Kagi Lets You Search the Web Without Ads (but It Will Cost You Money)

When you think of internet search, you undoubtedly think of Google (unless you’re the only person who thinks of Bing first). The search giant is ubiquitous because it’s fast, free, and better at what it does than most of its competitors. But not everything about Google is amazing. Although this service is technically free to use, you pay for it while maintaining your privacy .

Google tracks your search history to show you more relevant ads and builds a profile of you over time. This means you’ll likely become trapped in your own search bubble as Google keeps showing you the types of results you’re more likely to click on. If you’re looking for diverse perspectives or expanding your horizons, chances are you won’t be able to easily find it through Google over time.

Google’s dominance has also created another problem: thousands of websites exist solely to create spam content targeting Google search keywords. As a result, for many search queries, you will likely find low-quality articles, perhaps generated by artificial intelligence, that contain all the correct search terms, but do not contain anything that you do not already know.

That’s why there’s a strong argument for a competitor that values ​​your privacy and is able to highlight results that Google might not necessarily be able to reveal. Of course, there are privacy-focused search engines like DuckDuckGo that don’t track you and have an ad-supported model that doesn’t violate your privacy.

However, if you’re completely against the idea of ​​advertising and don’t mind paying for a search engine that doesn’t track you, you might want to try Kagi Search . It is from the developers of the Orion browser, which allows you to run Chrome and Firefox extensions . The search engine offers many features and no advertising in exchange for a monthly subscription fee.

How Kagi is different from Google

Kagi offers quite a few interesting features that make it stand out. The complete absence of advertising and sponsored search results is a big factor – it definitely keeps your searches free of unnecessary clutter. If you don’t like seeing search results on certain websites, Kagi allows you to block entire domains from your results, which is great if you want to hide conspiracy theory sites or sites that have a lot of AI-generated spam. You can add up to 1000 blocked domains at once through one of the Kagi settings pages . If blocking results doesn’t suit you, you can manually rearrange the order of your search results to reduce the priority of sites you don’t need.

Kagi’s best feature may be Lenses, which allow you to search for results in corners of the internet that would otherwise be inaccessible. For example, if you want to see results from smaller blogs and niche sites, you can enable the “Small Web Lens” in Kagi’s settings. This will push those niche results higher. You can also create custom lenses to highlight results from your favorite websites, so Kagi finds what you need on high-quality sites you trust.

The search engine also does some other cool things like grouping listings to reduce the amount of space they take up on the results page. It has a filter that allows you to prioritize results from sites that have too many ads and trackers, and also sometimes displays unique in-depth articles under the “Interesting Finds” label. All of these features work quite well in practice.

Kagi works quickly, so you definitely won’t have to wait forever to see results, and it’s easy to set up. You are given complete control over not only the results you see, but also over Kaga’s appearance. It also allows you to use keyboard shortcuts and hits (like !r to search Reddit).

How much will Kagi cost you?

All these features come at a price. Kagi offers a free tier that allows you to perform up to 100 searches; when you run out, you can pay $5 per month for up to 300 searches or $10 per month for unlimited searches.

This model also has the biggest drawback: to use Kagi, you need to create an account. This means that while Kagi is private (it doesn’t even save your search history), it is not completely anonymous. The company says it only needs an account to track the number of searches you’ve made and process your invoices, and that it’s otherwise not interested in storing any of your data. If you are concerned about privacy and want to reduce the amount of information you provide to Kagi, you can create an account using an anonymous email service and pay with Bitcoin. The company’s FAQ pages are full of privacy-related questions and you should read them before signing up.

Will anyone pay to search?

While these features may be attractive, you have to wonder: Is there still a market for paid search products after decades of free Internet searches? Kaga’s approach aims to create something that will appeal to a small group of people who value quality search results above all else. This philosophy is reflected in the fact that Kagi often generates relatively few (often less than 100) results, which are likely more useful than those you’ll find on page four of Google results. If the product works for you, $5 a month isn’t a bad price at all. The free trial is also generous enough to allow you to make an informed decision—even if you search a lot, it will take you a while to use those 100 searches.

How to try Kagi

To give Kagi a chance, you can either install the Orion browser (which sets Kagi as your default search engine) or add a browser extension that will allow you to use it as your primary search engine. Unfortunately, using it as the default search engine on mobile devices is a bit difficult, and this is the biggest obstacle to completely switching to Kagi. But if you take a few minutes to set Kagi’s search page as your default home page, you’ll be able to use it more often.