[cmrdporcupine]

I've been paying for Kagi for the last few months and I guess the compliment I could give is: I have it on some machines but not the other and I don't really notice? when I'm on the kagi one other than ... no ads and no ads-ranked results

Which, frankly, I'm willing to pay for. I think it's a good product.

[EasyMark]

No ads, privacy of searches, and ability to filter junk sites is why I pay. I think the google results can be good but they are drowned out in this noise and constant reminder I’m seeking help from a malevolent agent.

[monkmartinez]

I don't have ads on my SearXNG instance and I find that its comparable to Kagi. Have you tried searching with SearXNG?

[cmrdporcupine]

I mean, it's something I'd consider. I have a little ARM SBC here that I run Plex and Immich etc on. But Kagi makes it very easy for a not terrible price -- not much more than the monthly power bill for a little server -- and they also do more than just grab from other search services as they _do_ have their own crawler (unclear how much it's used for results?) and have LLM stuff which isn't terrible.

Also as a former Google employee... I dig the idea of contributing funds for some competition in this space.

[prophesi]

How much maintenance does running a private instance take, and would you say it should be fine to run from your own IP? I've been using Kagi for ages, but I wouldn't mind a fallback that does better than DDG.

[monkmartinez]

Not much? I mean, I set it up initially to use as an LLM search tool for agents. That required me to use a specific version of SearXNG due to a JSON bug. My exact docker command is here:

    docker run -d -p 9017:8080 --name searxng_data -v "${PWD}/searxng_data:/etc/searxng" -e "BASE_URL=http://localhost:9017/" searxng/searxng:2024.8.31-769b2ed03

I run this from the directory where I want to store the data on windows (hence the weird PWD thing). I also use cloudflare tunnels and have the internet facing website, https://sear.mydomain.com, pointed at http//localhost:9017. I set up all my cloudflare tunnels with email authentication. My token lasts a month (but is configurable to whatever time frame you like). My traffic is strictly mine, so it seems to be working ok.

Its basically no maintenance after this setup. I can mess with all the settings (except results format) from the main interface.

[prophesi]

I appreciate the writeup! I'll likely go down this rabbit hole soon.

[carlosjobim]

Why go though all that hassle when you can easily use Kagi?

[monkmartinez]

Because I can configure exactly which search engines to index, no ads, use it for my local LLM's for search, better image search (maybe not better, but totally different results), a bazzillion tweaks and mods. I don't have to pay Kagi for the same results or keep track of how many searches I have left.

[dexterdog]

What is the hassle? I set it up once and just use it. When I hear about search engines that I don't think I want in my mix I go in and turn it off.

[carlosjobim]

I looked into it before Kagi existed and you needed to be a sys admin or developer to be able to use it. It's not for the general public.

[dexterdog]

Not at all. You can run it with docker or you can use one of the myriad public instances.