[HN Gopher] Kagi is contemplating the removal of the assistant f...
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Kagi is contemplating the removal of the assistant from its
professional tier
Author : EbNar
Score : 47 points
Date : 2026-03-18 09:56 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (kagifeedback.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (kagifeedback.org)
| EbNar wrote:
| From the thread on kagifeedback.org:
|
| "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)."
| sph wrote:
| Good. I'm a paying user from day one, and I never used, nor want
| to see any AI features on my search engine. I'd use Google if I
| cared about any of that stuff.
|
| Honestly, I just want my money to be used to improve good old
| match-keywords-against-index search.
| EbNar wrote:
| Well, good for you, I guess. But for the rest of us who use the
| Assistant this would be a net downgrade, AKA paying the same
| for less.
| shaky-carrousel wrote:
| For the rest of us that deeply distrust and despise the anti-
| ethical and wasteful assistants is an upgrade.
| EbNar wrote:
| Friendly reminder that you're not forced to use it. "I
| despise soccer, so soccer should disappear".
| TACD wrote:
| Soccer is not destroying the planet and making basic
| computer hardware unaffordable.
| EbNar wrote:
| You're looking at the finger and missing the Moon.
| cardanome wrote:
| You still have to live in a world where LLMs exist and
| are based on the stolen labor of millions of people and
| are actively destroying the livelihood of people, our
| environment and democracy.
| EbNar wrote:
| Again, right now the assistant is entirely optional. Oh,
| summarizer and translate are base on the same models, by
| the way.
| card_zero wrote:
| I am interested in your manifesto
| willis936 wrote:
| I think a more fair analogy is "I despise soccer, so the
| specific cable package I choose should not include it".
| mpalmer wrote:
| You haven't thought too hard about it then; Kagi is (in
| part) looking to get better margins on its AI spend here.
| genthree wrote:
| Is it any better than Google's or the one in DDG? Those
| things are wrong _most of the time_ for questions that couldn
| 't have been answered by looking at a few words in the
| summary of the very first search result anyway. I find they
| only save me time if what I was searching was so trivial that
| it doesn't matter at all if it's wrong ("How old is such-and-
| such actor?") and I didn't really even need to search it in
| the first place. Otherwise, if it actually matters, I still
| have to check the sources, because no matter how confident
| the answer looks, it's wrong way too often to rely on it.
|
| (Gather 'round, kids: used to be, questions of utter trivia
| like the exact ages of actors or whatever _didn 't even take
| root in our minds in the first place_, we didn't even feel
| the _itch_ to answer them to begin with, because it was far
| more effort to answer them than it was worth, unless it was a
| topic you cared enough about to have a bunch of books about
| it on-hand, so such questions would usually fall out of our
| brains before we even consciously engaged with them. Our
| heads were a lot less noisy then. It was very nice.)
| EbNar wrote:
| I've never user Google or DDG assistants, tbh. My use for
| Kagi's assistant is for stuff related to work. I'm a
| university prof., so it "saves me a bit of time" while
| checking for errors in assignments, clarify concepts to
| explain to students and so on. I almost never use it to
| _search_ for stuff.
| fgonzag wrote:
| Same here. I'd definitely drop the subscription immediately,
| unless the assistant was super cheap, like $1 or $2 more
| which is the most I'd pay for kagi personally.
| imjustmsk wrote:
| Wouldn't a a feature to turn all AI features work? You can turn
| of all AI from Brave search and duckduckgo and for Google just
| use startpage.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| He's say splitting the pot for AI features reduces the value
| of improved search quality.
|
| I'd rather that too. Kagi should try to curate like a
| Librarian and not some kind of oracle. They're not going to
| capture people with offering AI assistants. They will capture
| people by filtering out all the garbage places like Google
| throw into their results to get ad dollars.
| Apreche wrote:
| Exactly. Same as you I am just paying for search. I never used
| the assistant, and never will. Right now Kagi is good enough at
| search that it would be annoying to lose. But if I was forced
| to go back to Google I could survive by using adblock. I really
| wish Kagi would just put all their engineering efforts on
| search to make it so good that I couldn't possibly live without
| it.
