Kagi is a paid, ad-free search engine with a built-in AI assistant (called Assistant), summarization for any URL, and the ability to block or boost specific domains in your personal results. It prioritizes human-made content and lets you tune results to match your preferences without an ad auction distorting what you see.
ShareTool Verdict- 8/10
The most credible answer to declining Google quality. If you do research or technical queries regularly, the signal-to-noise improvement over Google is real and noticeable within a week. The $10 Professional plan is the right starting point - Starter's 100-search limit is too tight for daily use.
Users who switch to Kagi become loyal fast. The dominant sentiment is that search quality is meaningfully better than Google for anything technical or research-oriented. Price is the main barrier to adoption.
Starter
$5/mo
100 searches per month, AI Assistant, URL summarizer
Professional
$10/mo
Unlimited searches, all features, FastGPT, custom lenses
Ultimate
$25/mo
Everything in Pro plus early access features and the highest AI model tier
Because free search is not free - you pay with your data and your attention. Kagi's incentive is to give you better results, not to sell ads. Users report that the quality difference over Google is most noticeable on technical and research queries where SEO content farms dominate Google's first page.
Kagi Assistant combines live web search with AI reasoning using models including Claude and GPT-4. You can choose which model to use depending on the task. It cites sources so you can verify its answers.
For most queries yes, though Google still has an edge on local search, Maps, and very fresh news. Most Kagi users find it fully replaces Google for everything except local intent queries.
The URL summarizer can access cached or partial versions of some paywalled content, but it is not a reliable paywall bypass. It works best on freely accessible content and PDFs.
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“Paying for search still feels psychologically wrong even though I know it is the right model”
RedditAnalyzed · June 2026
The Starter plan limits you to 100 searches per month at $5. Most active users need the Professional plan at $10 for unlimited searches. The Starter plan is best for testing whether Kagi's quality justifies the switch.
