Kagi Assistant standalone subscription

MattIvan

There's a general problem with kagi pricing. It goes 5, 10, ... 25.

Have you considered a $15 tier? That's a lot more likely to work.

p0ly60n

I'm going to post the comments I previously made on Discord in this thread as well, as they got 11 + 4 upvotes:

I can only agree with the other commenters. I often encourage friends and colleagues to use Kagi. They're always a bit shocked when I tell them that the price is 10 USD/month for the professional plan. I usually tell them that it covers many vastly different products with subscription, including the Kagi Search, Assistant, News or my favorite Translate, which is what really encourages them to try it.

Switching to a one-time Assistant Trial, and effectively removing the Assistant from the Professional subscription would make it difficult to justify the cost, both for them and for me.

I want to see you guys succeed. I think you are truly building something great and are probably the only company I am genuinely happy to pay for. Your user centric view really stands out to me. But the range and quality of products offered need to match the price.

Breulkf

Alfondorion Frankly. I'd take a 90% reduction as an offense. Take away some of the less used models, for instance. This I could accept, but changing an in-place agreement is really a hard pill to swallow. To be frank, any change/reduction to my actual plan would me me cancelling it instantly.

ph

I've been a Kagi user since 02/2022 and have been a paying user as soon as the “unlimited searches” plan was available. I was glad when Assistant became usable as a Pro user, and it led to choosing a Duo plan together with my wife because AI chats were what was missing with Kagi for her to be useful. We're paying yearly. Initially, I didn't think I'd need or use the Assistant much, but given how much better the models have become, I have been using it more than expected. That being said, we still produce less than 2 USD of AI cost together per month, so we're not exactly power users. If Assistant access were to be stopped, I'd feel cheated, honestly, given that it is what had been promoted at the time, is what I told my wife, and is what made us upgrade to the Duo plan.

The price difference between Pro and Ultimate is just much too steep for us to be justifiable. I would pay maybe an additional 5 USD a month to access the premium models, but not more. But paying what I do now and losing Assistant access (to the basic models like Gemini 2.5, etc., usable right now), I would feel betrayed, and I would probably end our subscription.

I have been advocating for Kagi a lot to colleagues and friends in the past; it's always a difficult conversation to explain to people why it's worth paying for it. A huge part of this is privacy and trust. If Kagi cuts a feature that was there and advertised when I decided to pay for the plan, I would feel that this trustworthiness is damaged and reconsider. Changing things for future customers is one thing, but lessening a service I've already paid a full year's price for would really not be okay.

howie

Ultimately, Kagi have a reason for doing this, and I don't believe the stated one. If the reason is "we need to make more revenue on these products", I'd rather they just say so. Claiming that they're enhancing the way they do pricing is literal San Francisco tech company doublespeak that Kagi are supposed to be the antithesis of. This is the company that does things like the fair pricing if you don't use the subscription - they don't send me doublespeak emails about how I'm getting less for the money I pay but actually this is a really good thing for me because I have more choices. All of the communication here has exactly mirrored this SF-tech textbook - Kagi can be user-centric or engage in doublespeak, and the doublespeak is more offensive than the fundamental change.

foxberg34

There is one thing I don't understand. Currently if the AI does a search for you (which is the goal of the Research Assistant) it gets counted as part of your Search subscription. If I paid for Assistant without Search, would the searches be included? That would just seem like paying for search in a roundabout way.

Conversely, if I pay for search, couldn't I just take the API key and use it with a different AI chat?

lasu

I think seperating Kagi Search and Kagi Assistant is a sensible choice. Many users have repeatedly asked for an unlimited plan without AI features.

Many users think that it is unfair to paying customers who use both search and assistant. I would argue that this seperation would allow Kagi to invest more into search indexing, allowing them to improve the quality of it. It is difficult for a growing company to invest in R&D for search, news, translate etc, if it has razor thin profit margins.

Secondly, a company has no obligation to keep the prices the same as costs for both searching and AI can increase, making it impossible to always offer the same 10$ plan. As someone who uses a lot of searches, I know that Kagi is probably making a loss off of me.

However, this change should be implemented fairly and transparently, with at least a month of proper warning labels for quick answer and research assistant, before implementing the one time credit reset.

Finally, those people who support a private, ad-free search engine should support this decision, considering how difficult it is to challenge traditional search like Google and starting a completely new industry of paid search engines. This small sacrifice for users can be thought of as an investment or a donation for a better web. If Kagi succeeds, privacy and ad free search will be normalized, reducing its cost for competitors and users in the future.

