Is it worth paying for a premium search engine?

Premium search engines claim to protect user privacy and keep them from seeing annoying ads while still getting the results they want. Some people have tried Kagi, but while it meets these criteria, they are not yet willing to pay for it.

Why wouldn't people pay for a premium search engine?

1. More manual effort for targeted search results

No search engine is better than Google at providing tailored search results. Kagi allows you to customize what you see, but the process is more hands-on.

When searching on Kagi, you can select the shield icon and decide whether the results are relevant or not. For example, you can pin websites; if they're not useful, you can block them completely.

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While this feature is useful, people prefer the way Google shows more targeted results right away. Many browsers also have privacy features like 'Do Not Track,' so you can at least make your searches a little more private.

2. People don't mind seeing targeted ads

Many people have no problem seeing targeted ads on search engines, websites, or social media. However, people start to have problems when ads become intrusive or irrelevant to their interests. For example, if a website is unusable because it has too many ads, find an alternative.

Paid ads are easy to ignore. But if you feel differently, consider signing up for a paid search engine instead.

3. Not everyone likes a different look and feel

No one likes using programs with outdated interfaces. Unfortunately, people always feel this way when using paid search engines. You can extend this to almost any search engine besides Google.

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While everything else is neat at first, the interface looks 20 years old after you search. Aesthetics are important to many people, and Google's search results look great. Plus, you can access tools like Maps and get an overview — like the weather forecast for a destination — more easily. Google's interactive widgets like this make finding simple information a breeze. You can find some of this information (like weather) in Kagi, but you have to do a specific search.

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4. Some search results appear outdated

Beauty is important, but people are willing to compromise aesthetics to get the results they want. Unfortunately, many of the search results in Kagi are outdated.

For example, when searching for a city, the author of the article gets results from blogs that haven't been updated in years. This would be fine if the information was accurate, but much of the content isn't even formatted anymore (i.e. some images won't display themselves).

Some queries are also out of date. For example, one query still includes information about COVID-19 entry requirements. Additionally, some images in the search results look like they haven't been updated in years.

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Should you pay for a premium search engine?

While many people won't pay for a premium search engine (for the reasons above), some may think otherwise. If you don't like seeing paid ads in your search results, removing them through a premium search engine might be a good idea. Kagi starts at $5/month for 300 searches, going up to $25/month for unlimited searches.

The option to choose whether a site is relevant or not in Kagi is appreciated by many users. It's definitely one of the better private search engines out there. Google does most of the segmentation for you, but it's a nice feature nonetheless. However, it's not enough to convert people on its own.

While paying for privacy is something to consider, there's no denying that DuckDuckGo has a better experience than Kagi, so if privacy is a big concern, consider DuckDuckGo first.

Kareem Winters

Update 22 January 2025