I've been using Kagi for over a year now and I can't recommend it enough. I never really liked the results that I got from DuckDuckGo as a programmer, and found myself using bangs to constantly...
I've been using Kagi for over a year now and I can't recommend it enough. I never really liked the results that I got from DuckDuckGo as a programmer, and found myself using bangs to constantly redirect myself to Google which somewhat defeated the purpose of me switching from Google (privacy). I'm also a power user, so I really like the custom bangs feature to add shortcuts to existing bangs or to ones that don't exist as bangs yet. Additionally, being able to prioritize/deprioritize/block results from searches is another useful feature to remove a bunch of the repost/AI trash (e.g. Pinterest or those sites that summarize various other sites).
I totally understand why somebody wouldn't want to pay to use a search engine, but for those that don't, definitely give it a shot. The biggest downside I've found with Kagi so far (which is present for other smaller search engines) is that it's not possible to switch to a custom search engine on stock Safari, you have to use an extension from Kagi themselves to do it on both iOS and macOS. Hopefully Apple changes that at some point.
I've been using Kagi for over a year now and I can't recommend it enough. I never really liked the results that I got from DuckDuckGo as a programmer, and found myself using bangs to constantly redirect myself to Google which somewhat defeated the purpose of me switching from Google (privacy). I'm also a power user, so I really like the custom bangs feature to add shortcuts to existing bangs or to ones that don't exist as bangs yet. Additionally, being able to prioritize/deprioritize/block results from searches is another useful feature to remove a bunch of the repost/AI trash (e.g. Pinterest or those sites that summarize various other sites).
I totally understand why somebody wouldn't want to pay to use a search engine, but for those that don't, definitely give it a shot. The biggest downside I've found with Kagi so far (which is present for other smaller search engines) is that it's not possible to switch to a custom search engine on stock Safari, you have to use an extension from Kagi themselves to do it on both iOS and macOS. Hopefully Apple changes that at some point.