Kagi

Kagi
Website type
Web search engine
Founded2018
HeadquartersPalo Alto, California
Country of origin
USA
CEOVladimir Prelovac
Key peopleVladimir Prelovac, Raghu Murthi, Dr. Norman Winarsky
Website
AdvertisingNo
CommercialYes
RegistrationRequired
Current statusOnline

Kagi (/ˈkɑːɡi/ KAH-ghee) (stylized as kagi) is a paid ad-free search engine developed by Kagi Inc., a company located in Palo Alto, California.

Its name is derived from the Japanese character 鍵 (kagi), which translates to 'key'.

Features

Kagi

Kagi functions as a metasearch engine to aggregate search results from other established search engines with its own indexes for websites and news. They run their own crawler under the brand name Teclis, although that index is only used for small-web searches. As of April 2024, Kagi listed that its sources for search results were derived from Google, Brave Search, Mojeek and Yandex.

Kagi offers many different customization options. The search engine results may be filtered by category with a feature (called "lenses"), which can be edited by users. Available lenses include filtering to find discussions, podcasts, search directly for PDF files and filtering to focus content from smaller websites like blogs or forums. Websites shown in search results can be prioritized, de-prioritized, pinned, or blocked. Additionally, Kagi also offers the ability to customize of the user interface with a custom CSS editor, a video search tool which lets you replace clickbait thumbnails from videos with a screenshot of the actual video, a toggle which disables all AI-generated images from appearing in search results, and shortcuts (called "bangs") which can be created and allow searches to be redirected to different websites.

There is also an opt-in AI quick response feature that summarizes a search query and gives sources. Details about websites can be shown in the search results such as creation date and counts of ads and trackers, some of which can be used to customize your future search results.

Internet activist Cory Doctorow praised the quality of Kagi's search results as "sorcerous", comparing the search engine favorably with Google Search.

Orion Browser

Orion Browser
DeveloperKagi Inc.
Operating system
LicenseProprietary freeware
Websiteorionbrowser.com
Repositorygithub.com/OrionBrowser

Orion Browser was a proprietary browser developed by Kagi Inc. that is based on the WebKit engine – the same engine as Apple's Safari. Orion offers a number of different features not found on Safari, such as natively supporting WebExtensions designed for Chromium and Firefox. Orion Browser is designed to be used with Kagi, but users have the option to use any search engine. As of September 2026, stable releases are available to download on macOS, iOS and iPadOS devices.

On March 7, 2025, Kagi Inc. announced that development of Orion Browser for Linux had begun. The browser is currently available to download on Linux in beta. On October 2, 2026, Kagi ended development of Orion for Linux and Windows. These implementations were also slated to be open sourced 30 days from the announcement.

In June 2025, Lifehacker praised Orion's ad blocking by default and faulted it for not supporting tab management or VPNs.

Kagi Assistant

On September 4, 2024, Kagi Assistant was announced. The Assistant uses generative artificial intelligence models from third party AI providers which are accessed anonymously with their respective APIs to preserve user privacy and can use Kagi Search to improve their output. Users can choose the AI model they want to use, and custom assistants can be created for different tasks. Originally limited to Ultimate plan members, the service was made available for all users in April 2025.

Reception to the assistance was positive. Nieman Lab's Neel Dhanesha found that the assistant did a relatively good job at citing its sources in its AI overviews compared with other models, and Willow Roberts from Digital Trends appreciated how easy it was to fact-check due to hyperlinked inline citations.

Kagi Translate

A screenshot of a translation website. The English shows "I am editing a Wikipedia article." The resulting translation in "LinkedIn Speak" shows, "I’m thrilled to share that I’m currently deep-diving into the world of knowledge curation by optimizing a high-impact Wikipedia article! 🚀 It’s all about driving accuracy, fostering global collaboration, and contributing to the democratization of information. 📚✨ Always striving to add value to the community! #KnowledgeSharing #ContinuousLearning #Impact #Wikipedia"
Kagi Translate can translate into corporate jargon typical of LinkedIn posts, a feature which became viral in March 2026.

In 2024, Kagi Translate was introduced. It's similar to Google Translate but will also give multiple options to choose from, explaining the differences. It uses a combination of LLMs.

In March 2026, Kagi Translate received an influx of popularity due to offering more comedic language translation options. These include "Gen Z Slang", which translates a given body of text into something which a Generation Z person would write, LinkedIn Speak, allowing users to translate plain English into corporate jargon similar to that used in LinkedIn posts and Pirate Speak.

