I also find it steep. I've got several reservations such as always needing to be logged in on all devices where you want to use it / it being gated in general (most software projects I support are available to everyone equally) and the search results not being better than anything else, but 5$/month would be okay to support this concept... but that hasn't got enough searches included. You also pay double for image searches because it'll already incur a credit for the web results before you click on images
Skipping past the top two sponsored results in DDG really isn't that big a deal and still diversifies the search market from Google's monopoly, so paying the equivalent of a streaming subscription service... idk. None of my friends seem interested in paying for what is currently free (on top of the hassle of being logged in everywhere all the time) so sharing a duo/family account isn't an option for me either. Maybe that's something that would put it in reach for you?
Edit: apparently they've shared what it costs them to provide the service:
They charge 54€$/year for 3600 searches, which is.... precisely 1.5 cents per search. That sounds a little bit too convenient that the claimed cost price is precisely what they charge
This is either not the cost price or relies on people not using their subscription, otherwise you could never recoup R&D costs. Maybe this is total expenses divided by number of searches being run? I.e., it includes wages for the devs working on new features, their administration, etc. (fixed costs) and isn't actually the expense that each additional search incurs to deliver
DDG displays up to 2 ads above search results (most of the time I get none: trying just now, I saw 1 ad when doing two product searches and one knowledge search). The most favorable figure for 1000 ad impressions is 6$ according to <https://spideraf.com/learning-hub/what-is-the-average-cost-p...>. That's 0.6 cents per ad if the advertising network costs nothing. Advertising on DDG goes via Microsoft, so they'll take a cut: <https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/company/adverti...>. Guessing that they take 10% (I expect it's more), you're looking at 0.2 cents average revenue for each search I did just now. (Not a reliable figure but as a ballpark estimate.) DDG must have much lower costs somehow (maybe they just take results from Bing verbatim and have few costs of their own)
Their privacy pass thing lets you run searches in a way that doesn’t let them associate the query with your account, so the privacy half of the “always logged in” problem is mostly solved.
I switched from DDG. It saves me more than $10/month, both in time and in actual dollar costs due to suboptimal search engine results. It’s as simple as that.
The jump in improvement from google to ddg is probably bigger than the jump from ddg to kagi though. Also, I switched before ddg and kagi had AI search. Kagi’s AI is a huge differentiator for me, and I haven’t used the DDG one that much.
What would solve the "always logged in" problem is if I can enter a 6-digit PIN to use the service on a random computer or VM
I also can't associate searches I do for work with a personal account, and installing special software (this privacy pass client) is also iffy, so that's not going to work for people like me
Otherwise I'll have to use a publicly accessible search engine all the time anyway, since there's no way I can get my boss to pay for a search engine when I can't even get him to pay for our primary communications mechanism (calls and chat) that is hosted by a third party relying on donations
> This is either not the cost price or relies on people not using their subscription, otherwise you could never recoup R&D costs.
It seems pretty save to assume that the average user will search less than 300 times when 300 is the limit.
It’s of course possible for users to search exactly 300 each month before they stop searching or use an other provider, but my guess is that most people who regularly hit that limit will either stop using Kagi or move to a more expensive plan.
And that €54/$54 is the price when you pay per year, if you pay per month you’re paying more per search (although at least part of that extra money will go towards handling the payments)
Skipping past the top two sponsored results in DDG really isn't that big a deal and still diversifies the search market from Google's monopoly, so paying the equivalent of a streaming subscription service... idk. None of my friends seem interested in paying for what is currently free (on top of the hassle of being logged in everywhere all the time) so sharing a duo/family account isn't an option for me either. Maybe that's something that would put it in reach for you?
Edit: apparently they've shared what it costs them to provide the service:
> a single search costs us 1.5 cents to deliver
https://kagifeedback.org/d/687-implement-regional-pricing/23
They charge 54€$/year for 3600 searches, which is.... precisely 1.5 cents per search. That sounds a little bit too convenient that the claimed cost price is precisely what they charge
This is either not the cost price or relies on people not using their subscription, otherwise you could never recoup R&D costs. Maybe this is total expenses divided by number of searches being run? I.e., it includes wages for the devs working on new features, their administration, etc. (fixed costs) and isn't actually the expense that each additional search incurs to deliver
DDG displays up to 2 ads above search results (most of the time I get none: trying just now, I saw 1 ad when doing two product searches and one knowledge search). The most favorable figure for 1000 ad impressions is 6$ according to <https://spideraf.com/learning-hub/what-is-the-average-cost-p...>. That's 0.6 cents per ad if the advertising network costs nothing. Advertising on DDG goes via Microsoft, so they'll take a cut: <https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/company/adverti...>. Guessing that they take 10% (I expect it's more), you're looking at 0.2 cents average revenue for each search I did just now. (Not a reliable figure but as a ballpark estimate.) DDG must have much lower costs somehow (maybe they just take results from Bing verbatim and have few costs of their own)