Kagi’s “Assistant” feature, previously only available to Ultimate subscribers, is now rolling out to all tiers — including the free trial tier. The feature gives you access to a range of different LLMs for both chatting and web-searching purposes.
If you don’t know much about Kagi, it’s a paid search engine that borrows its name from the Japanese word for “key.” The concept is simple — with Google, you pay for the service by allowing ads and data collection. With Kagi, you pay for the service with money to get a private and ad-free experience.
There are also open-source and free-to-use search engines out there that focus on data privacy, but they nearly always have ads and they nearly always struggle to get the funding they need to improve their services and expand their features at a decent rate.
As a search engine that’s funded by its users, Kagi can axe the ads, keep your data locked up safe, and bring you plenty of new and polished features to improve your search experience.
Kagi’s default homepage is a big old Google-style search bar, as most search engines tend to have, but when you switch to Assistant mode, you’ll get an LLM-style chat interface instead. You can choose the AI model you want to use from the drop-down box and use the toggle next to it to control whether the model has access to the web or not.
Without the web, you can use the chatbot just as you would normally. With the web, the AI model will be powered by Kagi Search, allowing you to ask anything you want and get generated responses complete with hyperlinked references.
Since Kagi is a paid service, the higher your subscription tier, the more you get. The Ultimate tier gets access to the best AI models along with unlimited interactions and searches. It costs $25 a month and is mostly aimed at professionals and super AI fans.
Apparently, the average Google user searches three or four times a day or around 100 times a month, so Kagi believes most people probably only need the $5 Starter plan, which provides 300 searches and AI interactions per month. This tier gets access to the “standard” AI models including:
If you want unlimited searches and interactions but you’re not bothered about the top-tier AI models, then you can choose the Professional plan for $10 a month.
The trial tier will also have access to the Assistant feature, allowing anyone to try it out for a total of 100 searches and interactions. Kagi also has an interesting “Fair Pricing” system that doesn’t charge you if you don’t use it. If you pay your fee at the start of the month but then don’t use the service, you’ll receive a full credit to your account to pay for the next month.
Paying for a search engine can definitely seem odd at first, but these services have never actually been free — they’ve always been powered by advertising. And as time has gone on, tracking and data collection practices have become part of the game as well. I’m personally pretty intrigued by this whole thing, so I’m going to subscribe and use this service for a while to see what it’s like.
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