[baobabKoodaa]

I don't like how this was rolled out. I'm currently paying for "Unlimited Kagi Assistant" and the Kagi website STILL advertises "Unlimited Kagi Assistant". And they stealthily rolled in limits? I pay the same amount, but it's no longer unlimited, and I only know about this because I happened to notice it on HN. Otherwise I would only know after hitting a limit.

[louthy]

Fair-use limitations were always there. It sounds like they weren't actively enforcing it, but now they are because of some problem users. I don't think anything has changed for you unless you're one of the users this refers to:

Q: Why did Kagi start enforcing the fair use policy?

A: The policy was enforced due to excessive use. For instance, the top 10 users accounted for approximately 14% of the total costs, with some individuals consistently using up to 50 million tokens per week on the most advanced models. Our profit margins are already quite narrow. 95% of users should never hit any usage limits.

[gaiagraphia]

I'm really surprised that more people didn't jump on the unlimited usage of Claude3.7, tbh.

Don't think it's fair to call users problematic when they were using the product as advertised. "Unlimited" has a meaning.

[louthy]

> Don't think it's fair to call users problematic when they were using the product as advertised. "Unlimited" has a meaning.

I'm sympathetic to that argument, for sure, but it's also just a branding-label to not necessarily be taken literally. There must always be a limit to everything as there's only so much energy in the universe: so, the word 'unlimited', in every real-world physical context, is still with limits.

Read the T&Cs should always be the the advice.

[zik]

In my country (Australia), companies have been found guilty in court when making that claim. It considered false advertising to claim your product is "unlimited" when it is not, in fact, unlimited.

[baobabKoodaa]

> I'm sympathetic to that argument, for sure, but it's also just a branding-label to not necessarily be taken literally.

Sure sure sure, but I'm not abusing the "Unlimited" service. I'm just asking AI questions every now and then. I'm a normal user doing normal usage and I have no idea if I will be hitting these limits or not.

[gaiagraphia]

Personally, I think it's a bit scummy to expect customers to trawl through T&Cs, when the company gets to sit back and chill, while profiting from using 'unlimited' front and centre.

There's a subtle difference between using something for 5 hours per day vs causing the heat death of the unvierse.

Metred use, with all parties being informed and honest with wording, is the fair and ethical solution. I absolutely abhor how companies are allowed to change meanings of words, then run behind 'muh conditions' when they lose out on their gamble.

[louthy]

> There's a subtle difference between using something for 5 hours per day vs causing the heat death of the universe.

Replace 'heat death of the universe' with 'the available funds of the organisation'. Nobody should be so naive to think that any 'unlimited' service is unlimited in the same way as there's an unlimited set of natural-numbers, or any other mathematically pure meaning. There are plenty of words where the precise meaning isn't used any more ('myriad' is one that jumps to mind right now, nobody uses it to mean 10,000 any more).

I'm sure if there was a word that meant: "effectively unlimited for the majority, but there's a limit for the extreme outliers" I'm sure it would be used as an alternative, I don't know of one?

I agree that the absolute upper-limits should be upfront. So the local definition of 'unlimited' is clear. I believe that's what Kagi is moving toward, if I'm reading FAQ correctly.

[ipaddr]

If no one can offer unlimited then it shouldn't legally be able to make that claim. It's like putting cures cancer on your bread loaf and then changing the terms to say curing cancer means eating wheat; everyone should know it's a lie but it raises sales anyways.

[baobabKoodaa]

I have no idea if I will be limited or not. I can see I have about 3 million tokens used per month. But I don't know where the limits are.

[drake_112]

Kagi says they will charge the actual token costs of the underlying API's. They will hopefully make the actual calculation visible soon.

If we make a quick back of the envelope estimation: in the outlier case if those 3 million tokens are mostly output tokens and you always used an advanced model like GPT 4.1 which costs $8 per 1 million output tokens you would be close to hitting the limit that the plan provides ($24 out of $25 worth of tokens).

In pretty much most other scenario's (including a higher proportion of input vs output tokens and mixing in cheaper models) you could be a long way from hitting the limit. For example if you used half of those tokens on GPT 4.1 Mini instead of GPT 4.1 you'd only be roughly halfway to your limit ($14 out of 25$ worth of tokens).

[freezingDaniel]

I wish they had first included/added a usage meter then the limit. If they had first given users a way to see their usage, users of the assisstent could know how much they have to worry about the change. As it stands I use up to 2m tokens per month but have no clue how much this amount of tokens (over various models) cost. And 5% hitting the limit and not having a way to just pay for usage past the limit (yet) is kind of dauntingI wish they had first added a usage meter before implementing the limit. If they had first given users a way to monitor their usage, users of the assistant could know how much they have to worry about the change.

As it stands, I use up to 2M tokens per month but have no clue how much this amount of tokens (across various models) costs.

And 5% hitting the limit and not having a way to pay for usage past the limit (yet) is kind of scary. Especially as I feel like I use AI more than my peers.

[mppm]

Maybe they've changed it in the past hour, but as I write this comment the 25$ plan is called "Ultimate" and promises unlimited search, but not unlimited assistant.

I agree about the need for appropriate wording and advertising, but other than that, the new limits seem entirely reasonable and in line with what other aggregators like Abacus and Poe are doing. The paid plans of the major AI labs themselves always have usage limits too. It simply can't work any other way if you include costly models in the mix.

[switch007]

It's easier just to never believe a company whenever they say "unlimited". It almost always goes away. And never ever truly unlimited as they all have a legal caveat to terminate your services for whatever reason whenever they like

[raffael_de]

Afaiu, with Unlimited you have more tokens available and more models to choose from.