|
| I don't need a new browser. I don't need a replacement for
| Google Maps, since Google Maps is actually good and Kagi will
| never even catch up to Apple Maps. I don't need any AI trash.
|
| Just have everybody work on the search engine to make it is
| faster, more reliable, and free of content farms or slop. That
| is the only reason I'm paying for Kagi.
| kace91 wrote:
| I happened to be checking out kagi just yesterday (as a first
| time costumer) and I can say the AI focus put me off it.
|
| I was running away from the constant shoving of AI features by
| google, so most of their landing page advertising AI related
| stuff wasn't really selling it for me.
|
| Totally anecdotal evidence, of course, but I'm sure I'm not the
| only one dropping off the funnel for that reason.
| sph wrote:
| My comment sounds negative, but for what it's worth, I still
| am a very happy user, and you can disable assistant/quick
| answer so it's never pushed on you if you don't care about
| it.
|
| I just don't want Kagi to get enshittified. If everybody and
| their dog are focusing on AI, good-old search becomes a
| vanishing product space which definitely still has its place
| in the AI era, when you want determinism from your search.
| 112233 wrote:
| So how much Kagi without AI costs? It should me much
| cheaper subscription, right?
| type0 wrote:
| They could use AI is to remove web pages with AI generated spam
| content in search results. I don't know how accurate that could
| work. For technical blogs there should be a lens that ranks GPG
| signed articles higher, is that even possible?
| petcat wrote:
| Can't AI sign their articles with GPG too though?
| sph wrote:
| They're working on it:
| https://help.kagi.com/kagi/features/slopstop.html
|
| Discussed at: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46716806
| plutokras wrote:
| I'm also fine with the change. Claude is my go-to for research
| as the standalone app and shortcut are very convenient.
|
| The Kagi team should focus on the core product; that's what I'm
| paying for. I stopped being a ProtonMail customer once they
| began chasing side projects instead of polishing their actual
| offering. I hope Kagi doesn't go down that same route.
| raincole wrote:
| I know I'll sound like a Google shill, but I really don't know
| how this could compete against what Google AI Studio offers for
| now. Studio even has free quota (while being completely opaque).
|
| I once feel Kagi is some fresh air that we need for search
| engine. But now it seems to be more and more directly competing
| against the other LLM web summery products and imo Google/Gemini
| is light-seconds ahead in that space. The AI Overview is an ultra
| water downed version of it and it's still somewhat usable.
|
| Perhaps this move is signaling that they'll be back focusing on
| search itself more though (I hope so).
| Valodim wrote:
| Kagi is unfortunately in a tough spot, imo.
|
| I'm a happy subscriber, and it's certainly a big improvement over
| Google search. But the internet just isn't the same place it was
| five years ago. And as search results (for non-navigational
| queries) are becoming less useful by the day, I find myself
| asking AI to do it for me more.
|
| There's a lot to like about Kagi, but they'll probably have to
| reinvent themselves if they want to grow beyond the niche that
| high level internet search will probably become.
| arch-ninja wrote:
| Agreed. I LOVE Kagi as a search engine - so long as it answers
| queries in under 2s with no ads, I'm a very happy customer. I
| don't mind if they flirt with LLMs, but if the LLM work
| detracts from the search work they will lose me as a paying
| customer. If the LLM work slows down search results I also lose
| the only thing I pay for - search result response time and
| correctness.
| Yeri wrote:
| I always thought the browser, coworking space
| (https://hub.kagi.com/), and mail (https://kagimail.com/) are
| a distraction.
|
| I've been a paying customer since 04/2022, and have the early
| adopter badge. I was easily doing 600-800 searches/month, and
| now I do 400-300 searches. I think that's the reality. More
| and more people are asking ChatGPT or whatever for search.
| littlecranky67 wrote:
| I didn't renew my Kagi subscription, as I am now mostly using
| AI based search (google, chat.bing.com, perplexity). Search
| engine wise, Kagi was superior but it is just that traditional
| search engines are less and less needed with the rise of AI.
