I use Kagi too - they have a feature I haven't seen before where you can basically optimize your own SEO. You can uprank or downrank any given website to varying degrees based on how much of that site you want to see in your future search results (I use this a lot for game wikis that have since migrated off of Fandom etc, but the stale Fandom page always shows up first in google search).

They're also working on a feature to warn you which articles are paywalled directly from the search result, which I will use the hell out of.

They also have something they call Lenses, which are essentially search profiles that emphasize certain types of results (programming lens upranks stackoverflow, github, and API docs for instance).

All in all I've been extremely pleased with the quality of the product and the directions they're exploring in. And being able to easily chat up the devs in discord doesn't hurt either.

As a subscriber, one of the things I like about Kagi is how responsive the Kagi team is. I've reported a few bugs (4-5 maybe?) and they all got resolved fairly quickly. You can also find the founder on the Discord server talking with users. This was a breath of fresh air to me when I signed up.

I can customise it to ignore AI spam with custom filters + academic search + custom rankings + other custom tools. I can yeet domains from ever being seen again. It's just very tailored to whatever you need. I hardly go elsewhere now. I find it curbs my compulsive rumination googling because I get clear, trustworthy answers and not AI telling me I have cancer or am distracted by something dramatic.

I hadn’t even seen other paid providers but I got real sick of Google about six months back, tried kagi on trial and paid for it before the trial was up, that’s how good it is.

I’d pay for Kagi if it were $5/month unlimited. Not going to pay $5/month for limited search.