https://kagifeedback.org/d/10116-kagi-assistant-standalone-subscription Kagi Feedback Loading... This site is best viewed in a modern browser with JavaScript enabled. Something went wrong while trying to load the full version of this site. Try hard-refreshing this page to fix the error. Kagi Assistant standalone subscription Luis As we prepare to launch Kagi Assistant as a standalone subscription, we're considering changes to how it will be available on the Pro and Starter plans (Search subscriptions). Currently these plans let you use the Kagi Assistant each month up to the AI cost value included in your subscription, similar to how it works on Ultimate. The change we're consideringn would turn this into more of a trial where you'd still have access to the Assistant, but only up to a fixed usage cap. Once you hit that cap, you'd need to subscribe to either the Ultimate plan or the Kagi Assistant's own subscription to keep using it (same mechanism we already have for Search). We've created this thread to get your input, please feel free to share your thoughts below --------------------------------------------------------------------- Pleonasm @Luis, a few questions... * Can you please clarify what "the Bundle" means? * By "Assistant," do you mean Kagi Quick or Kagi Research? * Does the free trial provide a "fixed usage cap" that resets at the start of each monthly billing cycle? What occurs if the customer is on an annual plan? An annual "Duo" plan? * What is the amount of the "fixed usage cap" for each plan type? * My understanding is that the existing Profesional and Ultimate plans are not changing - correct? --------------------------------------------------------------------- Luis Pleonasm I edited the original to disambiguate. Does the free trial provide a "fixed usage cap" that resets at the start of each monthly billing cycle? What occurs if the customer is on an annual plan? An annual "Duo" plan? What is the amount of the "fixed usage cap" for each plan type? The fixed usage cap wouldn't reset, it would be a one time allowance. We haven't worked out the details yet; I'm just communicating the direction, and options we are considering. In practice, this means a Kagi Search subscription (Starter or Professional) would grant the same rights as signing up for a Kagi Assistant trial account. To clarify another few other things from the thread: a/ Kagi Assistant's web tool uses Kagi Search, and that has nothing to do with this subscription plans discussion, we're not changing anything there. The same applies to LLM-powered features in Kagi Search, like Quick Answer. This discussion is specifically about two things: (1) Kagi Assistant getting its own paid subscription, and (2) how we're considering shaping its trial plan, which will be what Starter and Professional Search subscribers have access to b/ When we added Kagi Assistant to Search plans, we limited it: it doesn't have our best Assistants (Research) or access to top models. Now that we're working toward launching a standalone Kagi Assistant subscription, we're rethinking that approach - a 1x allowance would let Search subscribers use all Assistant features, and if they find them useful, they can upgrade to Ultimate. Professional subscribers who are happy with the current limited offering won't see much benefit from this change. But for others it provides an opportunity to decide whether Assistant is a tool worth paying for. c/ An important objective is to have simple pricing: an individual can purchase a Search subscription or an Assistant subscription, depending on what they care about. If they want the full Kagi ecosystem, there's the Ultimate plan. Each product has a standalone trial and a paid tier (Search has two paid tiers), and Ultimate serves as our bundle. We believe this will make Kagi's offering much easier to understand. Pricing changes are always some of the most painful things to do. We want to minimise confusion for existing users, and create an upgrade path for heavy users. --------------------------------------------------------------------- JosephT I am interested in how you wand to do your positioning, being seen as an ai first or ai company could turn people away. Its clear u know this in how u market kagi and assistant but now u want to launch a pure ai product which changes things. --------------------------------------------------------------------- wickerbox1234 In addition to the questions above I would be interested in knowing whether the quick answer in search would also be part of this new subscription or whether it is kept as part of search --------------------------------------------------------------------- user9091 As a customer of course I'd rather stick with the current model because it seems more beneficial (because of the post I assume the limit is gonna be lower than the current) - and as a "casual" user of AI its not worth it to subscribe to Ultimate since my usage is kinda low and im fine with the models currently provided to Pro - but I do understand the high costs of AI so I dont blame the team at all for the changes, its totally understandable. Instead of a fixed cap why not reduce the monthly "allowance"? (it seems from the post that the cap doesn't reset at all). --------------------------------------------------------------------- Hanbyeol I'm not sure if there are enough people who would want to subscribe to the Assistant alone without Kagi Search. Personally, I think Kagi Assistant is sometimes a pretty decent tool with personalized search results/lenses, and it's much easier to get to the sources I'm looking for. However, I don't use it for coding, and I'm not interested in image generation or similar features, so I'm not sure there are enough reasons to pay extra for Kagi Assistant. The only advantages I can think of for the Assistant without search are that I can choose open-weight models and that it has a better privacy policy than most other services. I hope this doesn't effectively become a price increase for Professional subscribers. --------------------------------------------------------------------- k7absp2h Hanbyeol Actually, I would happily pay extra if they offered a product as