Google Search got so bad I tried a $10/month alternative. Here's why I'm going back

There’s a reason why Google is a proprietary eponym and the de facto way to search the internet. It’s been the best way to find content on the web for literal decades, but recent changes and additions have made me reconsider its position at the top of the tree. AI Overviews, the sheer number of ads and sponsored products usurping genuine results, and the nonsense social media post suggestions make search result pages cluttered and borderline unusable. In short, Google no longer feels like the best way to Google. So I sought out a new way to, well… Google.

The alternative I settled on, at least for this past week, was Kagi Search. It’s been around for a while, but now that I’m finally nearing my limit with Google’s degraded service, I’m excited to try a novel alternative.

As I’d soon discover, Kagi is a lot more like Google than I’d realized in the best way possible, but this also comes with a significant drawback.

“A better way to use the web”

To offer a proper introduction, Kagi Search is a premium search service that replaces ads and user data sales with a subscription service. It claims its service uses no “invasive” trackers and promises far more answers than visual clutter.

For those on the fence about paying for a search service, users can defer the steep $10/month for unlimited searches in favor of a free 50-search limit trial. If you sign up, you get 100 more. While that’s incredibly cagey if you’re used to free rein, I discovered that it’s more than enough to get to grips with Kagi’s capabilities.

So, now we know what Kagi claims and what it stands for, but what does it actually offer?

In recent years, search engines have deviated from the “search” aspect and loaded results pages with more ads, promotions, and unnecessary AI garbage. Finding the actual, useful results is now more difficult than before, and that’s perhaps why many people use ChatGPT and other services as replacements. Kagi, while keeping things simple, offers many of these additions without obfuscating the results. For the most part, it reminds me of early 2000s Google — a clutter-free, results-first experience. Granted, there are aspects of AI integrated into it (the Quick Answer chip is an obvious example), but it’s certainly not as overt or obnoxious as Google’s product.

Counterintuitively, this means Kagi provides far fewer search results per query than Google does. For instance, searching Kagi for “red wine” yields around 90 results. Trimmed results might sound like a disadvantage, but think of how often you dip into the third or fourth page of Google Search results. For me, perhaps a handful of times in my entire life. Shedding results and privileging the highest-quality options should, in theory, provide users with the best overall experience.

Like Google and almost every other search engine, Kagi offers results that differ slightly from pure web link recommendations, including images, videos, and other subcategories. I’m a big fan of the “Interesting Finds” list in which Kagi lumps news, opinion, or science-adjacent content on a specific query, and “Listicles,” which show results that offer point-by-point breakdowns. These two aspects are certainly unique to Kagi, at least when compared to Google.

Kagi showcases other information about results that Google Search excludes. In addition to displaying the website index date, tapping the little shield next to a result highlights the trackers it contains, its page rank, its website speed, and its traffic ranking. This goes far, far deeper than Google, which adds further context when finding the best website for each search term.

Beyond the web links

Then there’s Kagi’s other strengths. As a kid, I used to spend hours browsing Google Images, searching for cars I liked and saving them to a floppy disk for use as wallpapers. Nowadays, Google makes it pretty difficult to do this, but Kagi offers a robust picture search feature. It packs a host of toggles and filters, so many that it can be quite overwhelming. Everything from image type to age to quality and size to color and license can be tweaked, included, or excluded. For the most part, this is where Kagi Search really feels like the old Google Search, especially on the web.

Not looking for images? Kagi’s great at searching for videos, news, and podcasts, the latter of which is perhaps my favorite way to use the product. One of my gripes with podcast apps is the lack of far-reaching search, but Kagi remedies this. Want to learn more about red wine? How about giraffes? What about significant historical events, like the Siege of Constantinople? Kagi is by far the best way to find new content in this specific medium.

Then there’s the final option on the nav bar: Maps.

Now, if there’s one Google product that’s difficult to topple, it’s Google Maps. Kagi Maps certainly does its best to provide useful insights into the sights and sounds of a city, including cafes and parking, hotels, and parks. Ironically, it showcases reviews that it fetches from Google Maps, but it also provides far less information in comparison. You don’t get any insight into the busiest times or menu items, for instance. Worst of all, it’s far too slow on the mobile app. I simply can’t imagine myself reaching for Kagi Maps over Google Maps, especially on my phone. There’s just no reason — better OpenStreetMap alternatives exist, while Google Maps is simply better in almost every aspect.

While I do like how Kagi Maps categorizes and then lists items in a given category (for instance, open the Parks chip on a specific city, and it’ll highlight all options in that window), I can’t get over how tardy it feels. I’m not going to mark Kagi down for offering a Maps section — after all, it would be a pretty good experience if I didn’t know Google Maps before it — but there’s no doubt that it needs plenty of polish.

Is Kagi worth paying for?

It’s surprisingly easy to integrate Kagi into my daily desktop browsing routine. I can set it as the default search engine or home page in my browser of choice, but it’s a little trickier on a smartphone. You’ll need to download the Kagi app for maximum effectiveness, which requires a workflow change. Instead of opening my main browser and initiating a search, I open the Kagi app, search, then tap a link to continue browsing in another window. This isn’t a problem when I’m hunting for the top result alone or for podcasts, but when I’m hopping from one result to the next, this process becomes very tedious very quickly.

And then there’s the lumbering elephant in the room — Kagi’s premium demand. I appreciate the company’s intent in charging users for its service, but I don’t particularly care if Google is using any data surrounding my search habits — data it can’t link to my Google account — to line its coffers. I never use search while logged in, so even though it has a vague idea of who I am through cookies and trackers (that sneak past uBlock Origin and NextDNS), it can never truly know that I am initiating searches. In short, I don’t see the value in paying to remain a ghost when my identity is largely obfuscated in any case. This makes Kagi’s plea largely inconsequential to me.

That said, given the degrading efficacy of Google Search, Kagi should certainly be on the alternatives list. Whether it’s worth its asking price, especially versus other non-Google alternatives, is another matter entirely.