Kagi
At #1 of 16 in our search engines ranking, Kagi is summed up in the catalogue as: Subscription search with no ads and monthly search allowances by tier.
Sebastiaan SmitsFounderCommercial relationships can affect which products appear and how prominently. The Kagi link is marked as every vendor link is, see disclosure.
Visit Kagi See it in the search engines ranking
At a glance
| Headquarters | United States |
|---|---|
| Free plan | No |
| API | Not stated in the pages we read |
| Deployment | Left open by the sources we used |
| Pricing model | Monthly subscription with published tiers; limited trial before paying |
| Best for | People who will pay monthly for ad-free results and personal ranking settings |
What is Kagi?
Kagi is a paid search engine made by Kagi Inc. of San Francisco. It has no ads, and the vendor says it is funded entirely by its users and does not track them. The vendor says it combines results from the most popular search engines, strips out ads, trackers and sponsored content, and does not store search queries after results are returned.
Users can raise, lower, pin or block sites, limit searches with Lenses, and filter by source type. Around search sits a family of tools: Kagi Assistant for chat with language models, Quick Answer, Translate, Maps, News, Summarize, a developer API and the Orion browser. The vendor says more than 75,000 members pay for it. Plans start with a limited free trial and run from $5 to $25 per month for individuals, with Family and Team plans.
Kagi key features
- Personalized ranking. Members can raise, lower, pin or block any website in their results. The vendor says no other major engine in its comparison table offers this. Settings made through Personalized Results are shared automatically across a Team plan.
- Lenses. A lens restricts search to a chosen set of sites or conditions. You can share a lens through a link, which opens a pre-filled create form for another Kagi user, and on Team plans a lens can be shared with all members.
- Bangs and Snaps. Typing @ plus a short code limits a search to one site, for example @r for Reddit. The vendor lists Snaps and bangs as shortcuts for going straight to favorite independent sites or other engines.
- Quick Answer and Assistant. Adding a question mark to a search gives a summarized answer with sources. Kagi Assistant offers chat with models, and the Ultimate plan adds Research mode and flagship models from several providers. Threads can expire 24 hours after the last message or be kept.
- SlopStop and AI image filter. The vendor lists SlopStop and an option to exclude AI-generated images from results, aimed at users who want less machine-made content in what they read and see.
- Privacy options. Members can use a pseudonymous email address, pay with cryptocurrency, access through Tor or use Privacy Pass, which lets a browser authenticate without linking searches to the account. The vendor says it does not load analytics or track which result you click.
- Verbatim and recency. A verbatim mode matches exactly what you type, with no synonyms or spelling corrections, and results can be ordered by recency. An advanced search form combines several filters.
Who Kagi suits
- A developer who searches documentation all day. The developer blocks content-farm sites, pins official docs and builds a lens for a few reference sites. Because Professional has unlimited searches at $10 per month, heavy use does not run into the 300-search cap of Starter.
- A family with school-age children. The Family plan adds a kid-friendly profile with stricter content filters, larger text and parental controls. Parents can restrict kids to a whitelist of sites through lenses, and adults can be upgraded to Ultimate features for $15 more each per month.
- A 15-person research team. The Team plan gives each member Professional at $10 or Ultimate at $25 per month, shares blocked, lowered, raised and pinned domains and shared lenses, and shows an analytics page with 28-day usage. Inactive members are not billed.
Getting started with Kagi
You can start a free trial from the sign-up page; the trial includes 100 searches and 100 Kagi Assistant interactions, and the vendor says you can use all features.
After sign-up the docs have a Quick Start and a guide to setting Kagi as your default search engine, plus a Privacy Pass extension for Chrome, Edge, Brave, Vivaldi, Opera and Firefox, and an Android app. The vendor suggests starting with the Starter plan and says you can upgrade or downgrade at any time, with the unused balance pro-rated.
Strengths and limits of Kagi
- Kagi sells search to its users instead of to advertisers, so its ranking has no sponsored slots to protect.
- Kagi is tagged AI assistant add-on in our records.
- Marked in our records as no ads.
- Strongest for: People who will pay monthly for ad-free results and personal ranking settings.
- Paid search is among the traits we single out for it.
- Less suited to: Households that want a search engine with no account or payment.
- Search is metered on the cheapest paid tier, so a heavy user has to move up.
- Part of the results come from third-party search providers through anonymised calls, so the index is not wholly Kagi's own.
Verdict: Kagi
Kagi sells search to its users instead of to advertisers, so its ranking has no sponsored slots to protect. The cheapest paid tier caps searches at 300, unlimited search starts one tier up, and the premium AI models sit in the top tier.
It is a Delaware public benefit corporation, and its results blend its own index with calls to other providers.
The search engines list places Kagi 1 of 16: Mojeek follows directly after it. Places 1 to 3 in every list go to challengers where the category has them, so this is a position on that rule and not a score.
By headquarters, 5 of the 16 are established in North America, as Kagi is in the United States.
Kagi pros and cons in practice
- Result control (block, lower, raise, pin) and lenses let you tune what appears, instead of leaving ranking to an advertiser-funded engine.
- Privacy practices are documented in detail, including log retention periods and cookie lists.
- The fair pricing rule credits a month in which you did not use the service.
- Family and Team plans add shared settings and billing control.
- It is a paid product: the Starter plan caps searches at 300 per month and Professional is $10 per month.
- The Trial plan stops at 100 searches and 100 Assistant interactions, so evaluation time is short.
- Premium AI models and Research mode need the $25 Ultimate plan.
- Assistant plans are subject to a Fair Use Policy, and additional payments may be needed if limits are reached.