good as OpenRouter. But with no API access and lots of restrictions (plus Kagi's 20% extra fee compared to OpenRouter's 5.5%), it's not a very good choice for an advanced user. Kagi Assistant feels like a weak wrapper around a powerful search engine. And it's also ridiculous to separate models for people paying $10 or $25 when the cost is calculated per token. With my $10 on OpenRouter, I can use models like Claude Opus 4.6 however I want. I think Kagi needs to decide what it wants to be. Does it want to be a product like OpenRouter that focuses on advanced users with pay-per-token and no extra limits? Or does it want to be a product like ChatGPT that focuses on average users with message-based limits? --------------------------------------------------------------------- Hanbyeol k7absp2h And it's also ridiculous to separate models for people paying $10 or $25 when the cost is calculated per token. With my $10 on OpenRouter, I can use models like Claude Opus 4.6 however I want. Agreed. If Kagi separates the assistant from search, I don't see any reason to restrict some models to Ultimate users only, even if they cost more per token. --------------------------------------------------------------------- kirkmc Wut? So you're saying that now, you can only use the assistant up to a fixed amount, and you're changing it so you can only use the assistant up to a fixed amount... I'm confused. k7absp2h Kagi Assistant feels like a weak wrapper around a powerful search engine. I agree with the above. I would pay for ultimate if it had a feature like Perplexity Spaces; I don't use AI heavily, but that feature is really useful for work with one of my clients (I'm a writer, and use it for a client's documentation). --------------------------------------------------------------------- Peter If this is basically a price increase for us Pro subscribers, then naturally I'm against it. I'm pretty happy with how the Professional plan works right now. I would add the ability to buy additional tokens if you need them, or some other way to temporarily have more AI usage available. --------------------------------------------------------------------- k7absp2h Peter I mean, they didn't up the price when they added Kagi Assistant, so I can't really complain if they drop it. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Peter kirkmc So you're saying that now, you can only use the assistant up to a fixed amount, and you're changing it so you can only use the assistant up to a fixed amount... I'm confused. I think Luis means changing it to a one-time fixed amount. But you're right, it's not clear. --------------------------------------------------------------------- kirkmc Luis In practice, this means a Kagi Search subscription (Starter or Professional) would grant the same rights as signing up for a Kagi Assistant trial account. This is confusing. I'm paying $10 a month for a trial account? There have been requests here for search only accounts with no AI. There has always been pushback against this. But you're now saying that's the way you plan to go? In any case, I'm confused. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Emu7037 Luis Why not simply make the assistant pay as you go for tiers below Ultimate? With a free plan one can continue to use assistant after the tokens included in the trial expire, by paying according to the number of tokens used, and Starter and Pro subscribers get a small allowance renewed each month and get billed after that. A lot of people might use AI very rarely but still need it a couple times a month, perhaps because kagi search is failing them for a particular search, I don't see it as wise to charge them for those rare occasions they try to use assistant to find something kagi search is not helping them with or to force them to get a different subscription just for that Edit: the free plan could be renamed pay as you go, or something like that, include a limited number of searches and uses of kagi assistant, and then people would pay for the number of searches and LLM tokens they use --------------------------------------------------------------------- Peter Luis An important objective is to have simple pricing I would understand changing the Pro plan if it's losing money, but if you're removing Kagi Assistant just to make pricing simpler, that's a totally unfair downgrade. --------------------------------------------------------------------- UnusualClouds We want to minimise confusion for existing users, and create an upgrade path for heavy users. + Luis I'm glad that's your goal. I think your current approach unintentionally obscures what's actually happening for some of us. There are several ways your post could have been clearer. I'll go through them. 1. "Won't see much benefit" "Professional subscribers who are happy with the current limited offering won't see much benefit from this change." + Luis This is precise in a way that happens to be convenient. "This change" here refers narrowly to the feature unlock in section (b), namely access to Research and top models during the trial. That's a fair standalone point. But it sidesteps the other half of the picture, that Professional members' perpetual rolling Assistant access is going away. That part does affect us, and there's no upside to it for Professional subscribers specifically. A clearer version would name both sides: "Professional subscribers who are happy with the current limited offering won't gain much from the expanded trial features. They will, however, lose their ongoing monthly AI allocation once the one-time trial is exhausted." 2. Subscription benefit vs. trial benefit You describe the current state as: "use the Kagi Assistant each month up to the AI cost value included in your subscription." Then you describe the future state as: "a Kagi Search subscription (Starter or Professional) would grant the same rights as signing up for a Kagi Assistant trial account." This is confusing. A component of what Professional subscribers are paying for is being retroactively reframed as equivalent to something a free trial user gets. Calling it a "trial" implies the thing was never really ours, that we were just trying it out. A clearer version would name the mechanism directly: "Professional subscribers currently have a recurring AI allocation as part of their subscription. Under the proposed changes, that recurring allocation would be replaced with a one-time trial allowance. For light but steady users, this is a reduction in ongoing value." 