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Comment by jen729w | Hacker News Reader

As an existing happy subscriber to Kagi, this statement is illogical.

I currently pay for x. Soon I’ll get x + y for the same money.

That’s better.

I am also an existing happy subscriber to Kagi. I currently pay for unlimited X. Now I pay for limited X, where I can't even see if I'm approaching limits or not. Anyway, my main point is that I'm getting LESS for the same money.

Search isn't getting limited is it?

And the GPT features always had some limits.

I'm not paying for search, I'm paying for Unlimited Assistant. No, they did not "have some limits". Or at least, the product they sold me was very clearly labelled "Unlimited". The word "Unlimited" is literally in the name, and it was described as such in more wordly descriptions.

Maybe your usage might not be affected, I propose to check for a month and if it really goes over the limit, you have the option of canceling the subscription.

It definitely is worded in a way that it can either be interpreted as (unlimited searches and unlimited premium ai) or (unlimited searches and premium ai).

It also may not help that they did not enforce the fair use policy until now. At least that is what I read out of their blog post.

But the fair use policy has been included a long time. I checked 2023-12-25 and found it there, might be available earlier, but no interest in looking harder.

They advertise with the phrase "Unlimited Kagi Assistant", so I'm not sure how you can interpret that as "unlimited searches and premium ai". Kagi Assistant refers to the same thing as "ai" here. It's a different product than Search.

I'm not going to argue about your interpretation of the word unlimited and wish that its use was either banned or strictly enforced in this (and similar) contexts. That said, until accountability is legislated and enforced, it is not reasonable to assume that unlimited means unlimited. Just as marketing abuses the word, customers abuse the concept. That's especially true in a domain where processes can be automated and distributed, by some means or others.

> it is not reasonable to assume that unlimited means unlimited

sure, but I am not abusing the unlimited plan. it is reasonable to assume that "unlimited" means that a normal user like myself will not run into limits.

If you’re not abusing it and are just using it like a normal user, you won’t hit the limit.

As far as you’re concerned, nothing will change, so I’m not sure why you think this is bad for you.

You seem very confident I will not hit the limit. So presumably you know where the limits are? Where are they?

It’s all written in the blog post

No it is not.

The article claims that 95% of users won't be affected when enforcing the policy. Assuming the claim is true, not affecting 95% of users is pretty much the definition of not affecting normal users.

That policy is there because some users were incurring >$500 in AI costs in ultimate.

Out of tens of thousands of users, the top 100 were using 48% of total AI costs.

Kagi is bootstrapped, it can't just hemorrhage money like this the way the VC-subsidized AI startups do

That is totally unsurprising. I would be curious to see what they are doing to achieve that. Likely automating something and not using it like a typical human would.

No! Are you wilfully misrepresenting this?

You currently pay for unlimited X.

Now you get unlimited X + limited Y.

More.

I'm going to take a charitable interpretation of your post and assume that you have simply misunderstood Kagi subscription tiers, and you have mistakenly assumed that I was on the first tier. I am not on the first tier. I am on the tier which they continue to advertise with the words "Unlimited Kagi Assistant". That is the product I am paying for. Now, instead of getting "Unlimited Kagi Assistant", I am getting "Limited Kagi Assistant".

"As an existing happy subscriber" -- goodness! Even after years of seeing what happens after such illogical evangelism, hn never ceases to surprise you and brings the fandom out in full force. It's like with Apple. You say once "your phone switches on and off on its own - maybe something is amiss with the hw/sw" and there are dozens of replies already blaming you "you must be holding it wrong!". It's a whole new level of apologism.

I don't follow what either you or the OP are upset about. Where is the apologism and why do you think it's needed?

Kagi rolled out a free feature to its existing customers without increasing the price of their plans. The limits of that plan seem quite generous, as well. The only way I can make sense of the OP's post is that the OP wants the Kagi subscription price to decrease. Perhaps that's fair, but it doesn't make any sense here because you're strictly getting more for your money. If you're paying $10/month for a subscription, yesterday you couldn't use Assistant and today you can for the same $10/month. Placing a cap on how much you can use seems quite reasonable given the service costs money to operate. If you choose not use it, you're no worse than you were yesterday... you can happily go about using the search service you were already paying for.

Is the problem that the free usage isn't unlimited? Is it that not using the free service doesn't reduce the search price? Or is it that those using Assistant more than you appear to be getting more value for their money? I'm not trying to be dense, but I really don't see what's even remotely controversial about this announcement.

Lately, every subscription I have is increasing the fee without giving me anything. Kagi is giving me something extra without charging me any more money. I'm sure the nefarious intention is to make their service more attractive to non-subscribers and grow their userbase, but interests can align.

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