|
| BUT Kagi is in a good spot, as they have their user data (and
| the feedback/upvote/downvote/blacklist feature) to train their
| own models on. Maybe their AI will one day be a superior
| search. Especially when the big ones like Google will start to
| enshittify the free AI tier with ads, or SEO-like AI
| manipulation on Google will take off.
| denkmoon wrote:
| Why though. Why does it need to grow beyond a niche premium
| option? As long as they're paying the bills and everyone is
| happy why not just let a good thing keep chugging along.
| mpalmer wrote:
| Amen. "Growth" is literally product cancer
| mpalmer wrote:
| "Asking AI" is doing a lot of work there.
|
| The people who pay for Kagi do so for very specific reasons,
| often because they know what "asking AI" really means for their
| privacy.
| willis936 wrote:
| To me this seems fine. You'd run out of tokens pretty quick
| without ultimate anyway, so it is a small cross section of users
| this affects.
|
| I am interested to learn if anything else is coming besides a
| billing change. Like will ultimate/assistant subscribers get
| access to MCP?
| EbNar wrote:
| Well, no... I use maybe 1/5 to 1/3 of may month allowance on
| Assistant. It's nice to have. And I subscribed to Kagi also
| _because_ of it. So, the Assistant going away would mean my
| expensive Duo subscription going away as well.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| I recommend Kagi focus on being a sidecar to AIs rather than try
| to offer it in any way; I'm hoping the API comes out and I can
| get proper search results for my local LLM.
|
| Unless they're building their own LLMs, best not to annoy people
| who already see random LLMs everywhere.
| leokennis wrote:
| I admire and applaud Kagi for what they are trying to be.
|
| But on the AI front, the Assistant is simply worse than using for
| example Gemini or ChatGPT directly. It is slower, it cannot
| generate images etc.
| EbNar wrote:
| That's why I don't think anybody is going to pay for the
| Assistant alone.
| nicce wrote:
| It is not worse I would say. It uses neutral system prompt by
| default, whereas Gemini and ChatGPT will please you too much to
| mislead you badly. Also the base search is much batter. You can
| control the search while with Gemini, for example, you can't.
| mpalmer wrote:
| On the other hand, it doesn't monetize any of the data you
| give. Six of one, half dozen of the other, yeah?
|
| Re: image gen... it's a search engine. Why would I need my
| refrigerator to toast my bread?
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| Because at least for my own usage of Google the LLM started
| out as an interactive search with substantially better
| context filtering that could tune the results to my desired
| technical level. However I promptly started just having it
| explain the subject matter to me rather than spending 30+
| minutes consulting various docs and forum posts because it
| makes for an excellent secretary/tutor combo provided you
| vigilantly watch for misinformation.
|
| So to answer your question, while charts might not be
| particularly useful for a search engine a tutor certainly
| benefits from them.
| willis936 wrote:
| The privacy buffer between the LLM providers and the user is
| a large part of the appeal. Having it hooked up to a search
| engine outside of the data broker space makes it uniquely
| attractive.
|
| Given that window dressing, having toasted bread in a kitchen
| that isn't selling my data is something I want.
| mstipetic wrote:
| The research assistant should be able to generate images
| buster wrote:
| Keep in mind that kagi offers a wide range of models, not just
| one. I wouldn't want to have multiple subscriptions (for
| chatgpt, anthropic, gemini etc.)
| i_love_retros wrote:
| I see the slowness and now the news that they might remove the
| assistant for the $10 plans as evidence of how costly it is to
| run LLMs and by extension how unsustainable it must be for
| OpenAi, anthropic, Microsoft etc to be offering such
| performance for free or very low prices. Surely something has
| to give soon.
| BoredPositron wrote:
| While the assistant is a decent add on, it fails as a standalone
| product. It just isn't in the same league as Claude, ChatGPT,
| Gemini, or even LeChat, and I'd hate to see them waste too much
| development time on it.
| QuadmasterXLII wrote:
| The big advantage of this is that instead of getting commentariat
| feedback, you will see people's wallet votes on whether they
| value kagi for being the best of like 6 options for search, or
| for being a distinctly middle of the pack option in a field of
| millions of thin llm wrappers.
