Fundamentally there are only two business models available for search.
Since searching the vastness of the web in under 500ms is not free, it is either the user paying for that, or a 3rd party (usually advertisers) paying on the behalf of the user. We (Kagi) thought that for something as intimate as search the latter made no sense, hence the birth of paid search business model where incentives between the user and search engine are aligned.
Price not being right for you currently is another matter, and hopefully one day it will be (you could help by sharing feedback how to improve the product, and there is new Kagi pricing coming up soon).
I personally pay for YouTube Premium ($15/month I believe?) just to not have to see ads on any device I watch YouTube on. Many people would never consider that, but many (~25 million subscribers [1]) still do, despite being able to watch videos for free, availability of adblockers and what not. So YouTube Premium makes half a billion dollars every month and that is essentially using the same business model as Kagi's.
Since searching the vastness of the web in under 500ms is not free, it is either the user paying for that, or a 3rd party (usually advertisers) paying on the behalf of the user. We (Kagi) thought that for something as intimate as search the latter made no sense, hence the birth of paid search business model where incentives between the user and search engine are aligned.
Price not being right for you currently is another matter, and hopefully one day it will be (you could help by sharing feedback how to improve the product, and there is new Kagi pricing coming up soon).
I personally pay for YouTube Premium ($15/month I believe?) just to not have to see ads on any device I watch YouTube on. Many people would never consider that, but many (~25 million subscribers [1]) still do, despite being able to watch videos for free, availability of adblockers and what not. So YouTube Premium makes half a billion dollars every month and that is essentially using the same business model as Kagi's.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1261865/youtube-premium-...