Matou

Personally, I signed up for a one-year Kagi Pro subscription on the basis that it included Kagi Assistant. I wouldn't necessarily have been ready to take the plunge for a subscription if it wasn't included, and I'd find it pretty unfair to have it removed from my subscription when I've already paid for those credits.

I think, on the other hand, that you should strictly limit the translator for free accounts in order to encourage people to get a subscription.

Pleonasm

Luis We know there are Starter and Professional subscribers who find utility in the Kagi Assistant but haven't upgraded to Ultimate, and we'd love to understand why.

Although soliciting qualitative feedback from this community is valuable, the question as to why customers do not upgrade to the Ultimate Plan is one that can be answered using advanced marketing research methods. Kagi may wish to consider making an investment in marketing research to understand the utility that customers place on each product feature, the influence of price, the competitive set, and how all of those factors combine to impact the purchase decision.

You can guess - or, you can know. The latter is likely to be more strategically productive.

Pleonasm

howie Assistant would need to both be a significantly better product and actually prove that it's going to remain a significantly better product before I can take this seriously.

In my opinion, this is a point that Kagi would do well to seriously ponder: is Kagi Assistant truly a better AI research solution than the competition - and, if so, will it remain competitive? Regardless of the current perceived merits of Kagi Assistant, it does seem that the competition is rapidly advancing while Kagi is remaining relatively static. For a company that seeks to differentiate itself based on product features, this evolution may not bode well for the future of the firm - or, for the launch of a standalone Kagi Assistant subscription.

The good news is that Kagi still has time to place a renewed emphasis on the development of Kagi Assistant. Doing so is likely to be more beneficial than modifying the subscription plans, which is akin to "rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic." Updated subscription plans provide the appearance of meaningful change, without altering the underlying substance.

onthefence

Pleonasm

I agree. I had reverted back to free ChatGPT, Gemini and a paid Perplexity sub rather than using Assistant. In these trying times, I am extremely price sensitive, and the Pro plan at $15 CAD is all I can justify. Even at that price, there are times I have to justify why I should continue with Kagi rather than another non-Google search. With the absence of Kagi Assistant it becomes harder. Before Kagi I was using DDG and found it fine for my needs. I never use the finer control in Kagi search. I search for something, look at the results, and that is it. I do not use Kagi News or other things thrown in with the subscription.

rkj

As a pro subscriber that hardly ever uses the Assistant, this is not too big a deal. My main benefit is the unlimited search, and I'd rather be able to purchase that as a standalone product.
I understand the transition can be hard to make fairly, but the end goal of having more clear products is laudable IMO.

Bitdruid

Joined at Professional subscription because certain AI features like the Summarizer were part of the offer. Given the intent to discontinue the Assistant now, which feature is going to be next?

I came to Kagi at the suggestion of some guy that I'm sure nobody else really knows, who goes by the name Cory Doctorow. He also coined that one term that Kagi itself has been using the past. What was it again enchanti-something? ... nah it eludes me! ... but I'm missing the point, or am I? 🤔

Now, I get that the Assistant may have been a miscalculation and adjustments are needed from time to time. That's okay. I'd rather have Kagi than not have Kagi — but not at any cost!

After all haven't we noticed that "mileage" for LLM usage varies over time? Surely this must affect Kagi's calculations as well. But please be direct about it. Don't hide it behind euphemisms. If you're completely dropping the Assistant without lowering the price that would push me to discontinue my subscription. The price gap to Ultimate is simply not worth it to me. Lowering the allotted quota for the Assistant somewhat and providing similar billing transparency as currently but paired with user-defined (monthly) limits against the account balance would definitely keep me.

"Fortunately" (for Kagi) the offered payment options mean I have plenty of balance left. So unfortunately "voting with my wallet" won't be very obvious if and when this takes effect ¯\(ಠ_ಠ)/¯

I was delighted to find the Assistant added shortly after I joined and only came close to using up the allotted quota once. Otherwise it has ranged between 0.501 USD and 2.143 USD since September 2025, median being 0.83 USD and average being 0.942 USD. Not sure if this counts as heavy use.

wickerbox1234 If so that’s fine - Assistant was originally not included in Professional and we got it for free recently.

Recently in this case means 18 months ago, which at the age of Kagi isn't exactly a short period of time.

