Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

> Worth the $5 for me

Steep at 300 searches per month or about 10 per day. If you search often, it is too expensive. If you rarely search, not worth 5 bucks.

They are plainly trying to push people to their $10 unlimited plan. I would have appreciated if they allowed, say, 600 searches per month for $5 or so.

 help



I find that I rarely do one search. It’s usually a search, followed by looking at the first few links and probably opening them in tabs, then refining the search terms to get better results. It’s an iterative process. So the 10 per day on average would be exceeded quite quickly.

I too feel the yearly price of $108 for one person, $155 for two people and $216 for a family is expensive. Ok, maybe the family plan is cheaper if you can find five others to share it with.


$10 is nothing if you're searching that often to no longer be the product.

https://proton.me/blog/what-is-your-data-worth-to-google


Pretty much sums up why Google’s business model changed. Everyone wants good search, few are willing to be even $10/mo.

You know how many things are asking for "~$10/mo". People don't have the purchasing power they used to, and everything has a subscription model. Firefox with DDG is good enough.

Google kept increasing its profits since then, and it was one of the most successful businesses out there way before they changed the business model to become enshittified. The argument that their business model changed because people wouldn't pay for its services doesn't really stand.

If they charged a newspaper price for it per se (like $1 a month), Google would be rolling in cash with as many users they have.

I do agree it's kinda expensive. I'm lucky enough that my employer pays the $25 plan for met because it includes access to many LLMs.

I pay the $10 and use assistant multiple times a day and never needed the fatter models since for coding I have copilot and Gemini

> because it includes access to many LLMs.

That is interesting, which LLMs? Asking as someone paying monthly Claude subscription.


A lot of them. Claude is a choice. Here is the list : https://help.kagi.com/kagi/ai/assistant.html

You can even choose a model for each turn.


The 300 searches a month work for me because I only use Kagi when I think it will give better results than others. And most searches are trivial so any free engine will do (like you have the website name and want the url).

FWIW Kagi has worked hard on their pricing over the last few years and has been trying different models. They're not "big search" the price is what it is so it can exist as a business. 100% fine to not be a customer obviously, but then you forfeit your license to complain about Google spying on you and ruining the web. Like they're trying to solve the problem. IMHO speaking just for myself I feel a moral duty to support them.

I agree on all your points. I'm just saying, that the $5 tier is not a honest to good option. The $10 one is but they can make the $5 one genuine too by increasing the quota. I'm sure they have done their research and maybe increasing it will cannibalize the $10 tier.



Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: