Phind
Ranked 4 of 5 AI search engines by recommenders
People recommend Phind for AI web search with verifiable links and detailed answers, though critics say its mini-apps break and answers have slipped.
People recommend Phind for AI web search with verifiable links and detailed answers, though critics say its mini-apps break and answers have slipped.
54 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 36
- criticize it
- 18
- approval share
- 67%
Recommended in 3 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Owned for 1 year
Median of the 3 owners who said how long they have had it.
Each square is one year.
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 36 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 2 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 3 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, not met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Strong web search in chat
“they were the first ones that did web search in AI chat well enough to make AI actually into a useful daily tool”
Comment from 13 Jan 2026 in “Phind.com Is Shutting Down” “Just ask Phind/Perplexity to explain the problem, give the solution and provide verifiable links one can check to validate.”
Comment from 1 Jan 2026 in “2025 was a disaster for Windows 11 as bugs and intrusive features erode trust” Detailed, clear answers and troubleshooting
“it came up with very detailed instructions and troubleshooting tips”
Comment from 3 Dec 2025 in “Launch HN: Phind 3 (YC S22) – Every answer is a mini-app” “I wasn't able to make it do that, but the information was still there presented in a reasonable way!”
Comment from 3 Dec 2025 in “Launch HN: Phind 3 (YC S22) – Every answer is a mini-app” “My attempt gave more reasonable results”
Comment from 3 Dec 2025 in “Launch HN: Phind 3 (YC S22) – Every answer is a mini-app” - Comment from 3 Dec 2025 in “Launch HN: Phind 3 (YC S22) – Every answer is a mini-app”
Useful mini-apps and clean format
“rough edges but overall love the format”
Comment from 3 Dec 2025 in “Launch HN: Phind 3 (YC S22) – Every answer is a mini-app” “I got clean and focused answer to my query and an app.”
Comment from 3 Dec 2025 in “Launch HN: Phind 3 (YC S22) – Every answer is a mini-app” “This is so cool. These are shareable I guess?”
Comment from 4 Dec 2025 in “Launch HN: Phind 3 (YC S22) – Every answer is a mini-app” Responsive, pleasant web app
“the UX was generally great, and the webapp felt responsive”
Comment from 9 Dec 2025 in “Launch HN: Phind 3 (YC S22) – Every answer is a mini-app” “This is pretty cool. Congrats on the launch! ... I'm initially impressed!”
Comment from 4 Dec 2025 in “Launch HN: Phind 3 (YC S22) – Every answer is a mini-app”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Mini-apps and diagrams break or misfire
“the interactivity/functionality didn't work and choice of visualization was poor for the domain”
Comment from 3 Dec 2025 in “Launch HN: Phind 3 (YC S22) – Every answer is a mini-app” “Some of the mini-apps actually feel useful, but others break in ways you wouldn't expect.”
Comment from 3 Dec 2025 in “Launch HN: Phind 3 (YC S22) – Every answer is a mini-app” “it created an unrelated page”
Comment from 3 Dec 2025 in “Launch HN: Phind 3 (YC S22) – Every answer is a mini-app” - Comment from 4 Dec 2025 in “Launch HN: Phind 3 (YC S22) – Every answer is a mini-app”
Answers weaker than rival models
“Claude 4.5 Opus in Phind gave a better answer than Phind Fast here”
Comment from 3 Dec 2025 in “Launch HN: Phind 3 (YC S22) – Every answer is a mini-app” “I agree that this answer was a bit wacky.”
Comment from 3 Dec 2025 in “Launch HN: Phind 3 (YC S22) – Every answer is a mini-app” “they swiched from gpt4 to phind-70b as driver behind their answers”
Comment from 13 Jan 2026 in “Phind.com Is Shutting Down” - Comment from 3 Dec 2025 in “Launch HN: Phind 3 (YC S22) – Every answer is a mini-app”
Slow, buggy, error-prone interface
“too slow man. come on. you make phind worse and worse. unusable.”
Comment from 8 Dec 2025 in “Launch HN: Phind 3 (YC S22) – Every answer is a mini-app” “Now, it's much slower and has some kind of solution view that gets updated with every new message.”
