Kagi Assistant

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Pricing and Plans

  • Assistant is on the $25/mo “Ultimate” tier; not available to free users and currently separate from the $10/mo plan (with hints it may move down later).
  • Some see it as good value vs $20/mo ChatGPT alone, since it bundles Kagi search plus multiple models (OpenAI, Anthropic, others).
  • Others prefer usage-based or BYO-key setups (OpenRouter, Deepinfra, Raycast, various self‑hosted UIs) and view flat subscriptions as more expensive overall.
  • Family members can be upgraded to Ultimate individually; subscriptions are pro‑rated when upgrading/downgrading.

Assistant Capabilities and Search Integration

  • Key differentiator: tight integration with Kagi search, including:
    • Use of lenses (e.g., Programming, Forums, PDFs, Recipes, Small Web, custom domain allowlists).
    • Ability to constrain results via lenses or site: filters (e.g., only Microsoft docs, only GitHub/GitLab).
  • FastGPT/Quick Answer and web summarize are widely praised for:
    • Summarizing top results or specific pages.
    • Citing sources, which users often click through for detail/verification.
  • Current limits: no image generation; missing some direct-OpenAI features (multimodal, DALL‑E). Some note no markdown code blocks yet, making coding workflows clumsy.
  • Assistant reportedly has no hard usage cap for now, but Kagi says they’re monitoring.

Quality vs Other Tools

  • Some feel Kagi Assistant and FastGPT rival or replace separate ChatGPT/Claude subscriptions, especially for search‑grounded questions.
  • Others find Perplexity, SearchGPT, or using models directly (ChatGPT/Claude apps) more capable, particularly for complex multi‑step or large‑context tasks.
  • One thread notes Kagi’s own token/input limits and shallow retrieval (few sites, sometimes odd sources) as making it weak for large documents or codebases.

Search Experience and Performance

  • Many users strongly value: no ads, ability to block/uprank/downrank domains, lenses (especially “Forums”) and bangs; some say this alone justifies paying.
  • Others report Kagi search often matches DDG/Startpage/Google, or underperforms on:
    • Location‑aware queries.
    • “Newest X” style searches.
    • Queries where terms seem ignored or result sets are too small.
  • Performance is mixed: many report it as “fast or faster than Google”; others (notably in parts of Europe and US) see ~2s latency or occasional hangs.

AI Direction and Skepticism

  • Some view AI features as a natural, even essential, evolution of search.
  • Others worry Kagi is over‑focusing on AI while core search quality and reliability have slipped, leading a few to cancel.
  • Concerns include hallucinations and confidently wrong Quick Answers, misaligned citations, and a general desire for “just good search” without AI.