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Comment by segasaturn | Hacker News Reader

If Kagi made a cheaper "no AI" tier I would be happy to subscribe. AI is costly to run, so even if you don't use the AI it's priced into your subscription fee - you're paying for an expensive product you don't want or use.

e: according to Kagi's pricing page they do have a 'no AI' tier, but it limits your number of searches to 300/month. Seems like a totally arbitrary limitation, but its still better than forced AI.

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I understand your point in general, but I don’t think it applies to Kagi. Users were paying the same monthly fee and then the company added those features on with no extra subscription cost. I also like that it doesn’t clutter my search. It doesn’t appear unless I press the AI button or end my search with a question mark (can also be disabled).

The only extra costs are if you use the (opt-in optional) AI Assistant which is a web UI to access various models for chatting purposes. As an aside, they recently updated this UI so it’s actually usable as a ChatGPT or Claude alternative.

Yeah I'm on the 300 per month tier. I tend to hit that limit after about 3 weeks, which is certainly annoying.

yeah I hit it in about two. I just signed up monthly to try it out for a bit but am wavering on whether I consider it worth it. It's good but I'm not sure it's enough better than DDG to pay for.

And for AI I'd usually rather have API access and use it with tools rather than a web chat.

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