# Kagi 732 Hacker News commenters recommended Kagi and 234 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 13 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 2 years (106 owners). It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule. **Verdict:** A paid search engine people choose for cleaner results without ads or tracking, with domain blocking, customization and opt-in AI answers; critics object to its Yandex data and pricing. ## Why people recommend it - You're the customer, not product (5 comments): "if you care more about not having your data/attention be the revenue source and having software incentives be to offer something customers are willing to part money for, Kagi is still it." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48781049)) "I really like Kagi because of all the features and just generally letting me be a user instead of a product, but they have some weird kludges sometimes." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46554794)) "The whole value proposition of kagi is that it moves you from being the product(eyeballs for ads) to the customer of a product(search results)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48230933)) - Better results than Google (8 comments): "I (and a non trivial number of people I knok) have switched to Kagi for search just to avoid having to deal with the bullshit that is the above the fold google search results." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50293190)) "I am quite happy with my Kagi search results. The biggest weakness I have noticed in my few months using it is that it is a terrible experience for shopping." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47417664)) "Yet they somehow manage to filter them out with a fraction of the resources available to Google itself with no negative impact on search quality." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46834142)) - Opt-in AI summaries with question mark (4 comments): "I really like how Kagi does it - summary only appears if you finish your query with a question mark, or if you press "q" after loading the results" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46022921)) "With Kagi you can opt in to an LLM summary of the search result by appending a question mark to the query. It's a neat mechanism when it works!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46709785)) "I love the way Kagi does AI - it defaults to a regular search, but if you add a question mark to the end, it will give you an AI answer." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48302564)) - Domain blocking and result customization (4 comments): "Im happy with it. I have filters which will try to find search results from before 2022, which has greatly improved the quality of results for me" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45937965)) "It does one job and does it well, and you have additional features if you want/need to configure them or tweak the results to your liking." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48509511)) "the results are great, the assistant is great, and I like customizing the search result UI as well to look as clean as possible" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47234115)) ## What people warn about - Uses Yandex/Russian data (2 comments): "they use Yandex(be it only for images according to their own words) and I'm sure as hell refusing to give a single cent to them" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48396899)) "their stubbornness in using Russian data in their indexing, and paying Russian businesses for the data is what is stopping me" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49389555)) - Pricing and AI bundling (4 comments): "And search won't get cheaper because I imagine they've made the mistake of treating the unused AI credit as a subsidy for other services" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49651220)) "seeing AI bundled with searches in the pricing for Kagi really just sucks the value out of the main reason I want to switch to Kagi" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45999356)) "I dont find myself googling (searching) much anymore, so paying to do so just becomes something i need to find a way around." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49061233)) - Still surfaces slop and listicles (2 comments): "The results for every search was jammed with AI and "listicles" and all this shit that made the results essentially impossible to parse for me" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47422373)) "every time I search for something, I have to use 100% of my brain just to work out which results are slops and which are not, even on Kagi" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47226058)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [DuckDuckGo](https://hackerapproved.com/p/duckduckgo.md): 286 recommend - [SearXNG](https://hackerapproved.com/p/searxng.md): 76 recommend - [Brave Search](https://hackerapproved.com/p/brave-search.md): 67 recommend - [Startpage](https://hackerapproved.com/p/startpage.md): 25 recommend - [Qwant](https://hackerapproved.com/p/qwant.md): 22 recommend ## Where to get it - [Visit the official site](https://kagi.com/) ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Kagi", https://hackerapproved.com/p/kagi/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).