I don’t remember when I started using Google. Google just… is. It’s the verb for internet search, it commands 10 times the market share of all its competitors combined, and it is responsible for routing a huge amount of the internet’s traffic.
Almost two years ago, I got out. I signed up for a search engine called Kagi, which charges $10 a month and, in return, promises better search results, no ads, no data collection, and lots of advanced features. I’ve tried a lot of search engines and always ended up back with Google — the results elsewhere just felt somehow worse. This time, whether it’s because Kagi is great or Google is declining or both, I’ve felt no drop-off whatsoever.
I’m still using Kagi, and it’s hard to imagine switching back. It’s now Google that looks bizarre and unfamiliar every time I open it. As Google has become more visual, more chaotic, and consistently less good at simply finding the things I’m looking for, Kagi has stayed simple and straightforward. It is a page full of links, and they’re usually the right ones.
Kagi, as a product, is about three years old, but the company has been around since 2018. It was started by Vladomir Prelovac, who started the company after selling his previous startup to GoDaddy. He tells me he started it precisely because Google is so ubiquitous — he found himself wondering, do I want my kids growing up exposed to all these ads and all this data tracking? He’d paid for YouTube Premium, which offered a way to get all the good stuff and none of the ads. “And then I thought, why isn’t there a search experience like this?” he says.
When search is a paid product, Prelovac figures, it can be a better one. He doesn’t have to worry about engagement — in fact, every time you search, it costs him money, so getting you in and out faster is a win for everyone. “You pay for information, you get information,” he says.
Using Kagi feels a lot like using Google a decade ago, and I mean that in a good way
Using Kagi feels a lot like using Google a decade ago, and I mean that in a good way. You type in a search, and it returns a page full of links. It has image search, video search, maps, news, and even a podcast-specific tab I’ve found very useful. Search for something topical, and you’ll get a few links followed by a side-scrolling carousel of news stories. Search for a person, and Kagi virtually always starts with a short excerpt of their Wikipedia page.
In general, I have found Kagi’s results to be at least as good as any other search engine. This is admittedly hard to quantify, though; it’s why I waited so long to write this review, to see if I’d eventually feel a decrease. I haven’t. Part of the reason, I suspect, is the search index itself. Kagi has been building its own database for search and for news, and uses that for many searches, but it also calls Google, Bing, WolframAlpha, Wikipedia, and lots of other third-party providers as it looks for information. That’s already a step above most other non-Google search engines, which are just interfaces on top of Bing results, but Kagi also seems to put the pieces together more thoughtfully than most.
Kagi’s index is focused on quality rather than quantity, Prelovac says, which means Kagi is making decisions about what is good and what is bad while Google just crawls everything and hopes for the best. As a result, Kagi seems to be significantly less overrun by SEO junk than Google, and while its default settings are straightforward to the point of being kind of boring — a lot of Allrecipes for cooking, a lot of ESPN for sports, a lot of Wikipedia for everything — I largely think that’s a good trade.
Let me just offer one example of how the difference in approach plays out in search. I’m looking for a new pair of headphones to wear while running (my AirPods are finally starting to die, it’s all very sad). I search “best headphones for running,” and on Google, I am confronted with a carousel of sponsored shopping options, a Runner’s World ad, a Bose ad, a couple of buying guides, some Reddit links, a Best Buy link, a “what people are saying” carousel that repeats a bunch of the above, an Amazon link, more shopping links, and a bunch of ads. Kagi’s search results include 14 straight links to various buying guides. Google is filled with one-click answers but hardly any information or context, while Kagi helps me actually browse the internet.
There are only two things for which I find myself going back to Google. One is maps: Kagi’s interface is pretty rough, and Google is just unbeatable on all things local. The second is for really esoteric stuff. Like, if I’m searching for an email address that only appears on one webpage anywhere or a statistic from a long-since-deleted blog post that only exists in archived form, the sheer size and scope of Google’s search index is simply unbeatable. But that happens once a month, if that. For absolutely everything else, Kagi is enough.
Being as good as Google is a big win. Where Kagi starts to separate itself is by giving you a vast set of controls over how the search engine works. You can click next to any search result and select “More results from the site” to increase how often a given domain will appear; you can select “Remove results from this site” and stop seeing it altogether. (You can also go to Settings to add which domains you want to see more or less of. Kagi even keeps a public list of the most-blocked and most-raised domains, which is hilarious — people do not want Pinterest in their search results. And with two clicks, it can be gone forever.
You can flip a toggle in the search results to “Small Web” and see only results from a hand-curated set of personal blogs, well-liked publishers, and the like. Another toggle searches exclusively in forums, another specifically on programming-centric websites. Kagi calls these “Lenses,” and you can create your own — I set one up that searches for news only on sites I like and subscribe to, which essentially created my own personal Google News. It’s great.
This kind of customization is so clearly how every search engine should work, and it extends all over the platform. By default, I think Kagi’s mustard yellow accent design is kind of an eyesore, but there are a couple of theme options, and you can also write your own CSS to change the app in whatever way you want. The whole point, Prelovac tells me every time we talk, is that you should be able to make it whatever you want. That’s what you pay for.
You also pay for privacy, which I think Kagi handles well. Both Prelovac and Kagi’s privacy policy say that Kagi doesn’t store data on what you search for or what you click on. To be clear, it’s not a fully private thing: some of its third-party integrations collect data on your activity, and the app itself has some information about you and your preferences. But at least the search engine isn’t watching your searches. It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s better.
At the top of some searches, Kagi will show a small prompt for a “Quick Answer,” which is essentially its version of Google’s AI Overviews. Click on it, and you’ll get a short, AI-powered snippet of information attempting to answer your question, plus a few links. If you pay for Kagi’s most expensive tier, which is $25 a month, you also get access to the Kagi Assistant, which you can use both like a general-purpose chatbot (with access to ChatGPT, Claude, and more) and to interact more deeply with search results.
The $10 monthly plan does get you some AI access: there’s a chatbot called FastGPT, which is basically just a dedicated page for Quick Answers, and you can plug any link into its Universal Summarizer to get basic information out. Kagi’s way of thinking, paired with AI assistants, could be really interesting over time. But right now, that’s not what I use it for.
The simplest way to switch to Kagi is to download the browser extension, which also helps you switch to Kagi as your default search engine. (This is generally very simple on desktop and irritatingly complicated on mobile, but Kagi’s help docs are a good guide to get you through it.) If you’re going to use Kagi, there’s nothing to do but go all in — you absolutely shouldn’t pay for a search engine unless you’re going to use it full time. Kagi also has a mobile app and a dedicated browser called Orion, both of which are fine, neither of which I use very often.
Paying for search is a tough ask, and $10 a month isn’t cheap. (You can try Kagi for free for 100 searches, if you just want to see how it works.) But search is a core part of the online experience, and right now, it feels like search is dying. Google is investing heavily in an AI overhaul of search designed to answer your questions directly and is turning everything into a hyper-visual, shopping-focused, and often just worse experience. Meanwhile, companies like OpenAI, Microsoft, and Perplexity are building their own AI search products. Search is no longer about actually searching and more about simply trying to do things for you. Efficiency at all costs.
I have become increasingly uninterested in having the internet done for me. We live too much of our lives inside of too many algorithms, products with hidden agendas, and platforms with no concern for our best interest or user experience. That’s why I believe in the fediverse, and in RSS readers, and in algorithms. They offer me an internet experience that I am in charge of. It seems to me that a search engine — meaning, a way to find things on the internet — is a crucial part of that experience. And Kagi is a search engine I control. I give it 10 bucks, and it gives me the internet. I like that trade.
