How does that work? They have a contractual obligation to report to Microsoft and Google how many individual IPs have accessed Kagi domains and pay accordingly?
No, they just pay for their APIs per search. It costs Kagi about 1¼¢ per search.[1] Each user searches 20 times per day on average.[2] So it costs Kagi $7.50/month just to physically provide one person with search results, ignoring any overhead like buildings and employees. To keep the lights on they have to charge at least more than that.
In the early days, as a user you could see how much your searches were costing them vs what you paid. One month I threw them an extra $10 or $20, as I was costing them more than I paid, even at $10/month.
The goal should be profitability and sustainability, not user count. It’s not a social media site where the number of users should matter.
The hardest hurdle is getting people to pay anything. Even 1 cent would be difficult, as it requires a sign up and adding payment information.