Comment from 3 Dec 2025 in “Launch HN: Phind 3 (YC S22) – Every answer is a mini-app” “Application error: a client-side exception has occurred while loading www.phind.com”
Comment from 3 Dec 2025 in “Launch HN: Phind 3 (YC S22) – Every answer is a mini-app” - Comment from 4 Dec 2025 in “Launch HN: Phind 3 (YC S22) – Every answer is a mini-app”
Unclear purpose and weak moat
“I just dont see a moat or any vertical direction”
Comment from 3 Dec 2025 in “Launch HN: Phind 3 (YC S22) – Every answer is a mini-app” “for most use cases, this will begin to feel gimmicky rather quickly”
Comment from 3 Dec 2025 in “Launch HN: Phind 3 (YC S22) – Every answer is a mini-app” “I don't understand what the "one-off app" is trying to achieve.”
Comment from 3 Dec 2025 in “Launch HN: Phind 3 (YC S22) – Every answer is a mini-app” - Comment from 13 Jan 2026 in “Phind.com Is Shutting Down”
Other AI search engines people recommend
The four most recommended other AI search engines, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Perplexity | 121 | 102 | 54% | 12 | 1 yr7 owners | — |
| Kagi Assistant | 79 | 20 | 80% | 12 | — | Approved |
| Google AI Mode | 74 | 92 | 45% | 12 | — | — |
| PhindThis page | 36 | 18 | 67% | 3 | 1 yr3 owners | — |
| Google AI summaries | 13 | 37 | 26% | 7 | — | — |
What people said
40 of the 64 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“they swiched from gpt4 to phind-70b as driver behind their answers”
“they were the first ones that did web search in AI chat well enough to make AI actually into a useful daily tool”
“So... vaporware that could no longer compete with the big three frontier LLM firms?”
“Just ask Phind/Perplexity to explain the problem, give the solution and provide verifiable links one can check to validate.”
“the UX was generally great, and the webapp felt responsive”
“too slow man. come on. you make phind worse and worse. unusable.”
“It looks amazing. But the image aspect ratio is incorrect.”
“the map doesn't refresh when I click another pin, that's so annoying”
“instead of adding features to their product incrementally they decided to make that one feature their product”
“This is pretty cool. Congrats on the launch! ... I'm initially impressed!”
“The problem is, it says to select the appropriate answer, but selection does not work.”
“This opens up new possibilities for enterprise use.”
“This is so cool. These are shareable I guess?”
“this might replace chatGPT for me for learning stuff”
“low contrast text which is at times _very_ hard to read”
“I used Phind successfully about 2 years ago to make my way around an old codebase”
“Now, it's much slower and has some kind of solution view that gets updated with every new message.”
“I would like to see a detection of when I want a one sentence answer”
“My attempt gave more reasonable results”
“I don't understand what the "one-off app" is trying to achieve.”
“Claude 4.5 Opus in Phind gave a better answer than Phind Fast here”
“I wasn't able to make it do that, but the information was still there presented in a reasonable way!”
“the interactivity/functionality didn't work and choice of visualization was poor for the domain”
“I got clean and focused answer to my query and an app.”
“the diagrams are a lot less annoying in this new version”
“ChatGPT + phind always creating massive diagrams I kinda stopped using it unconsciously”
“it came up with very detailed instructions and troubleshooting tips”
“Awesome job is it possible to have predefined specing features”
“rough edges but overall love the format”
“long term phind user here. phind became absolute sh*t. almost every answer is wrong.”
“models are rapidly improving at building on-demand software and this will directly benefit Phind”
“Selecting Phind Large, GPT-5.1, and Claude models would be better for a modeling task like this.”
“I agree that this answer was a bit wacky.”
“Some of the mini-apps actually feel useful, but others break in ways you wouldn't expect.”
“for most use cases, this will begin to feel gimmicky rather quickly”
“That is really cool! Congrat on the launch!”
“I just dont see a moat or any vertical direction”
“It seems to work except when I connect to my work VPN”
“Application error: a client-side exception has occurred while loading www.phind.com”
“it created an unrelated page”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.