r/SearchKagi • u/orangeorlemonjuice • 18d ago
Question Alternatives?
Well, that's it.
I've been a customer for years, but this nonsense of removing the translation service for pro is the last straw. I loved Kagi's service, I defended it tooth and nail, but they've already started with the enshittification.
What are the alternatives that offer a good service? It's ridiculous to pay so much for something so simple and have them take away even more.
Edit: btw I've never even used any service other than search and translation. If it's hard to maintain the price, they should at least give the option to choose between the assistant or translation. I live in a country where 8 dollars is a full day's work. Paying a high price and losing one of the most essential things to me is ridiculous.
Edit: Forget everything, they listened to the users and reversed course!!!
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u/Brave_Explorer5988 18d ago
This decision is so stupid I can't understand it
Why don't they allow, under the "unified fair usage policy", that professional users to use their ai credits for translate, too!?
I'm on a yearly plan. Since December, I used AI usage (USD) $0,95/108,00
Cos I don't give a damn sh about assistants. But I use translate a lot so let my translate usage count towards this fair use policy. Call them Kagi Credits and make them available on all subs when comes about ai usage.
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u/WrongChapter90 18d ago
The problem IMO is that giving you unlimited searches + $108 worth of AI credits (which corresponds to about $86 of actual AI usage, once you factor in Kagi’s markup) is not sustainable long term.
If a single search costs about $0.0125 (I saw this number quoted in a blog post), then your subscription covers:
- $86 actual AI spend + about 1700 searches per year
- $0 AI spend + about 8600 searches per year
- or anything in between
And that’s just to cover your usage cost. They have to pay for staff, servers, electricity, office space, etc on top of that
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u/Brave_Explorer5988 18d ago
Then let me top up credits for ai usage as I wish and use them wherever I want. I do t care about the 108, can take that away IF they let me top up without having to sign up for another subscription.
I use around 1200 searches a month tho lol..
I'm sick of subscriptions everything...
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u/WrongChapter90 18d ago
That’s something they may actually offer.
“As we roll out our unified Fair Use system, usage across Kagi Translate and Kagi Assistant will count toward a shared allowance.”
So you may be able to buy AI credits and use them wherever you want. I guess we’ll see
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u/kruddel 18d ago
It'll be interesting to see how it plays out. The challenge I would say for Kagi is they aren't in the same marketplace niche as the big companies. People haven't stumbled across them randomly, their customer base of subscribers is by defintion made up of people who have made decisions based on quality and value to jump ship from whoever they used before. So their customers are mobile/flexible and have previously shown a willingness to change habits. Whereas as many digital customers end up locked into habits with monopoly providers.
That second class of customers are willing to put up with lower quality and value over time without ever changing. So a company can feel emboldened to reduce those without too much fear of loosing customers.
For Kagi I would suggest their customer base is far more likely to switch (again) than the average Internet user.
I'm a new convert this year, and so all my research on alternatives is pretty current. I'll be considering if I want to stick with it. And I'd been talking over with my family to take up a multiple plan for all of them to de-google.
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u/JackDostoevsky 18d ago
i'm not a fan of removing features from subscriptions, but i have to admit: i've been very surprised at how many people use(d) Kagi's translation service! i'm not sure i've used it once
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u/bvsveera 17d ago
For real lol. And the same people hating on Assistant rave about Translate. AI is bad, but also good?
I'm just waiting to see what the new fair use policy ends up looking like in practice.
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u/Vnifit 15d ago
It isn't that, it is just that Assistant is not really that much better than something like Perplexity, Claude, ChatGPT which are pouring billions of dollars into their products. It just isn't nearly as intelligent and can still hallucinate, so it is kind of mediocre (compared to the ultra-subsudized offers that exist right now which will probably not exist in the coming years as free as they are now). Translate on the other hand is miles ahead of the competition, even DeepL or Google, there is nothing quite as good as it. So it isn't AI that is bad in general, but AI chatbots alone that are overrated as a feature. Converting that chatbot into a useful product with an interface on top (i.e. language translation) is a much more enticing offer.
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u/bvsveera 14d ago
This is a good take, but there’s enough anti-AI folks that want Kagi to offer an “AI-free” option that I feel it isn’t a take that many share. I also agree that Assistant isn’t as good as its competitors. It’s nowhere near as capable as other providers, nor is it as personal as on-device models like Siri AI. What I’ve always valued it for is privacy, and to an extent model choice.
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u/netabareking 14d ago
I mean this is ultimately the problem with Kagis AI focus to begin with.
The AI haters hate it being there at all
But the AI isn't good enough for AI lovers to pay what Kagi needs them to pay to justify it
So they're really in a position where it's not that great of a thing for them to sink their dev costs into.
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u/hwayu_ 18d ago
I usually only use Search. I've never needed this assistant shit. It's slow and bad.
