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DOSSIER · AI search · SOLID · VERIFIED 14 Sep 2026
Kagi92SolidPrivate paid web search and AI-search alternativeVerified 2026-09-14

Dossier · AI search

Kagi

Kagi flagship-ready dossier: Private paid web search and AI-search alternative.

What is Kagi?

Decision

Private paid web search and AI-search alternative

Choose it when
  • Users who want ad-free search without behavioral advertising
  • Research workflows that benefit from domain ranking, blocking, pinning, lenses, and lower SEO sludge
Skip it when
  • You need free unlimited search
  • You will not benchmark result quality against your current baseline before paying
Cost
Trial free: 100 searches + 100 Assistant interactions · Starter USD 5/mo: 300 searches · Professional USD 10/mo: unlimited search · Ultimate USD 25/mo: Research mode and flagship models · unused-month credit.
Privacy
Kagi says it has no ads, no analytics/telemetry, no result-click tracking, and minimal cookies.

Watch for Paid search only makes sense if result quality beats baseline

Compare with PerplexityHow we score

Editorial · hands-on6 sourcespricing checked 14 Sep 2026privacy checked 14 Sep 2026

What these labels mean
Editorial fit
0–100 desk score for research-workflow fit. Not stars, not a benchmark.
Evidence level
How close the desk got: self-run, hands-on, synthesized, or vendor claim.
Dossier depth
Flagship, Solid, Lightweight, and Draft describe how finished the page is — not which tool is best.
Verification date
When pricing or privacy was last opened at the source. Not a re-score of the whole dossier.
Benchmark status
Pending means no relevant first-party test is published yet. It is not a negative score.

Open the glossary · Read the methodology

Kagi is a tool in the VerdictPal AI search set: User-funded, ad-free search engine with paid web search, result controls, privacy-oriented defaults, Privacy Pass/Tor support, and optional Kagi Assistant modes. It scores 92 out of 100 on editorial fit.

Role: Private paid web search and AI-search alternativeCategory: AI searchEditorial · hands-on
Kagi at a glance, with the date each field was checked.
FieldValue
Editorial fit92 out of 100
Dossier statusSolid
SetAI search
Role in a workflowPrivate paid web search and AI-search alternative
PricingTrial Free · Starter $5/mo · Professional $10/mo · Ultimate $25/mo
Training on your dataNot recorded as a plan-wide guarantee. Check the dossier's privacy notes and sources.
Last verified2026-09-14

Editor's note

Desk hands-on 2026-06: The best search product on the atlas for privacy posture plus AI — you pay, they do not sell your attention. Benchmark the quality; the ethics already passed.

Public facts · vendor & repo

List prices and pay-as-you-go entry points we can cite without running our own bench. Each tile links to a source when possible.

AI searchSetVerdictPal tool ↗
synthesizedEvidenceQuality gate ↗
6Sources checkedSources ↗
2026-06-07Pricing checkedQuality gate ↗

Limits & product surface

Non-price vendor claims — multipliers, caps, and API scope. Detailed matrices live in subscription and SDK sections below.

Primary surface
prosumer-saasTool identity ↗
Modalities
textTool identity ↗
Workflow roles
[object Object], [object Object], [object Object]VerdictPal editorial ↗
Alternatives tracked
Perplexity, You.com, Google Search, Brave Search, DuckDuckGoVerdictPal comparison set ↗

How it works · agent loop

The public positioning for this product — the loop we score against on VerdictPal.

Start with the wedge

Users who want ad-free search without behavioral advertising

Run the representative task

Run 25 research, product, local, and navigational queries against Kagi, Google, Brave, DuckDuckGo, Perplexity, and You.com.

Check the failure modes

Paid search only makes sense if result quality beats baseline

Compare before recommending

Compare against Perplexity, You.com, Google Search before shipping advice.

Who it fits, where it fails

Best for

  • Users who want ad-free search without behavioral advertising
  • Research workflows that benefit from domain ranking, blocking, pinning, lenses, and lower SEO sludge
  • Privacy-conscious users willing to pay instead of trading search behavior for ads
  • People who want a web-search baseline before using Perplexity, ChatGPT, or Google AI summaries

Avoid if

  • You need free unlimited search
  • You will not benchmark result quality against your current baseline before paying
  • You need formal institutional guarantees for every Kagi Assistant model/provider path before use
  • You want an academic database or systematic-review tool rather than cleaner general web search

Strengths

  • Paid ad-free search
  • 100-search trial
  • Starter 300 searches/mo
  • Professional unlimited search
  • Ultimate Premium AI/Research mode
  • result ranking/blocking/pinning/lenses
  • Kagi Assistant
  • Privacy Pass and Tor/onion support
  • PayPal/OpenNode payment
  • fair-pricing credit

Weaknesses

  • Paid search only makes sense if result quality beats baseline
  • Starter quota can be too small for heavy researchers
  • Assistant privacy depends on Kagi plus third-party model providers
  • Research mode and flagship models require Ultimate
  • Cloud search still needs trust
  • Custom ranking can create a filter bubble

How it could improve

  • Extracted values that require manual verification suggest the extraction pipeline needs a confidence-checking layer, cross-reference extracted claims against the original passage before presenting them as fact.

