$25 is a lot per month but it is saving me a lot of time and helping me to find better results so I find it worth it.
I justify the cost by relating it to how it helps me at work. I believe Kagi makes me more effective; my boss(es… :( ) and peers notice, and that translates to better performance evaluations and raises. I don’t hide my usage of it from my team, but I don’t think they realize how much of an advantage it gives me. Once you get the rankings and lenses tuned to your workflow, it’s amazing how it lets you cut through the nonsense of the internet.
I’ve been using it for about a year and a half, on the unlimited plan. I pay for the year up front for the discount. There’s no way I’m willingly going to stop using Kagi. I’m a developer and perform about 2500 searches a month.
The ability to adjust the ranking of domains and the lenses save me a ton of time. No other engine comes close to the productivity.
You can easily talk to the developers and founder, too. I’ve had many of my suggestions actually implemented. It’s great when you pay for the service and they are in it for you, not your data.
FWIW, the AI features are not used to provide search results; they are all on-demand and triggered by the user (via Quick Answer, or Universal Summarizer, or the “discuss this site” feature).
The founder is well aware of the problems with AI and that is taken into account when deciding how to use it in Kagi.
See this link: https://blog.kagi.com/kagi-ai-search#philosophy