RemainNA's blog

Kagi is better

I've been using Kagi since October 2023, and I'm a big fan of it! I used DuckDuckGo for quite a while before that, and before that I used Google (surprise!). I give that context because it is not my goal for this post to be a comprehensive review of all the search engines out there, I don't have enough experience to provide that. All I can (and do) claim is that between the three search engines I've set and used as defaults, Kagi has been my favorite.

I also didn't title this "Kagi is worth it" because I can't claim to know how much $10/month is worth to anyone that might come across this post, but it is worth it to me. Based on the statistics Kagi provides, I performed an average of 945 searches per month from January through June of this year, meaning each search cost me a little over one cent each (including tax). I also recently switched to the duo plan with my partner, going from $10/month to $14/month. I perform far more searches (almost exactly ten times as many in the current billing period), but that's still a solid deal in my book.

To actually get into the features that I use and find to justify said price:

Going line by line...

No ads

I feel like this is pretty self explanatory, but I will point to Malvertising in particular as the benefit of this. Sometimes the sponsored top links on Google can link to fake sites that look similar but are actually trying to infect your machine. I like not needing to be as worried about this possibility. And to address the obvious, yes ad blockers do help with this as well, and because of that they are legitimate security tools. But this is built in to Kagi rather than extended on top of it, so it counts in its favor.

Bangs

These are the tools that let you add "![name]" to a query and instantly search there rather than within Kagi, some examples being !yt for YouTube, !hltb for How Long to Beat, !proton for ProtonDB, or !w for Wikipedia. These are the ones available by default (you'll also find them on DuckDuckGo), and are really handy for getting to what you're looking for faster. Kagi also expanded this with "Snaps" which use similar syntax (@ instead of !) and are shorthand for using site:[website] in your query. I'll admit that I basically never use this feature, but for sites with bad built in search options it's nice that it's available.

The more significant addition to the bangs in DDG is the ability to set custom bangs, of which I make pretty extensive use. You can request that Kagi add new bangs on their GitHub page (which is really cool!) but for sites that don't meet their criteria it's really nice that you can add them yourself. I have a number of bangs set up for local businesses, and my personal favorite that I use is !library, which is specifically for my local library. On top of that, if you use the bang on its own it will simply send you to that site rather than search it, and custom bangs support adding different URLs for bangs vs snaps, and you can choose which one to use for the redirect. In practice, this means that I can use ""!library [query]" to search the library catalog, use "!library" to visit the home page directly, or use "@library [query]" to search the site for information like hours, events, etc. Bangs were my favorite feature when I used DDG, and I like them even more on Kagi.

Personalized results

Kagi allows you to pin, raise, lower, or block domains within search results. The only site I have pinned is Wikipedia, and I raise a number of documentation or wiki sites based on what I look up a lot. I've lowered sites like Amazon or Target since I avoid using those whenever possible, as well as some fandom wiki sites that have been replaced by better alternatives (shout out to Indie Wiki Buddy for being a really good extension for this as well). I do take great joy in blocking terrible websites like Breitbart, NY Post, etc. I never want to see them, so I don't! You can see a leaderboard of websites here to get a sense of what people use this for. I do want to note that I have seemingly accidentally blocked some sites which caused me plenty of confusion when they didn't show up (although that hasn't happened recently, so maybe it happened when I visited that leaderboard however long ago). Also I would love for there to be a notes section for domains, I don't always remember why I blocked them in the first place.

No AI summary in your face

Kagi does have some AI features, but they aren't in your face about it. The quick summary only appears when you click on it or end your search with "?", and in the latest changelog as of writing this they even added a toggle to disable all of the AI features. Sure I'd appreciate it if they put even more focus into search instead of AI, but at least the AI features they do have are not intrusive to the search experience.

Lenses

I don't use these heavily, but these allow you to fine tune the results some more. I have used the (built in) recipes and PDF lenses some which have been handy. Most significantly I created a local lens that limits searches to my city's subreddit, city government site, some local news sources/sites, etc. Nice to have for sure!

The downsides

Kagi isn't all upsides, but I do find that the pros outweigh the cons. To list some:

All of that to say: I like Kagi! If you search for things as much as I do or find the AI summaries to be impossibly annoying, you'd probably like Kagi too! The basic search is nice as is, and the amount of customization (including features I didn't get into because I don't use them myself) really help to justify the price. I want Google to lose its dominant position over search, and I appreciate Kagi for helping with that while also challenging the ad supported search model.