I used Kagi for months before the public beta, and I think it's an awesome search engine. However, the pricing model of US$10 per month is quite expensive for me since I live in Brazil. Can regional pricing be implemented so that I would be paying a reasonable amount in my currency? I'd love to continue using and supporting Kagi but at the moment it's not possible for me.
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Implement regional pricing
I'm on the same page.
- $10 is 1/3 of internet access
- $10 is one month of smartphone plan with 10GB
- almost 2x more expensive than Spotify (which I use a lot)
- more expensive than netflix
Every search costs money and on the Kagi website it says:
An average Kagi beta user is actually searching about 30 times a day. At $10/month, the price does not even cover our cost for average use
So not sure how sustainable it would be to have regional pricing
Well... in that case maybe.. just maybe... kagi has a too high running costs?
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C1231 You are correct. Our goal is not to provide a search engine, but the best search engine. This has a price and it is what it is now. And the cost to search the entire web is same regardless of where is search made from.
Regional, student, annual...discounts are not possible because we are not currently making any profit to discount it off from.
2 years later
This discussion is now already two years old but how is current status?
in my country the monthly fee for Kagi is almost the value of two days of work for average workers. For students like I am its even more expensive. i recently tried Kagi using the free plan and i really loved it. but I think its too pricey and i cant effort it. I see there is no easy solution as you have also to pay your bills. but brave offers unlimited ad-free searches for just 3$ worldwide. how come that kagi is so much more expensive?
I dont need the summarizer, fastgpt, orion, etc. I just would like to subscribe to Kagi search and willing to pay for it. but right now i cannot effort it. maybe you could introduce an subscription without any extra features but with unlimited searches for a lower monthly fee. thats just an idea. maybe there are some more people like me, but i can only assume.
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I think it would be fair to charge users in higher-income countries (a bit) more so users in lower-income countries can pay less. The question is if this could even be implemented. I'd guess that, if the fees for Brazil were lowered, there'd suddenly be a LOT of Brazilians using Kagi.
If there's hesitation to raise the fees for higher-income countries (which I'd understand) this could be done on a voluntary basis, but the question remains how to even identify those who deserve a lower fee.
Maybe this could be solved by taking into account the search region: I doubt someone from the US would set their search region to Brazil just to save a few bucks.
EDIT: The more I think about this, the more important I think it is. I understand the underlying issues with the cost of search, but that shouldn't be the dead-end argument. Making ad-free quality search a privilege of rich white people (globally speaking) can't be the answer to this.
LvL but brave offers unlimited ad-free searches for just 3$ worldwide. how come that kagi is so much more expensive?
Brave has received over 250 million in VC funding, uses affiliate links and has its own crypto tolken (BAT). Kagi has, to my knowledge, not talken any VC funding, has advanced AI features and uses several API calls to traditional search indexes like Google, Yandex, Mojeek, and Brave (all of which cost money) next to running its own two indexes.
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Adding politics to debate is probably the worst thing you can do. This is all about unit economics and cost.
@LvL
If we add any discounts, somebody would have to pay for those searches as their cost will be the same regardless where they are made. Since Kagi has no ads or VC funding to subsidize the cost, that means that existing Kagi users would have to pay for other users to receive discounts. That mechanism already exists through the 'Gift Kagi' feature.
Other mechanisms would involve governments deciding that ad-free quality search is fundamentally important for their citizens and then choosing to partner with Kagi to subsidize the cost and provide it for their entire population. We would obviously love to see this and perhaps starting a discussion in your country about this through your local representatives is a first step.
Kagi Inc. is a company created with the mission to humanize the web. Our goal is to amplify the web of human knowledge, creativity, and self-expression.
We want to bring a friendly version of the internet, one that has users' best interest in mind, into homes worldwide through our portfolio of best in class products - search engine, web browser, and soon email.
Maybe you should read your own mission statement from time to time. The cost of searching with Google is the same everywhere - a click is a click, and a view is a view. That gives Google a HUGE advantage over Kagi. If you look at the buying power of money, you are charging some users multifold - that's not political, it's a monetary fact. This means you're failing your goals (unless you don't regard certain nationalities as human, or worldwide excludes entire countries/continents).
Sorry to point this out - I think it's a big deal. If you don't see a problem, fine, but denying the existence of a problem just because you can't imagine it could be solved cost-effectively is a missed chance imho.
Racial hatred or envy aside – "rich white people" – there is nothing that would be fair in charging different prices for different countries. The people who would and are purchasing services such as Kagi in low-income countries are knowledge workers and they mostly come from the elite layer of the population. Meaning they can afford it if they want to. A low-income country is not a country where everybody is poor, it is a country where some people get very rich by keeping the majority very poor. Somebody earning a low income in these countries will not be a Kagi customer, just like they won't be a customer of most products and services. They need things that are a much higher priority than a premium search engine.