| treesknees wrote:
| I've used it quite a bit, but just as a natural language frontend
| to their search engine. I don't see it as a true alternative to
| generic chat bots like Claude or ChatGPT, and certainly not a
| coding tool. I would likely not subscribe to Assistant.
| omnimus wrote:
| You can look at it other way around - why to have ChatGPT when
| you can use chatgpt through kagi. One of the advantages being
| that they claim to be "privacy" layer that doesn't give other
| companies metadata about you.
| gonzalohm wrote:
| I honestly think that AI goes against Kagis's main purpose. I see
| it as a tool to search the Internet. Carefully craft what you
| think is relevant, try to remove as much AI generated crap from
| your results, etc.
|
| By using AI you are doing the opposite. You are letting some
| random AI get the results for you.
|
| That's assuming Kagi assistant is the AI that searches the
| Internet. I don't know, I have never used it. I use Kagi search
| every day though
| type0 wrote:
| Well, the solution is easy if users just paid for AI features
| separately.
| schrectacular wrote:
| Why is this on a whole separate domain and why can't I use my
| Kagi account to comment? Why do I have to sign up here? Why
| haven't I seen any messaging from Kagi directly about this? This
| seems really weird.
| Yeri wrote:
| Those domains have been around since forever (also
| https://orionfeedback.org). I guess it was easier to just set
| up a new platform instead of integrating it, or building
| something from scratch.
|
| I haven't checked in a while, but I'm sure there's been
| conversations about this on discord as well
| (https://help.kagi.com/kagi/support-and-community/discord-
| ser...). I'm too busy to read up on every little thing, so I'm
| glad this happens elsewhere, off-site, and I just get the big
| changes through my RSS feed.
| 1313ed01 wrote:
| I use the assistant daily, often instead of search. The search is
| good, but the sad fact is searching www has been getting less
| interesting fast and there simply isn't much of value to find
| (maybe if they added an option to search in the Wayback Machine?
| I would pay extra for that!). Adding a LLM on top of search
| results and to fire off multiple searches makes it possible to
| sometimes squeeze a little bit of actually useful information out
| of the cesspool that is modern web.
|
| Without the Assistant I would probably go back down to the lowest
| kagi tier.
| senko wrote:
| I use Kagi search all the time. I often use the Quick Answer
| feature (append "?" at the end of the query, gives an AI
| overview/answer, then standard search results below). I never use
| the full Assistant - I have ChatGPT and Claude for chatbot use
| cases.
|
| I like Quick Answer because of its ligtweight UX. Ctrl-T for a
| new tab in any browser window, type the question, get the answer.
| This is faster and mentally lighter than switching to a chatbot,
| typing the question there and answering. If I'm to use the
| chatbot, I don't see a special need to use Kagi's.
|
| (my EUR0.02 as a paid user)
| lemontheme wrote:
| This is generally how I use it too. Every now and then I click
| through to the assistant for follow-up questions. I appreciate
| that it's there, even if I use it infrequently. The default
| kimi model gives surprisingly good answers too
| omnimus wrote:
| You can add some "bang search" (like your ? for quick answer)
| to use the other models Kagi supports like Kimi.
|
| The quick model is there to be mainly quick.
| hootz wrote:
| To be honest, while it's great that it uses Kagi as its search
| engine and that improves the results, I find myself more and more
| using Claude and Gemini over Assistant while still using Kagi as
| my main manual search engine. They should probably focus more on
| their main product instead of LLMs.
| tomrod wrote:
| Huh, I didn't realize they had a standalone AI mode. I've used
| the summarizer a few times and found it to be occasionally
| useful.
| sdoering wrote:
| If they remove a feature (even if I am not using it) while
| keeping the price the same - why should I stay a customer? I have
| a contract. And at least in Germany one party to a contract can
| not just alter the terms of the contract.
|
| They need to cancel the existing contract and offer a new one.
| And I would not need to accept the new one. Yes, I would not be
| using Kagi anymore. But why should I have a business relationship
| with a company that does not honor the contractual obligations it
| entered into?