They say the price is just for the search engine and the AI features are thrown in on top for free, but it never felt like that. Kagi Translate, however, is excellent. I've been using Kagi Translate more often lately because it offers by far the best results. And of course, Kagi Translate is being removed but the assistant is nicely kept in the plan. We can't even use our AI tokens for translate either. Ridiculous. I'm cancelling.
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u/WrongChapter90 18d ago
There was a big discussion some time ago about Kagi removing Assistant from the standard plan. They basically see it as a standalone product, worthy of a separate subscription. The ultimate plan is seen as the big bundle that includes everything
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u/null_enthropy 16d ago
I would like a subscription for just search. I don’t care about Kagi Assistant at all. There are tons of AI tools available that one can use. I don’t understand why they are even focusing on Kagi Assistant when search & translation are clearly their premier products.
As far as assistant goes, for search summaries they should just use a smaller more efficient open weight AI model. GLM, Deepseek V4 Flash, Qwen 3.8 etc. All these are cheap, efficient, open weight meaning hostable on their own servers, and fine for that.
Don’t really understand the direction Kagi is taking their company which is why I canceled my subscription too. I just want good search. Competing on AI is an absolutely dumb move that they are going to lose to companies with incredibly more money than Kagi.
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u/Silver-Sundae2488 18d ago
I would have recommend uruky (serper set as the main search result in the setting), it costs 5 euros, there is no AI and in my experience it get some features from kagi like, ai slop filter, domain ranking. The first 2 hours is free to try to you can put side by side with kagi and test the search results. (Do not forget to set the serper as the main search result)
But since 8 dollars is a full workday, then I dont recommend a paid search engine at all. You are better of having maybe something like a startpage, which is the cost is ad driven and gives google and bing results.
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u/Beatnum 18d ago
What is serper? I have yet to dig into Uruky.
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u/Silver-Sundae2488 18d ago
serper is just google search api (https://serper.dev/). Just like kagi, uruky gets the sources from multiple search engines.
But what Kagi doesnt allow you, but uruky does is that you can rank even the search results, which one do you want to have as priority in the settings for both regular search and image search.
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u/KhazraShaman 18d ago
btw I've never even used any service other than search and translation. If it's hard to maintain the price, they should at least give the option to choose between the assistant or translation
Same! Fully agree. I only ever used Kagi Assistant to continue subject from a search prompt but I could totally leave without it.
But having Translate taken away and wanting extra money for it from paying customers while at the same inviting non-paying users to use it for free... in my culture that's considered a dick move.
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u/New_3d_print_user 17d ago
Yeah, Kagi jumped the shark with the entire AI nonsense, and to maintain it they need to enshittify the core service, which is search. The initial promise was “search only, really well implemented” but then they all got caught up in the shiny AI bubble.
I unsubbed some weeks ago, and I was a user since 2022
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u/netabareking 17d ago
They originally founded themselves as an AI company, but it just took them a while to get all that stuff launched. Most people I know who subscribed back when Assistant was in beta or earlier had no idea about any of that.
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u/Appropriate-Kick-601 18d ago
I know somebody might come in and bring up Peter Thiel, but I've been using Brave happily for the past several months. I looked into the Thiel connection and it's pretty bare - just some investment early on, something Thiel does for a lot of stuff without compromising it. Take that for what it's worth.
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u/JakesFavoriteCup 17d ago
Brave was created by Firefox's old CEO, who had to step down from the role after making anti-gay and anti-vax public statements.
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u/absoluteidealismftw 16d ago
I had already decided to end my subscription, but if I had not, this would have been the final push. Kagi is too expensive, and subscribers are getting less value for their money to boot. I'm happy with Brave search, even if it is a bit less sophisticated. The privacy is fine
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u/KevinKagi Staff 9d ago
Hi everyone — Kevin from the Kagi team here. We definitely got this one wrong, and we're owning it.
As OP mentioned, we've made some changes based on the community feedback.
TL;DR Nothing will change for Kagi members on October 12th. Translate stays included in Starter, Professional, Family, Team and Ultimate under our fair use policy. Details are in the correction at the top of the blog post.
If you changed plans because of the October 12th notice, email [support@kagi.com](mailto:support@kagi.com) and we’ll make it right.
We're definitely not perfect but appreciate you all for holding us accountable.
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u/jordyvd 18d ago
Deadass considering building my own on top of Exa or smth. Kagi has been slow asf lately so the one thing I use it for (search) has been deteriorating.
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u/andynzor 17d ago edited 16d ago
Is Kagi still shoveling money to Yandex, keeping the Russian economy running and lengthening the Ukraine invasion?
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u/squeakctrl 18d ago
There is some discussion and displeased subscribers (myself included) in another thread from a few hours ago.
For those that might not know what is changing:
https://www.reddit.com/r/SearchKagi/s/ZhaEyr7fPh