Kagi News

On September 30, 2025, Kagi News was introduced. It provides a daily summary of worldwide news using AI with customisable topics and sections in each summary. News is collated from an open-source list of public RSS feeds, updated once a day to prevent media fatigue. Summaries can be translated into any language supported by Kagi Translate. Kagi News is free and can be used without an account. An AI feature of Kagi News is the World Tension index. The app assigns a value to the global political climate based on the current news and tracks it on a graph.

Writing for Android Authority, journalist Andy Walker praised Kagi News for its design and features but found problems with its 12-story limit per category, slower content updates and errors in AI summaries.

Business model

Kagi has no ads or sponsored search results, instead generating its revenue from an account-based, subscription service. Kagi allows users to make up to 100 free searches before they must subscribe to one of the monthly subscription plan tiers below:

  1. A $5 individual tier, allowing a user to make up to 300 searches a month (formerly 500)
  2. A $10 individual tier, allowing a user to make unlimited monthly searches
  3. A $25 individual tier which, in addition to unlimited monthly searches, allows users early access to upcoming features
  4. A $14 family tier, allowing up to two users to make unlimited monthly searches
  5. A $20 family tier, allowing up to six users to make unlimited monthly searches

Additionally, users may instead make a yearly subscription to the service at a 10% discount.

As of June 9, 2025, Kagi reportedly had roughly 50,000 subscribed members which made 845,200 searches on that day. As of September 2026, Kagi reportedly has over 75,000 subscribers

Privacy

The site claims not to collect user actions such as searches.

In 2025, the company implemented the privacy pass protocol in their search product, allowing users to authenticate as a paying user while not being identifiable. The same day, the company also announced the availability of their services on Tor.

API

The Kagi API is currently in a 'v0' beta status, with ongoing changes and feature additions.

Kagi has the following APIs (paid):

  1. Kagi Search API (invite-only at the moment)
  2. Universal Summarizer API (public)
  3. FastGPT API (public)
  4. Web and News Enrichment API (public, exposes Kagi's own indexes Teclis and TinyGem)

And the following non-paid API:

  1. Kagi Small Web RSS feed (public)

See also

References

  1. 1 2 "Using Kagi with Tor | Kagi's Docs". help.kagi.com.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 "About | Kagi's Docs". help.kagi.com. Retrieved January 19, 2024.
  3. 1 2 3 Roberts, Willow (April 18, 2025). "Kagi's AI search assistant gives you access to all the big models in one place". Digital Trends. Retrieved May 1, 2026.
  4. 1 2 3 Purdy, Kevin (May 23, 2024). "Bing outage shows just how little competition Google search really has". Ars Technica. Retrieved April 30, 2026.
  5. ↑ "How bad are search results? Let's compare Google, Bing, Marginalia, Kagi, Mwmbl, and ChatGPT". danluu.com. Retrieved August 6, 2024.
  6. ↑ Koebler, Jason (April 3, 2024). "Friendship Ended With GOOGLE Now KAGI Is My Best Friend". 404 Media. Retrieved April 30, 2026.
  7. 1 2 Currie, Jason (August 10, 2022). "What Is Kagi Search and What Can You Do With It?". Make Use Of. Retrieved January 19, 2024.
  8. ↑ "Kagi Search Gets Major Upgrade". GreyCoder. May 12, 2023. Retrieved January 19, 2024.
  9. 1 2 3 4 5 Hutchinson, Lee (August 5, 2025). "Dumping Google's enshittified search for Kagi". Ars Technica. Retrieved April 30, 2026.
  10. 1 2 3 Roberts, Willow (April 26, 2025). "I tried using a paid search engine for a week, and I don't think I'll go back". Digital Trends. Retrieved May 1, 2026.
  11. 1 2 3 4 5 Parab, Pranay (April 2, 2025). "Why I Pay for Kagi, the Ad-Free Google Search Alternative". Lifehacker. Retrieved May 1, 2026.
  12. 1 2 Ivanovs, Alex (September 24, 2023). "Google Search vs. Kagi - Is paying for a search engine the future?". Stack Diary. Retrieved January 19, 2024.
  13. 1 2 3 Claburn, Thomas (January 30, 2024). "AI is changing search, for better or worse". The Register. Retrieved February 18, 2024.
  14. ↑ Doctorow, Cory. Enshittification. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. pp. 77–78. ISBN 9780374619329.
  15. ↑ "Orion F.A.Q." orionbrowser.com. Archived from the original on May 6, 2026. Retrieved May 28, 2026. we're not currently in a position to open-source [Orion]
  16. ↑ Pierce, David (November 2, 2025). "The best things to watch over and over and over". The Verge. Retrieved May 1, 2026.
  17. 1 2 Pathak, Khamosh (June 10, 2025). "The Best Browsers for iPhone (That Aren't Safari)". Lifehacker. Retrieved May 1, 2026.
  18. ↑ Batt, Simon (March 27, 2026). "This non-Chromium Linux browser can run Chrome, Firefox, and Safari extensions". XDA. Retrieved May 28, 2026.
  19. ↑ Ashwin (June 3, 2022). "Orion is a browser for macOS that supports Firefox and Chrome extensions". gHacks Technology News. Retrieved March 6, 2024.
  20. ↑ Smith, Ernie (January 21, 2022). "Orion Browser: A Future Best Web Browser for the Mac?". Tedium: The Dull Side of the Internet. Retrieved March 6, 2024.
  21. ↑ Roth, Emma (February 14, 2025). "Kagi's search engine adds a more private way to search". The Verge. Retrieved May 1, 2026.
  22. ↑ "Kagi HQ (@kagi.com)". Bluesky Social. Archived from the original on March 8, 2025. Retrieved March 15, 2025.
  23. ↑ "Not a Firefox Fork! Kagi's Orion Browser Arrives on Linux as a Public Beta". It's FOSS. March 16, 2026. Retrieved September 24, 2026.
  24. ↑ "An Update on Orion for Linux and Windows". October 2, 2026. Archived from the original on October 4, 2026. Retrieved October 3, 2026.
  25. ↑ "Kagi ends development of Orion for Linux and Windows, open sources code to community". AlternativeTo. October 5, 2026. Retrieved October 7, 2026.
  26. ↑ "Announcing The Assistant". Kagi Blog. September 4, 2024. Retrieved January 19, 2026.
  27. ↑ "Kagi Assistant is now available to all users!". Kagi Blog. April 17, 2025. Retrieved January 19, 2026.
  28. ↑ Dhanesha, Neel (April 9, 2025). "Testing Kagi, a premium search engine for a broken internet". Nieman Lab. Archived from the original on March 16, 2026. Retrieved March 19, 2026.
  29. 1 2 3 Orland, Kyle (March 18, 2026). "Kagi Translate's AI answers the question "What would horny Margaret Thatcher say?"". Ars Technica. Retrieved May 1, 2026.
  30. ↑ Tolentino, Aaron (March 19, 2026). "'LinkedIn Speak' translator goes viral amid layoffs across US". KRON4. Retrieved March 20, 2026.
  31. ↑ Dellinger, A. J. (March 19, 2026). "This Translator Will Help You Parse Your Boss's Mind-Numbing LinkedIn Speak". Gizmodo. Retrieved March 20, 2026.
  32. ↑ Taylor, Chris (March 18, 2026). "AI translation tool turns English into 'LinkedIn'". Mashable. Retrieved March 20, 2026.
  33. ↑ Pierce, David (October 5, 2025). "The best lists to keep — and the best ways to keep them". The Verge. Retrieved May 1, 2026.
  34. 1 2 Dhanesha, Neel (October 15, 2025). "Kagi News is an AI-powered app for keeping up with the world". Nieman Lab. Retrieved January 19, 2026.
  35. 1 2 Walker, Andy (June 27, 2026). "Kagi News is the Google News alternative I wish I started using sooner". Android Authority.
  36. ↑ Pierce, David (October 1, 2023). "The best Google alternative I've tried yet". The Verge. Retrieved January 19, 2024.
  37. ↑ Koebler, Jason (April 3, 2024). "Friendship Ended With GOOGLE Now KAGI Is My Best Friend". 404 Media. Retrieved June 8, 2024.
  38. 1 2 Ashworth, Boone; Nield, David; Burgess, Matt (November 26, 2023). "How to Make Your Web Searches More Secure and Private". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Retrieved January 19, 2024.
  39. ↑ Parab, Pranay (October 19, 2023). "Does Kagi Making It Worth Paying to Search the Internet?". Lifehacker. Archived from the original on October 19, 2023. Retrieved January 19, 2024.
  40. ↑ "Plan Types | Kagi's Docs". help.kagi.com. Retrieved January 19, 2024.
  41. ↑ "Search Stats". Kagi Search. September 29, 2026. Archived from the original on September 29, 2026. Retrieved September 29, 2026.
  42. ↑ Prelovac, Vladimir. "Introducing Privacy Pass authentication for Kagi Search". Kagi Blog. Archived from the original on February 19, 2025. Retrieved February 24, 2025.
  43. ↑ Davidson, Alex; Goldberg, Ian; Sullivan, Nick; Tankersley, George; Valsorda, Filippo (2018). "Privacy Pass: Bypassing Internet Challenges Anonymously". Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies. doi:10.1515/popets-2018-0026. ISSN 2299-0984.
  44. ↑ "Overview | Kagi's Docs". help.kagi.com. Retrieved November 2, 2025.