Kagi Trial Log Pt. 1

Kagi is a paid search engine focusing on privacy and better search results without advertisements. Privacy and quality of results are the primary reasons I wanted to try out this operating model of search engine.

I originally signed up for a Kagi trial account in November 2024. It came with 100 free searches and 50 AI interactions. I did 7 searches, but then discovered Whoogle, an open-source and (sort of) private way to indirectly use Google. Prior to that, I had long left Google and switched between DuckDuckGo, Brave Search and SearX, none of which was providing results as satisfactory as Google.

I didn't go back to Kagi until late January 2025 when my local instance of Whoogle broke (probably due to some updates on Google's end). I went back to testing out Kagi and was happily satisfied with the service. The search results are great, as I never scrolled past the first few entries to get what I wanted. I saw absolutely no ads and never needed to worry about Kagi tracking any of my online search activities.

The remaining 93 search quota in my trial account were exhausted within six days. The number of searches per day are 7, 28, 6, 24, 7 and 21 - a very interesting pattern. It kind of reflects my productivity on a particular day: I mainly search coding-related things for work, but I also have random thoughts at random times, some of which result in Internet searches.

There was no doubt that I enjoyed the service and would like to continue using it. I was faced with the following subscription options:

• Starter: $5 / month for 300 searches.
• Starter (annual): $54 / year for 3600 searches, which is 10% off.
• Professional: $10 / month for unlimited searches + some AI Chatbot.
• Professional (annual): $108 per year for unlimited searches + some AI Chatbot, which is also 10% off.

I chose the second option (Starter, paid annually), which meant $0.015 per search. There are a few considerations:

• I don't really care about any AI Chatbot capabilities. In fact, I prefer the traditional web search especially among the recent AI hypes.
• A simple extrapolation from my 6-day trial period indicates that I am expecting roughly 5658 searches per year, which is far from Unlimited and also a decent amount below 7200. Economically speaking, if I went for Professional paid annually, I feel like there would be some wasted search quota, compared with paying $54 twice.
• There may be fluctuations in the number of searches from month to month. If I went for the monthly option, I might end up with wasted quota in one month while needing more in another. Going for an annual option allows more flexibility from month to month.

I was also particularly conscious about what I searched during the short trial period. I did use some of the quota on very simple things, like converting between different currencies or temperature units. Now that I have a limited number of searches, I should probably pull out the Calculator app for these scenarios (which might be slightly inconvenient but gets the job done).

Now that I am more conscious about the number of searches I make, maybe I will continue to be more conscious about what I search. Hopefully, this should eliminate some really random ideas and Internet searches, which translates to more time spent on actually doing productive work.

Anyways, a Part 2 should be coming whenever my current Kagi subscription ends, most likely within a year when I use all 3600 searches. I think of this subscription as a longer-term trial of Kagi. I am hoping to provide a follow-up review of their service (maybe also some observations of my search behaviour).