this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2025
185 points (91.5% liked)

Technology

76635 readers
2649 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
L3s@lemmy.world
enu@lemmy.world
technopagan@lemmy.world
L4s@lemmy.world
L3s@hackingne.ws
L4s@hackingne.ws
185
Is Kagi search engine worth it? (kagi.com)
submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by fdrc_lm@lemmy.blahaj.zone to c/technology@lemmy.world
94 comments fedilink hide all child comments
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Glitchvid@lemmy.world 65 points 2 days ago (3 children)

I use Kagi because the truth is all other corporate alternatives at this point are unusable swill.

That said, I do not like the company and disagree with their choices in many aspects.

For one, while they don't force you to use AI features, there isn't a way to explicitly turn them off for your account, there always the opportunity to rack up token costs if you accidently hit one of the AI buttons.

They still don't run their own index, instead complacent to just pay the other search providers. Additionally, if you're trying to escape Google... Kagi runs on Google Cloud Services.

There's more complaints, and I'm sure others will chime in, but that's my take.

[–] logi@piefed.world 24 points 2 days ago

Hey, Good job not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.

[–] AnAmericanPotato@programming.dev 24 points 2 days ago (1 children)

there always the opportunity to rack up token costs if you accidently hit one of the AI buttons.

How do you mean? I don't think there's any way to incur charges for AI usages beyond your subscription fee unless you are coding against their API.

[–] Glitchvid@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

The AI assistant is backed by several different models which IIRC just call out to those providers (Op*nAI API, etc) and rack up tokens in the billing system:

collapsed inline mediaimage
You might be right that the AI cost is included when below the plan price — to that I have to say, give me a fucking cheaper plan that doesn't implicitly include the cost of AI.

[–] Scolding7300@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

https://kagifeedback.org/

Ask/vote for it there, will be useful for others

[–] Glitchvid@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

If you search some people already have. https://kagifeedback.org/d/6842-non-ai-unlimited-plan/39

And... it's not a priority for them, maybe they'll charge you $5 to disable AI features though 🙃

[–] specialwall@midwest.social 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

What specifically do you think is hard to avoid? I've never accidentally triggered a quick answer, personally

[–] Glitchvid@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

As far as I can tell, you have to completely disable all keyboard shortcuts or else when you press A anywhere that isn't the search box you get dumped immediately into their AI assistant prompted with whatever you already had in the search bar.

It didn't track me more than a few pennies, but on principle the several times that happened made me angry.

Apparently some of the news views in search are also easy to dump you into AI land. There's community CSS add on that hides all that stuff now, but I wish the company would let me just disable the AI traps.