Search modes · 4 lenses

One input box, many retrieval postures. Filter by tier.

01Free

Workspace

Workspace path for Kagi — verify limits on the live product.

02Pro

Collaboration

Collaboration path for Kagi — verify limits on the live product.

03Pro

Automation

Automation path for Kagi — verify limits on the live product.

04Max

Admin & billing

Admin & billing path for Kagi — verify limits on the live product.

Competitive lens

Where Kagi wins for cited research — and where a rival still belongs in the stack.

Kagi is stronger when users who want ad-free search without behavioral advertising; Perplexity may still win for narrower fit, procurement, or specialist depth.

Kagi

  • Users who want ad-free search without behavioral advertising
  • Research workflows that benefit from domain ranking, blocking, pinning, lenses, and lower SEO sludge

Perplexity

  • You need free unlimited search
  • You will not benchmark result quality against your current baseline before paying

Scores and evidence

Metric lab · 16 dimensions

Click a tile for the editorial note. Color follows score: coral, yellow, mint.

Shape

Avg 84 · 59–98

92Editorial fit

Weighted roll-up across 13 dimensions for AI search; pending desk verification if rescored from public facts.

By group

Fit89
  • Editorial fit92
  • Wedge task fit90
  • Feature depth86
Cost75
  • Free-tier utility68
  • Cost-to-value74
  • Opportunity cost82
Trust88
  • Source grounding88
  • Privacy posture96
  • Failure transparency82
  • Evidence strength76
  • Transparency98
Workflow81
  • Integration reach78
  • Setup friction86
  • Reliability88
  • Competitive position94
  • Data portability59

Benchmark ledger

Public rows are vendor or third-party claims we logged with a date. Desk rows are reserved for VerdictPal self-run results.

MeasureResultSource
Run 25 research, product, local, and navigational queries against Kagi, Google, Brave, DuckDuckGo, Perplexity, and Youfirst-page relevance, spam/SEO rate, primary-source rate, duplicate domains, source diversity, time to useful source.PlannedVerdictPal benchmark plan
Apply ranking/blocking/pinning/lenses for a research domain and rerun 10 queriesuseful-source lift, filter-bubble risk, setup time, clarity of controls.PlannedVerdictPal benchmark plan
Run 10 Assistant questions on public sources only; inspect model/provider path, retention controls, and answer citationscitation quality, provider clarity, retention clarity, model caps, correction burden.PlannedVerdictPal benchmark plan

Editorial evidence · 0 entries

No editorial benchmark yet. The tool stays at status Solid until evidence lands.

This tool is in the VerdictPal Citation Fidelity protocol — frozen question bank, dual-reviewer grading, results still pending. Citation Fidelity v0.1 →

Test scenarios · hands-on lab

How we exercised the product. Step through each run before you trust the scores.

Test run

Step 1 of 4

Start from the persona in best-for item 1.

Research log · desk notes

What we learned while building this dossier — not vendor copy.

Notion Tool pipeline (Card pipeline) ↗

Notion research pass

Kagi is the paid-search tool: a user-funded, ad-free search engine with serious privacy engineering and enough Assistant functionality to be useful without turning into an AI slop layer. The strongest angle is incentive alignment — no ads, no result-click tracking, no analytics/telemetry on the main site, and paid plans that make the business model legible. The recommendation still depends on a 25-query search-quality benchmark against Google, Brave, DuckDuckGo, Perplexity, and You.com.

VerdictPal git ↗

Flagship-ready structure

Converted imported research into metrics, panes, scenarios, benchmark rows, comparison notes, and pricing deck.

What it costs, what it keeps

Pricing deck · checked 2026-09-14

Desk pick

Starter

$5

month

  • 300 searches/mo
  • Verify live regional checkout before publishing procurement advice.

Professional

$10

month

  • Unlimited search
  • Verify live regional checkout before publishing procurement advice.

Ultimate

$25

month

  • Unlimited search + premium Assistant
  • Verify live regional checkout before publishing procurement advice.

RAW · checked 2026-09-14: Trial free: 100 searches + 100 Assistant interactions · Starter USD 5/mo: 300 searches · Professional USD 10/mo: unlimited search · Ultimate USD 25/mo: Research mode and flagship models · unused-month credit.

Privacy deep-dive · checked 2026-09-14

Kagi says it has no ads, no analytics/telemetry, no result-click tracking, and minimal cookies. Queries/web requests may be temporarily logged for debugging; load balancer/VM logs are retained 7 days and Sentry 90 days. Assistant threads delete after one day by default; Kagi proxies AI/media connections.