Paying for Kagi
In the catalogue: Monthly subscription with published tiers; limited trial before paying.
After the trial (100 searches) the printed individual plans are Starter at $5 per month with 300 searches, Professional at $10 per month with unlimited searches, and Ultimate at $25 per month with premium AI models and Research mode, all plus sales tax; annual billing is 10 percent off. Team plans charge $10 or $25 per active member per month. Family upgrades to Ultimate features cost $15 extra per member. Unused months are credited under the vendor's fair pricing policy. The base Family price was not shown on pages we read.
We took this from kagi.com, the vendor’s own site, when we reviewed Best Search Engines in 2026; that review is dated 7 November 2026.
Kagi: data and security
The privacy page says Kagi loads no analytics or telemetry, does not track which result you click and does not store search queries linked to an account. Server logs are kept briefly and not tied to accounts: load balancer and virtual machine logs for 7 days, Sentry error data for 90 days.
Assistant threads delete after one day by default. Payments run through Stripe, PayPal and OpenNode. A GDPR and CCPA rights addendum exists. Hosting region and certifications are not stated.
Integrations and ecosystem
Integrations the vendor names (12):
- Orion browser
- Kagi Privacy Pass extension (Chrome, Edge, Brave, Vivaldi, Opera, Firefox)
- Kagi app for Android
- Kagi API
- Sign in with Apple, Google or Microsoft
- Stripe
- PayPal
- OpenNode
- Apple Maps
- Mapbox
- Yelp
- TripAdvisor
Kagi in numbers and labels
| Product | Kagi |
|---|---|
| Vendor website | kagi.com |
| Rank there | #1 of 16 |
| Alternatives page | Not part of the alternatives set |
| Catalogue tags | Paid search, No ads, AI assistant add-on |
| Price visibility | A price or free offer is shown |
| Head-to-head pages | 1 |
| Headquarters | United States (North America) |
| Primary guide | Best Search Engines in 2026 |
| Not in our data | user counts and financial results |
Where else Kagi is ranked
| Guide | Position |
|---|---|
| Best Search Engines in 2026 | #1 of 16 |
Alternatives to Kagi
Shared tags and a similar price model decide who is listed here; where none match, the neighbours in the ranking fill in.
- Brave Search (#3 of 16): Independent index from the Brave browser company, with a paid API.
- Yahoo Search (#10 of 16): Ad-funded portal search whose help page does not name its result supplier. Watch out: the help page does not say whose index supplies the algorithmic results. (United States)
- Microsoft Bing (#11 of 16): Microsoft's web search, and a named source for other engines here. (United States)
- Swisscows (#16 of 16): A good match for: Users who want a Swiss-registered engine and are willing to pay to remove ads. (Switzerland)
Side-by-side pages with Kagi
- Kagi vs Brave Search: pick Kagi when you are happy to pay each month for results with no sponsored slots, and want a published price for your search volume.
Questions about Kagi
9 answersIs Kagi a European company?
The united states is the home country of Kagi, in the North America group. Country here means the contracting company, which can differ from where servers run.
What else should I look at besides Kagi?
Start with Brave Search, Yahoo Search, Microsoft Bing and Swisscows. You will find each one reviewed in the search engines ranking.
Is Kagi free, or what does it charge?
The pricing entry for Kagi reads: Monthly subscription with published tiers; limited trial before paying. On free access, nothing is free to use, as far as we recorded.
Is Kagi the right fit for me?
People who will pay monthly for ad-free results and personal ranking settings. It does not fit as well for households that want a search engine with no account or payment.
Where does Kagi stand among search engines?
In our search engines list Kagi stands at place 1 of 16.
Is Kagi free?
Not for ongoing use. There is a trial with 100 searches and 100 Assistant interactions.
Paid plans then start at $5 per month for 300 searches, $10 per month for unlimited searches and $25 per month with premium AI. Annual billing is 10 percent cheaper, and sales tax is added.
What happens if I do not use Kagi for a month?
Under the vendor's fair pricing policy, a month with no searches or AI interactions earns a full credit applied to your next billing cycle, so the following month costs nothing. For yearly plans, a whole unused year earns a credit equal to the yearly price.
Does Kagi log what I search?
The vendor says searches are not stored or linked to an account and it does not track which result you click.
Server logs are held for short periods, 7 days for load balancer and virtual machine logs and 90 days for Sentry error data, and are not linked to accounts.
Can I pay with PayPal or Bitcoin?
Yes. The vendor accepts PayPal and OpenNode, a Bitcoin payment processor. These methods do not create a subscription; they top up account credit, which then funds your membership. The privacy page also suggests crypto payment as a way to maximize anonymity.
Kagi: sources
Read from the vendor’s own pages on 5 November 2026.
- kagi.com/pricing: plan prices, trial limits, fair pricing, payment methods
- kagi.com/about: features, 75,000 members, comparison table
- kagi.com/privacy: logging, retention, cookies, AI data handling
- help.kagi.com/kagi/plans/plan-types.html: plan details and fair pricing rules
- help.kagi.com/kagi/plans/team-plan.html: team plan pricing and analytics
- help.kagi.com/kagi/plans/family-plan.html: family plan features
- help.kagi.com/kagi/features/lenses.html: lens sharing
- help.kagi.com/kagi/ai/assistant.html: Assistant thread retention
- help.kagi.com/kagi/privacy/privacy-pass.html: Privacy Pass
- help.kagi.com/kagi/company: company and products
How we rank
We test for four things rather than for features: setup time, price in practice, exit and audience. On those tests Kagi lands at place 1 of 16. The editorial process sets out how facts are gathered and how commercial links are handled.