[coldpie]

I've asked a number of times on HN threads for specific examples of searches that Kagi performs better on than DDG or Google, and never gotten a solid reply. It seems what people like about Kagi is the customization and surrounding tooling, but the actual search quality is about the same or possibly worse. That's cool, but I don't find it worth the cash personally.

[the_lucifer]

> It seems what people like about Kagi is the customization and surrounding tooling

I've been paying for Kagi since March 2025, so about a year and a half and this is precisely why. The search quality is far better than Google of 2025 (last I used Google at least). Yes, it is probably worse than Google from a decade or two ago, but no one's getting those days back after Google decided that prioritizing garbage links for ads > getting people off the search results page quickly.

I think what you are missing is that the customization is *extensive* for the search results. You can pin/raise/lower/block specific websites: so no more GeeksforGeeks if you don't want to see it, (or outright block specific image websites that flood results like pinterest), and pin (niche forums, reddit etc. that you like to see) to the top of your results page instead of having to add site:<domain here> every time to the box to get usable results.

URL rewriting lets you redirect any results URL to any other URL. Which means you can redirect youtube links to your self hosted instance of PeerTube if you like or redirect x.com links to xcancel.

Plus, you can create custom lenses to scope your results. (lenses are akin to "images", "News", "Videos" etc. on the top bar of google) but defined by you. I have one to return academic articles, and a developer-focused one (like documentation and SO). Another example of a lens that I use occasionally, is to only return results that have PDFs.

This is where the power of Kagi is tbh. The raw search results are a blank sheet you massage into the output you want to see.

[mackeye]

i love that geeksforgeeks is the website everyone mentions wanting to block :D

[moebrowne]

> It seems what people like about Kagi is the customization and surrounding tooling, but the actual search quality is about the same

For me the quality of results is improved exactly because of the customization. Removing sites which I don't trust, are low quality, spammy, etc.

[Marsymars]

“I've asked a number of times on HN threads for specific examples of searches that Kagi performs better on than DDG or Google, and never gotten a solid reply.”

It’s going to be hard for people to give an answer to that because if you get an answer you like on Kagi, you’re not going to also search on Google.

You basically need someone with a Kagi sub to commit to using Google, and trying Kagi whenever Google fails.

I’ve got a specific instance of something a few days ago where I searched on my wife’s phone for <specific thing> and neither the canonical website or the wiki page were anywhere in the top results for Google, whereas they were IIRC top-2 results on Kagi. Apologies though, I can’t for the life of me remember what the search term was.

[taude]

Also, Google isn't scraping your data....

[cavoirom]

I invite you to spend 10$ to try Kagi for 1 month. Try these features:

- Custom CSS. - Personalized search result: pin / block / raise / lower website on result. - Assistant: try the standard Assistant with Kiki K2.6 (reasoning), try to create custom assistant...

Kagi is a product package provides premium experience in retrieving knowledge from the Internet, it's not only search. No word can exchange for a personal experience with an open heart.

[gilrain]

> I invite you to spend 10$ to try Kagi for 1 month.

What a generous invitation!

[Forgeties79]

Potentially as good as Google without the surveillance isn’t worth $50/yr?

Also as a now-daily kagi user, I don’t know what sort of evidence you’re looking for. I search, the hits are good.

You can just try it for free and not wait around for others to write a report for you. They give you 100 searches.

[kefabean]

If ARPU for Google Search is estimated to be around $50-$80 per internet user and potentially way more in certain geographies, there could be significant financial savings to be had by switching to Kagi depending on where you sit.

[coldpie]

I have. Like I said, the results were the same or worse than DDG and Google. It was not noticeably better in any way, certainly not something I want to pay $50 for.

[Forgeties79]

I think it’s well worth it but we all make compromises. I have an iPhone after all lol.

[Marsymars]

Hey, here's one, search for "smbc comics".

Kagi top 5 results: smbc-comics.com, wikipedia, smbc author's patreon, gocomics, instagram

Google top 5 results: wikipedia, twitter, instagram, reddit, gocomic

DDG top 5 results: smbc-comics.com, a specific smbc-comics.com comic, gocomics, wikipedia, some listicle about smbc comics from a site I've never heard of

The Kagi results here seem pretty clearly better than the other two. smbc-comics.com doesn't seem to ever show up on Google. (I clicked through to page 10 of results.)

[crossroadsguy]

What people also might (eh, this is my guess, based on what I have seen around, so I may be completely wrong :|) like about Kagi is being associated with a "paid service". Might feel so very boutique. Makes people feel they are in control (even though they just use someone else's indexes and data behind the curtains.. anyway that doesn't matter apparently). It also gives a feeling of exclusivity. What I have seen people claim about its actual usage, esp. the ones who are not from NA, that it is either below or just average wrt Google (because, well, there's no other mainstream search service to compare against). Few of them literally just say something very closely on the lines of ".. been using for X years... happy to pay". I suspect it might as well be literally just a satisfaction thing :D

[inigyou]

It's a deslopping filter in between you and the slop. It's not perfect but it's honestly refreshing.

[TiredOfLife]

They are much better than DDG or Google in financing russian invasion into Ukraine