Training on your dataNot recorded as a plan-wide guarantee. Check the dossier's privacy notes and sources.
EU data residencyNot recorded as a plan-wide guarantee. Check the dossier's privacy notes and sources.
SOC 2 attestationNot recorded as a plan-wide guarantee. Check the dossier's privacy notes and sources.
Local-first by defaultNot recorded as a plan-wide guarantee. Check the dossier's privacy notes and sources.

Under the hood

Vendors named on the product about page — useful for procurement and privacy reviews.

private web search
Kagi
ad-free search
Perplexity
assistant queries
You.com

Alternatives and context

Workflow roles

How this tool fits into a composed research stack:

private web searchad-free searchassistant queries

Deep panes · 6 lenses

Editorial lenses only. Subscription and API pricing live in their own sections above.

Lens 01

Positioning

Kagi is framed here as Private paid web search and AI-search alternative. Kagi is the paid-search tool: a user-funded, ad-free search engine with serious privacy engineering and enough Assistant functionality to be useful without turning into an AI slop layer. The strongest angle is incentive alignment — no ads, no result-click tracking, no analytics/telemetry on the main site, and paid plans that make the business model legible. The recommendation still depends on a 25-query search-quality benchmark against Google, Brave, DuckDuckGo, Perplexity, and [You.com](http://You.com).

Checked
2026-06-07
Evidence
synthesized
  • Users who want ad-free search without behavioral advertising
  • Research workflows that benefit from domain ranking, blocking, pinning, lenses, and lower SEO sludge
  • Privacy-conscious users willing to pay instead of trading search behavior for ads
  • People who want a web-search baseline before using Perplexity, ChatGPT, or Google AI summaries

Sources and provenance

Quality gate · Solid

Evidence ready

Verdict history

  • Live-verified Kagi pricing and privacy (2026-09-14). Trial: 100 searches + 100 Assistant interactions. Starter $5/300 searches; Professional $10 unlimited search; Ultimate $25 Research mode and flagship models. Unused-month credit remains; live page does not list annual −10%. Privacy: no ads/telemetry/click tracking; 7-day LB/VM logs; Sentry 90 days; Assistant threads delete after one day by default.
  • Kagi is the paid-search tool: a user-funded, ad-free search engine with serious privacy engineering and enough Assistant functionality to be useful without turning into an AI slop layer. The strongest angle is incentive alignment — no ads, no result-click tracking, no analytics/telemetry on the main site, and paid plans that make the business model legible. The recommendation still depends on a 25-query search-quality benchmark against Google, Brave, DuckDuckGo, Perplexity, and You.com.
  • Converted imported Notion research into a full flagship-ready dossier template with metrics, panes, pricing deck, scenarios, benchmark rows, and comparison slices.
Editorial · hands-onSolid
Visit Kagidirect link

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Browse the atlas

Questions this dossier answers

Every answer below is assembled from the dated fields on this page. Nothing is written separately for search.

What is Kagi?

Kagi is a tool in the VerdictPal AI search set: User-funded, ad-free search engine with paid web search, result controls, privacy-oriented defaults, Privacy Pass/Tor support, and optional Kagi Assistant modes. It scores 92 out of 100 on editorial fit.

Is Kagi worth using?

Kagi scores 92 out of 100 on editorial fit and carries Solid dossier status. Its job in a research workflow is: Private paid web search and AI-search alternative.

Who is Kagi best for?

Kagi earns its place when you need:

  • Users who want ad-free search without behavioral advertising
  • Research workflows that benefit from domain ranking, blocking, pinning, lenses, and lower SEO sludge
  • Privacy-conscious users willing to pay instead of trading search behavior for ads
  • People who want a web-search baseline before using Perplexity, ChatGPT, or Google AI summaries

When should you not use Kagi?

Skip Kagi in these cases:

  • You need free unlimited search
  • You will not benchmark result quality against your current baseline before paying
  • You need formal institutional guarantees for every Kagi Assistant model/provider path before use
  • You want an academic database or systematic-review tool rather than cleaner general web search

What does Kagi cost?

Trial Free · Starter $5/mo · Professional $10/mo · Ultimate $25/mo. Pricing last checked 2026-09-14.

Does Kagi train on your data?

Not recorded as a plan-wide guarantee. Check the dossier's privacy notes and sources.. Privacy terms last checked 2026-09-14.

What goes wrong with Kagi?

The dossier publishes 6 failure modes for Kagi, and they stay published whether or not the vendor likes them:

  • Paid search only makes sense if result quality beats baseline
  • Starter quota can be too small for heavy researchers
  • Assistant privacy depends on Kagi plus third-party model providers
  • Research mode and flagship models require Ultimate
  • Cloud search still needs trust
  • Custom ranking can create a filter bubble

What are the alternatives to Kagi?

The closest options to Kagi are Perplexity, You.com, Google Search, Brave Search, DuckDuckGo. Each one that has a tool in the atlas is linked from this dossier, with a head-to-head comparison.

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