Kagi is contemplating the removal of the assistant from its professional tier

Good. I'm a paying user from day one, and I never used, nor want to see any AI features on my search engine. I'd use Google if I cared about any of that stuff.

Honestly, I just want my money to be used to improve good old match-keywords-against-index search.

Strangely: "Searches are, unexpectedly, more expensive for us to serve than AI. A user that does only traditional searches (not using Assistant) will cost more on our end than someone using AI + search."

https://kagifeedback.org/d/1338-provide-a-plan-without-ai-fu...

I use Kagi search all the time. I often use the Quick Answer feature (append "?" at the end of the query, gives an AI overview/answer, then standard search results below). I never use the full Assistant - I have ChatGPT and Claude for chatbot use cases.

I like Quick Answer because of its ligtweight UX. Ctrl-T for a new tab in any browser window, type the question, get the answer. This is faster and mentally lighter than switching to a chatbot, typing the question there and answering. If I'm to use the chatbot, I don't see a special need to use Kagi's.

(my €0.02 as a paid user)

If they remove a feature (even if I am not using it) while keeping the price the same - why should I stay a customer? I have a contract. And at least in Germany one party to a contract can not just alter the terms of the contract.

They need to cancel the existing contract and offer a new one. And I would not need to accept the new one. Yes, I would not be using Kagi anymore. But why should I have a business relationship with a company that does not honor the contractual obligations it entered into?

I admire and applaud Kagi for what they are trying to be.

But on the AI front, the Assistant is simply worse than using for example Gemini or ChatGPT directly. It is slower, it cannot generate images etc.

To me this seems fine. You'd run out of tokens pretty quick without ultimate anyway, so it is a small cross section of users this affects.

I am interested to learn if anything else is coming besides a billing change. Like will ultimate/assistant subscribers get access to MCP?

From the thread on kagifeedback.org:

"As we prepare to launch Kagi Assistant as a standalone subscription, we're considering changes to how it will be available on the Pro and Starter plans (Search subscriptions).

Currently these plans let you use the Kagi Assistant each month up to the AI cost value included in your subscription, similar to how it works on Ultimate. The change we're consideringn would turn this into more of a trial where you'd still have access to the Assistant, but only up to a fixed usage cap. Once you hit that cap, you'd need to subscribe to either the Ultimate plan or the Kagi Assistant's own subscription to keep using it (same mechanism we already have for Search)."

Kagi is unfortunately in a tough spot, imo.

I'm a happy subscriber, and it's certainly a big improvement over Google search. But the internet just isn't the same place it was five years ago. And as search results (for non-navigational queries) are becoming less useful by the day, I find myself asking AI to do it for me more.

There's a lot to like about Kagi, but they'll probably have to reinvent themselves if they want to grow beyond the niche that high level internet search will probably become.

I didn't consider that bundling Search & Assistant maybe puts them in a tricky spot among some users who revile LLM features, and others who will utilize them to the cap. To the degree that the former is subsidizing the latter, or costing them customers (probably not a ton): I can see why separating the two offerings makes sense.

Though I'm sympathetic to the users for whom this would basically be a strict downgrade in featureset.

The big advantage of this is that instead of getting commentariat feedback, you will see people’s wallet votes on whether they value kagi for being the best of like 6 options for search, or for being a distinctly middle of the pack option in a field of millions of thin llm wrappers.

For a beautiful 6 months before the frontier labs were able to search as part of their responses, Kagi had an edge here. This was when the “AIs hallucinate!” meme was thriving and my response was “Wait, your AI AGENT doesn’t provide references?” and I felt very cutting edge then.

Now that frontier labs have search, generalised tool use, memory, I no longer use The Agent. Haven’t done so for months. I still find great value in Kagi’s FastGPT even though this overlaps with many search engines today. It works well and I don’t pay with my privacy. But there’s no Agent edge any more, Claude wins.

I’ve used it quite a bit, but just as a natural language frontend to their search engine. I don’t see it as a true alternative to generic chat bots like Claude or ChatGPT, and certainly not a coding tool. I would likely not subscribe to Assistant.

Ultimate user here. I assume this doesn't kill "quick answers" for pro users - which I use frequently when I need a quick summarization. For assistant use directly, I've been thinking about stepping back from ultimate, as I use claude for AI rubber ducking; which works better than all of the LLMs available on assistant.

I’m a pro subscriber. I like Kagi, but I think it is getting lost. Instead of focusing on being the best search engine in a world where other search engines have become deeply enshitified, they are joining the enshitification train.

Start by removing features and adding a different subscription. Next add one ad from curated sources. Then add ads everywhere.

I will probably cancel my subscription soon and spare myself the disappointment.

To be honest, while it's great that it uses Kagi as its search engine and that improves the results, I find myself more and more using Claude and Gemini over Assistant while still using Kagi as my main manual search engine. They should probably focus more on their main product instead of LLMs.

I completely forgot this existed.

I like the occasional feature of appending a question mark to your query to get a nice summarizer to comb through the internet so I don't, but I only use it a few times a month.

Why is this on a whole separate domain and why can't I use my Kagi account to comment? Why do I have to sign up here? Why haven't I seen any messaging from Kagi directly about this? This seems really weird.

I've switched to lumo if I need an ai so that's fine by me.

I know I'll sound like a Google shill, but I really don't know how this could compete against what Google AI Studio offers for now. Studio even has free quota (while being completely opaque).

I once feel Kagi is some fresh air that we need for search engine. But now it seems to be more and more directly competing against the other LLM web summery products and imo Google/Gemini is light-seconds ahead in that space. The AI Overview is an ultra water downed version of it and it's still somewhat usable.

Perhaps this move is signaling that they'll be back focusing on search itself more though (I hope so).

Huh, I didn't realize they had a standalone AI mode. I've used the summarizer a few times and found it to be occasionally useful.

Well, the solution is easy if users just paid for AI features separately.

I honestly think that AI goes against Kagis's main purpose. I see it as a tool to search the Internet. Carefully craft what you think is relevant, try to remove as much AI generated crap from your results, etc.

By using AI you are doing the opposite. You are letting some random AI get the results for you.

That's assuming Kagi assistant is the AI that searches the Internet. I don't know, I have never used it. I use Kagi search every day though

I use the assistant daily, often instead of search. The search is good, but the sad fact is searching www has been getting less interesting fast and there simply isn't much of value to find (maybe if they added an option to search in the Wayback Machine? I would pay extra for that!). Adding a LLM on top of search results and to fire off multiple searches makes it possible to sometimes squeeze a little bit of actually useful information out of the cesspool that is modern web.

Without the Assistant I would probably go back down to the lowest kagi tier.

I've been a Kagi Pro user for several years now, and to be honest, the models from the pro tier aren't that useful compared to the free versions of Gemini & ChatGPT.

For me, I pay for Kagi pro for search without Google/Bing enshittification, their Translate (which I use quite often while I'm learning German/working in German - better for me than Google Translate), and their Summarizer. I pay for Claude, and also occasionally use OpenRouter for my AI needs.

While the assistant is a decent add on, it fails as a standalone product. It just isn't in the same league as Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, or even LeChat, and I’d hate to see them waste too much development time on it.

I recommend Kagi focus on being a sidecar to AIs rather than try to offer it in any way; I'm hoping the API comes out and I can get proper search results for my local LLM.

Unless they're building their own LLMs, best not to annoy people who already see random LLMs everywhere.