PS: Looking forward to four years Kagi and how this will be framed in the respective blog post (here's the one from three years Kagi).

k7absp2h

Luis

We know there are Starter and Professional subscribers who find utility in the Kagi Assistant but haven't upgraded to Ultimate, and we'd love to understand why. What would make the upgrade worth it for you? If you're using another tool, what's missing from Kagi Assistant to justify you going through the pain of switching?

Check out old Kagi Assistant feedbacks

Bitdruid

Luis We know there are Starter and Professional subscribers who find utility in the Kagi Assistant but haven't upgraded to Ultimate, and we'd love to understand why. What would make the upgrade worth it for you?

I can tell you what made the switch from Starter to Professional worthwhile for me: the Assistant.

Pleonasm If the separation of Kagi Search from Kagi Assistant allows Kagi to place additional emphasis on improving search quality, then the proposed change could be very beneficial.

If the team size doesn't change another full-fledged product is likely going to drain resources from search rather than help it.

blahblahblahkagi

Luis I’ve used $.385 of ai usage since September of last year when I subscribed. I like using the grammar checker, summarizer and occasionally quick answer. As long as all those features don’t become a separate subscription I’m fine with it. If it truly is ONLY Kagi assistant than I’d keep my subscription, but I’d trust Kagi a lot less.

k7absp2h

Unreal So, even if that's true, I'm still gonna be a heavy search user. For me, searching the web is irreplaceable, but LLMs? something I can live without.

Unreal

k7absp2h that’s exactly my point. If they break out assistant into a separate plan - you’ll still be consuming searches which is what costs them the most.
It’s like having a broken arm, then putting a cast on your foot.
At the end of their day, they’ve gotten their feedback: annoyed customers on this thread, Reddit and Discord. Now the ball is in their court.

Edit: I truly think that if they had said "search is costing us more than expected so we're raising our Pro plan to $12" - we'd all say "dang" and then go about our business. It wouldn't have made this mess.

Peter

Unreal I truly think that if they had said "search is costing us more than expected so we're raising our Pro plan to $12" - we'd all say "dang" and then go about our business.

That's probably true. The interesting thing is that adding AI seems to lower the costs:

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.

Source: https://kagifeedback.org/d/1338-provide-a-plan-without-ai-functionality/180; see also Breulkf's comment in this thread.

OJFord

Hadn't seen that usage page until mentioned above:
https://kagi.com/settings/consumption?range=1

Assistant's apparent value to me, in making my search subscription feel worth it, is definitely more than the (highly variable, couple of dollars average) cost!

A model that might make sense to me, subtly different at least in marketing from the proposed separate packages, would be say $5 current Kagi Starter, plus $2.50 unlimited search add-on, plus $2.50 basic AI add-on (both of which adds up to current Kagi Pro), or $12.50 unlimited AI add-on (to get to current Kagi Ultimate).

rhyxalia

Half the people here who mention usage of the Assistant said they barely use it or dont use it at all. Those same people are upset it’s being taken away. The Assistant was released for all plans only a year ago, they were fine paying for Kagi search before that.

ph

rhyxalia

Half the people here who mention usage of the Assistant said they barely use it or dont use it at all. Those same people are upset it’s being taken away.

I can only speak for myself, obviously, but "barely using it" (in terms of AI cost produced) does not mean I'm not finding it useful, but rather that I don't have the need to burn through 10 USD worth of tokens every month. I do find the Assistant useful, and I suppose even more so with ultimate's premium models - so for me, the added value of Ultimate just isn't reasonably proportional to the extra cost. Either way, it would be unacceptable to remove a feature that was actively advertised when the subscription was purchased. For me, losing it would make my subscription unattractive, but above all, I would find it to be strange and annoying behavior towards existing customers.

kirkmc

rhyxalia I have been paying for Amazon prime for ages. I now have to pay extra to watch movies and TV shows ad-free. I was fine paying for Prime before.

Not exactly the same thing, but when you downgrade a service, people will be unhappy.

Bitdruid

rhyxalia The Assistant was released for all plans only a year ago, they were fine paying for Kagi search before that.

It's been 1.5 years by now according to Kagi's own timeline. For a company that celebrated its first three years less than a year ago, that's more than a third of its existence.

Besides, the Assistant was the feature that tipped me over to switch from Starter to Professional.

OJFord

rhyxalia they were fine paying for Kagi search before that.

Based on what? I'm sure many only started paying for Kagi Pro after (whether or not because) it included Assistant. I know I did.

Why assume people are being unreasonable and inconsistent when the simpler assumption is that actually they weren't customers before that?

« Previous Page Next Page »