3. "Minimize confusion" vs. the actual change "We want to minimise confusion for existing users." Luis The stated goal contradicts the structural outcome. A. Currently: pay for Pro, get X amount of AI use per month, it renews. Simple. B. Under the new model: pay for Pro, get a one-time trial of a separate product that has its own subscription. When the trial expires, evaluate whether to add a second subscription or upgrade to a third tier (Ultimate). This introduces more decision points, more subscription tiers, and a moving target. A more accurate framing: "The proposed changes will add decision points and subscription tiers. We think the trade-off is worth it for the reasons outlined above, but we want to be upfront that it will be slightly more complex for existing users, not less." 4. "Simple pricing" vs. actual pricing landscape "having simple pricing lets us focus on building product instead of managing plan complexity and billing flows" If understand correctly, the goal is simple pricing: Search or Assistant, with Ultimate as the bundle. The framing suggests simplification, but the actual tier count goes up. Currently there are three tiers: Starter, Professional, Ultimate. Under the new model there would be at minimum five: Starter Search, Pro Search, Assistant Trial, Assistant Paid, Ultimate. If Duo plans are in the mix, more. A more accurate version: "We're adding a standalone Assistant subscription, which means more tiers overall. The simplification is conceptual. Search and Assistant become distinct products But users will be navigating a larger menu of options." 5. "Upgrade path for heavy users" vs. impact on light users "We want to minimise confusion for existing users, and create an upgrade path for heavy users.." Luis The upgrade path framing is accurate for heavy users. They were presumably already bumping against the AI cost ceiling and considering Ultimate. But the structural impact of this change falls disproportionately on light, steady-state users who are well-served by the current rolling budget and have no reason to upgrade. The justification points at one population and the impact lands on a different one. A more complete framing: "This change creates an upgrade path for heavy Assistant users. Light users who rely on a small but steady AI allocation will see a reduction in ongoing access. We think the trade-off is justified because [reason], but we want to name it directly." --------------------------------------------------------------------- I'm raising these because the way it's being communicated minimizes the cost to existing subscribers while overstating the simplicity of the result. On a personal level, being direct about the trade-offs would earn my respect and trust. Framing a reduction as an opportunity is a red flag. Hope that helps. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Mythos Maybe keep stuff as it is for people already paying for Kagi and ship the new pricing for new subscribers? Kind of like some other Services have Legacy Plans old subscribers can stay on? --------------------------------------------------------------------- kirkmc Mythos That's pretty hard to manage long term when other changes are introduced. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Peter kirkmc This is confusing. I'm paying $10 a month for a trial account? Yes, this is very confusing. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Peter k7absp2h On the other hand, they're describing the Professional plan as "Unlimited searches & Standard AI" and "Kagi Assistant with Quick mode and standard models". So if I'd just recently subscribed to this plan and they went with this change, I would be upset. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Breulkf k7absp2h But many people (like myself) subscribed to Pro with the offering of the assistant, so removing it would mean simply downgrading our plan (paying the same for less). --------------------------------------------------------------------- wickerbox1234 I'm going to be honest here and say that the vague wording is really not helping here. I think you would get much better understanding and buy in if you're just direct. So Professional users will no longer get Assistant (other than a one time goodwill credit) and if you want to use assistant you have to either pay a separate subscription or upgrade to Ultimate - from what I can piece together. Correct? If so that's fine - Assistant was originally not included in Professional and we got it for free recently. We aren't entitled to it. But using language like "professional users get an Assistant free trial" is a bit murky, why not just say it like it is? In any case, an approximate ballpark price point would be useful to comment on - I would not pay another $5 on top of Pro for Assistant as I don't really use it for much other than Quick (very occasionally use some of the cheaper models for suggestions). $2 per month maybe, but still probably not to be honest - I would just go back to regular search as $10 per month is already at the top end of what I want to pay. I think what might work well for everyone involved is if Pro users can get a minimal recurring credit (say $1-2??) that can be used in Assistant, and if you need any more than that then you can buy a subscription? That way those users who use assistant for essentially search (eg Quick) should be fine and be happy, and those who want to use Assistant more heavily and probably use more advanced models can subscribe? --------------------------------------------------------------------- Peter wickerbox1234 was faster than me; here's what I was writing: I don't like it when you're using euphemisms to describe a product change. Be clear and say that this is essentially a removal of Kagi Assistant from the Professional plan. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Next Page >>