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| Presumably they would discontinue it at the end of a billing
| cycle? Or have you entered into a long term contract with them?
| niam wrote:
| I didn't consider that bundling Search & Assistant maybe puts
| them in a tricky spot among some users who revile LLM features,
| and others who will utilize them to the cap. To the degree that
| the former is subsidizing the latter, or costing them customers
| (probably not a ton): I can see why separating the two offerings
| makes sense.
|
| Though I'm sympathetic to the users for whom this would basically
| be a strict downgrade in featureset.
| oidar wrote:
| Ultimate user here. I assume this doesn't kill "quick answers"
| for pro users - which I use frequently when I need a quick
| summarization. For assistant use directly, I've been thinking
| about stepping back from ultimate, as I use claude for AI rubber
| ducking; which works better than all of the LLMs available on
| assistant.
| 9Ljdg6p8ZSzejt wrote:
| I have maxed out my ultimate usage before and when that happens
| the quick summarization tools did not function indicating I hit
| my limit. I assume it would affect those, but that might be
| part of how they break it up.
| keysersoze33 wrote:
| I've been a Kagi Pro user for several years now, and to be
| honest, the models from the pro tier aren't that useful compared
| to the free versions of Gemini & ChatGPT.
|
| For me, I pay for Kagi pro for search without Google/Bing
| enshittification, their Translate (which I use quite often while
| I'm learning German/working in German - better for me than Google
| Translate), and their Summarizer. I pay for Claude, and also
| occasionally use OpenRouter for my AI needs.
| zetanor wrote:
| Strangely: "Searches are, unexpectedly, more expensive for us to
| serve than AI. A user that does only traditional searches (not
| using Assistant) will cost more on our end than someone using AI
| + search."
|
| https://kagifeedback.org/d/1338-provide-a-plan-without-ai-fu...
| EbNar wrote:
| Yeah, that reply is a mildly infuriating, in view of what
| they're planning.
| luke5441 wrote:
| How can this be true? Should I not worry about margin
| compression at Google due to heavy cap-ex requirements anymore?
| Is this temporary because Kagi got a good deal for tokens? Are
| they paying through their noses for the Google search API
| calls? I don't get it.
| techjamie wrote:
| Because they pay API costs to send the search to SerpApi. I
| forget exactly what the cost was for them per-search and I'm
| having little luck finding it, but I know they've published
| that cost before and I know it's more than a whole cent. By
| comparison, running a good but not top-tier model to answer
| the same question might run a small fraction of a cent.
| Cheaper than a follow up query by the user.
| DamnInteresting wrote:
| > _A user that does only traditional searches (not using
| Assistant) will cost more on our end than someone using AI +
| search._
|
| Unless I am missing something, that appears to be a
| mathematically impossible claim. They are saying A > A+B, where
| both A and B are positive values. I suppose it could be that
| non-AI users do more total searches, and the extras add up.
| Hmm.
| nchagnet wrote:
| They're likely saying that at equal usage, the user with
| mixed usage will cost less because the cost of B is lower
| than A.
| sshine wrote:
| For a beautiful 6 months before the frontier labs were able to
| search as part of their responses, Kagi had an edge here. This
| was when the "AIs hallucinate!" meme was thriving and my response
| was "Wait, your AI AGENT doesn't provide references?" and I felt
| very cutting edge then.
|
| Now that frontier labs have search, generalised tool use, memory,
| I no longer use The Agent. Haven't done so for months. I still
| find great value in Kagi's FastGPT even though this overlaps with
| many search engines today. It works well and I don't pay with my
| privacy. But there's no Agent edge any more, Claude wins.
| kmfrk wrote:
| I completely forgot this existed.
|
| I like the occasional feature of appending a question mark to
| your query to get a nice summarizer to comb through the internet
| so I don't, but I only use it a few times a month.
| rcmjr wrote:
| I've switched to lumo if I need an ai so that's fine by me.
| clutter55561 wrote:
| I'm a pro subscriber. I like Kagi, but I think it is getting
| lost. Instead of focusing on being the best search engine in a
| world where other search engines have become deeply enshitified,
| they are joining the enshitification train.
|
| Start by removing features and adding a different subscription.
| Next add one ad from curated sources. Then add ads everywhere.
|
| I will probably cancel my subscription soon and spare myself the
| disappointment.
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