Someone will correct me if I'm wrong but Kagi uses Google search results. I'm sure it's more complicated than that and they have their own secret sauce but it is not an independent search engine.
Kagi Search includes anonymized requests to traditional search indexes like Google and Bing as well as sources like Wikipedia, DeepL, and other APIs. We also have our own non-commercial index (Teclis), news index (TinyGem), and an AI for instant answers. Teclis and TinyGem are a result of our crawl through millions of domains, focusing primarily on non-commercial, high-quality content.
Our unique results combined from all of these sources help you discover the best content you can possibly find online, sometimes from the quieter places on the web.
I would say using Google and Bing makes it not independent but they could invest in further developing their own index if they wanted to go independent.
Click two links down in the same menu:
https://help.kagi.com/kagi/why-kagi/kagi-vs-brave.html
Kagi Search includes anonymized requests to traditional search indexes like Google and Bing as well as sources like Wikipedia, DeepL, and other APIs. We also have our own non-commercial index (Teclis), news index (TinyGem), and an AI for instant answers. Teclis and TinyGem are a result of our crawl through millions of domains, focusing primarily on non-commercial, high-quality content.
Our unique results combined from all of these sources help you discover the best content you can possibly find online, sometimes from the quieter places on the web.