Apple doesn't sell their devices for a lower price in low income countries, and they would never sell them at a loss. Kagi shouldn't either.
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Kagibeh That gives Google a HUGE advantage over Kagi.
That is quite the ridiculous comparison. Google (Alphabet) isn't even a search company. Their search is mostly a data extraction operation for their core business - ads. Instead of traditional business model, like Kagi has, Google invented a deeply inhumane surveillance capitalist business model while conditioning users to expect to get everything for free on the web. While you use their services for "free", they actually generate impressive amounts of profit from you (~ 400$ year/user in the US). Google claims to not sell your data, which is true. It instead broadcasts your personal data for free to its 7000+ partners via the real time bidding (RTB) system. Further, being an monopolist, the company for the most part doesn't have to compete and innovate. Alphabet conspires with other big tech giants and rigs the market in its favor. It has cheaper access to money than all smaller entities and can thus just buy up every innovative or competing business.
Comparing such an entity to a small company with fewer than 30.000 users, with no VC money, ads, or data collection to subsidize its services, is a comparison of apples and oranges
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Everyone, please keep on topic.
The way feature suggestions work is formulate not just the problem but also a solution to it. So for everyone involved, how does Kagi implement regional pricing - who pays to subsidize the cost for users receiving discount and what criteria Kagi should use to decide who gets a discount and who does not?
13 days later
Vlad To me, those questions are spot on, but if nobody sees the/a problem, then there will be nobody to brainstorm with. And finding a solution will be hard, I have no doubt about that.
The "replies" leave me kinda dumbfounded, because they have little to with what I posted.
#1 "rich white people" is a simple demographical remark - nothing political, let alone a matter of racial hatred or envy. If I was under the impression that Kagi would be used primarily by Kermit the frog, I would have pointed it out just the same. The bet is on - I bet anyone willing to hold against it a case of of beer that the average user of Kagi will have a higher income and a lighter skin tone than the average user of, let's say, Google. That's not an opinion - rather it's a claim that can be proven or falsified. If it's falsified, there's no problem. If it's proven, but everyone is happy with it, there's no problem either. But if that's not how Kagi is supposed to be (see the mission statement above), it might be worthwhile to discuss.
#2 I don't compare Kagi to Google for moral reasons, for ideology or for business concepts (and again, I have no idea where this is coming from). It's a simple fact that both are used for searching the internet, Google is dominating the market, and Kagi is fighting for a share of that market (in that sense, they are direct competitors). Whether you or me refrain from comparing apples and oranges doesn't matter, because that's what every internet user does when they choose how to search the internet. By focusing on Google's "surveillance capitalist business model", you are missing out on the fact that their "pricing" is actually quite socialist: While US users may generate USD 400 per year, a user in a lower-income country may only generate USD 4 per year but still get to use the same search features. If Kagi is planning to cap out at a couple million users, this is completely irrelevant, but if they intend to become a serious search contender (and again, their mission statement suggests just that), they need to wrap their heads around this, or else it'll become a huge growth impediment.
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I think at this moment Kagi's opportunities for growth are plentiful. There are 1.5 billion people with an iPhone, a not-so-cheap device that costs the equivalent of 10 years of Kagi subscription. And Spotify has 250 million subscribers, paying similar to what Kagi costs, and Kagi is arguably a better use of one's money as it makes people more productive and more competitive in the modern world.
Kagi is now at just 25,000 customers so there is plenty upside opportunity for growth (10,000-100,000x based on above numbers). So basically sky is the limit.
I do agree that everyone deserves to have access to a search engine that has their best interest in mind, not just those who can pay for it. This is a social and economic problem and one way to solve it is for goverments to create ad-free search engines for their citizens, with their best interest in mind, similar to the role public libraries held for centuries. We'd be happy to partner with such forward thinking governments around the world in providing this service.
@Vlad is there any idea to work around the regional pricing idea? Because what regional pricing wants to archive is cheaper subscription. If it manages to do so for everyone, the better.
For example, I just use search. Nothing more. No fastgpt, no summarize, no assistant, no quick answer. Nothing. Just search. I want a list of results and I want them fast and reliable.
So it seems Kagi has huge costs per search that is preventing Kagi from offering a subscription that is effectively cheap? And this is the issue to tackle. Bring the cost per search down and Kagi is going to be able to offer lower subscriptions plans.
In April I did 1000 searches. That's more than $0.01/search with tax, which is super expensive in this context!
I really enjoy Kagi but there's the constant feeling that I'm overpaying for it.