Data: kagi.json. Quotes are verbatim; the verdict and theme labels are written by a model from these comments, and every clause links to its sources.
All comments 45
“I rarely touch Kagi anymore because my own hosted model + searxng drops results faster”
“I may do over 100 (Kagi) searches a day.”
“I use Kagi”
“I have moved to Kagi myself”
“have switched to Kagi for search just to avoid having to deal with the bullshit that is the above the fold google search results.”
“pay for kagi”
“the thing that makes me a paying customer in the first place”
“I’d rather the company focus on Kagi development.”
“I'll probably renew Kagi because its assistant can answer my questions”
“I ended up staying because the Adblock is good (search remains good).”
“I don't say Google as a verb now that I use Kagi for search.”
“At risk of looking like a shill: Kagi.”
“Kagi is brilliant.”
“it kicks straight to the configured search engine (Kagi in my case)”
“I pay for search (Kagi), LLM usage (Kagi assistant)”
“I pay for Kagi, but that makes me part of a very niche market.”
“I use kagi, ddg etc.”
“I pay for Kagi search because it’s a lot like pre-seo google.”
“Kagi is the stickiest digital subscription I have.”
“I use Kagi as my daily driver.”
“It hasn’t replaced Kagi as my daily driver but the UX is fun.”
“To anyone who didn’t find Kagi useful in the past, I strongly recommend you try it again”
“I use kagi exclusively because it works.”
“I use the AI option more often than I thought I would”
“I love Kagi”
“When I use Kagi I have a curated search experience that has a relatively high information density”
“Nowadays, I use Kagi which is better than Google”
“for folks using Kagi Search, you can set up a search engine level redirect”
“search the web with Kagi”
“Currently I'm watching Kagi silently change results. If they're doing it for Lake Ontario, how can I be confident they aren't doing it with other search results?”
“I used Kagi's search and I didn't have that issue”
“I am an avid Kagi user”
“kagi is great, love kagi.”
“I love it.”
“I love Kagi. I want to see them do well, of all of the search alternatives, this is the only one where I’ve never felt the need to go back to google.”
“Kagi is great, but it's not everything.”
“I love Kagi so much. What an incredibly thoughtful, fast, powerful, customizable search tool.”
“I used to be a paying member but then dropped it because the results didn't feel more useful”
“I use the Bangs feature to open paywalled links with archive.is with !a.”
“their stubbornness in using Russian data in their indexing, and paying Russian businesses for the data is what is stopping me”
“Kagi is almost always better now.”
“their paywalled search offerings seem to be inferior to other options”
“Another vote for Kagi from me. Been using it for 3 years now and not looked back.”
“it is also genuinely a much better experience than Google or DDG”
“I'll expand on a few reasons why I personally love Kagi:”